angela gill

Veteran Teacher Keeps Pace with Young Teens at Linton Hall

By Pauline Hovey
Special to the HERALD
(From the Issue of 2/8/07)

She has been teaching seventh- and eighth-grade English at Linton Hall School for 20 years, is the mother of two adult children, grandmother of five, and is eligible to retire at any time. But Angela Gill has told her students, “as long as I can outrun you people,” she plans to stay. “I used to talk about retiring,” Gill said, “but now I don’t say it anymore. Being around these kids keeps you young. I don’t like old people.”
Gill can hardly be called old herself. She has been organizing and going on the annual eighth-grade trip to Boston for nearly 17 years: five days with 20-plus 13- and 14-year-olds full of energy and raging hormones. That in itself should be indicative of her vitality, but Gill pushes herself and her students beyond what is required. Every year she makes them walk a piece of Colonial history, from Lexington to Concord, about a 7 and one-half mile journey between these towns northwest of Boston.
When she first proposed the idea, Gill said, “People at the National Park Service looked at me like I was nuts. They said ‘you’re going to make those kids walk this?’” But Gill wasn’t daunted by their skepticism. Now everyone involved knows what to expect. The students call it “the Gill Death March.”
“I have lots of graduates that come back to see me. They all say their fondest memory of Linton Hall is the Boston trip,” Gill said.
In addition to keeping up with youth, Gill is the upper school coordinator, which means she is the liaison between fifth- through eighth-grade teachers and the administration. As she explains, she sits on the board that hears about serious issues pertaining to upper school children and “tries to keep the faculty happy.” She also teaches eighth-grade religion and, as the chair of English and religion, she coordinates both programs, reviews and chooses textbooks, and ensures teachers are “doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
In 20 years, Gill has seen many changes at Linton Hall. Once a boy’s military boarding school run by the Benedictine Sisters, it evolved into a coed day school offering classes for pre-K through eighth grade. Her first year, Gill taught three boys. Now the classrooms are usually maxed out at 22 students. And certainly the technology has changed. “When I first came here we had these old, nasty computers in the lab,” Gill said. “Now we have the intranet and the Internet and over-the-top computers for every child.”
What has not changed at Linton Hall, Gill said, is the children, the atmosphere and the closeness of the faculty to each other, to the parents and the children. “That’s been a constant since I’ve been here. The goals and the philosophy are to respect all God’s creation. It’s just a wonderful place to be.”
Adding to the specialness of the atmosphere, Gill’s husband, a retired Air Force colonel, now teaches Spanish part time at the school. Gill good-naturedly jokes about how during his many years as a pilot, “he had to get up early and I could sleep in; now I have to get up early and he is snoring when I leave the house.”