Reading Specialist
Margaret Wilson Hill grew up in Orange County and still lives on the family farm. Margaret, a Grymes alumna, Class of 1969, attended Grymes from kindergarten through eighth grade. Mrs. Grymes was her kindergarten teacher. Both her brother and sister graduated from Grymes. Margaret’s children, Lauren, Sterling, and India, are also Grymes alumni.
After Grymes, Margaret attended St. Anne’s in Charlottesville and graduated in 1973. From there she went to St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina and graduated in 1977 with a BA in Fine Arts. While there, one of her art professors brought a letterpress and she learned how to set type and make small books. One summer, she worked on two books of poetry by North Carolinian poets, which was funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. She currently owns a letterpress and tons of type and prints cards from time to time.
When her fist daughter, Lauren, was two years old, Margaret enrolled her in a local co-operative preschool. This experience sparked Margaret’s interest in teaching children. She became very involved with the preschool and taught the two-year-old class for two years. Margaret came to Grymes in 1990 as the afternoon kindergarten teacher, responsible for art, science and social studies. Two years later, she became the second grade teacher and for the next five years worked on a Master’s degree in reading education. During that time, she became interested in writing and wrote three plays for her second grade classes to perform.
Margaret retired from the classroom to the Grymes library in 2001 where she enjoyed engaging children in a good story, encouraging them to become life long readers, and getting a chance to see all the children in the school. In combination with her duties as librarian, she also taught Reading/Writing Workshop to 7th and 8th graders. In 2006,Margaret retired from the library and added Reading Resource teacher to her educational repertoire.
Margaret continues to love to write and “dabble in art projects”. She reflects on this saying, “Grymes was the school where I was first exposed to reading, writing, and art. I feel I learned more about responsibility, hard work, and caring for others at Grymes than in any other school I attended. I have maintained close friendships with many of my Grymes classmates. I never had any doubts about where I wanted to send my children to school.”