By: Kassi Simmons – Owl Feed

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Terrace Hill is a Geometry and Algebra Extensions teacher at our high school. Even more remarkable, she is a former member of the Peace Corps and has an incredible spirit and a kind heart.

The vision in Ms. Hill’s classes is simple: Your education equals your impact. Your education isn’t just important to you, it helps everyone around you. In these classes, the ultimate goal is to fix the world as you learn.

Ms. Hill served in the Peace Corps from 2010-2012. She was located in Northern Peru in an area called the Bosque Seco, which means “equatorial dry forest” in English.

“The majority of the families in the community live on eight dollars a day,” she said. This community was very poor and had very little access to electricity and the floors of the houses were dirt.

In order for families to have money, “A lot of them were chopping down these trees that are very special,” Ms. Hill said. They would bury the trees underground for multiple days and create a charcoal they could sell that gives flavor to rotisserie chicken, a very popular dish in Peru.

These trees are very important to the environment, and the area is slowly becoming victim to deforestation. At the same time, Ms. Hill added, “You have issues of severe poverty and a lack of education.”

This is where Ms. Hill came in. She taught at a high school and also had a radio show that aired once a week that talked about environmental education.

This radio show spread messages to “take care of your community by not chopping down the trees,” as well as other issues.

While teaching at the Peruvian high school, Ms. Hill developed a program called Iron Man, Iron Woman. “The program was a leadership program that teaches students how to be community leaders,” she said.

This program also encouraged students to further their education by looking at colleges, technical schools, etc. and setting goals on how to end up there.

Her experience in Peru was what made her fall in love with teaching.

To Ms. Hill, being an Owl means, “Honor First, Win or Lose.” Additionally, she feels like being an Owl means knowing that your education is important and that “you are bettering others by bettering yourselves.”

Ms. Hill is also a big advocate for a program called Mary’s Meals. This program feeds children at school in underprivileged areas. Twenty dollars could feed one child for an entire school year. For more information, see my article on Mary’s Meals.

I spent no more than 20 minutes in Ms. Hill’s classroom, and I came out of that room a more thankful and caring person. I am incredibly envious of anyone who gets to be in her class (even though my math teacher is amazing). You will come out smarter, wiser, more compassionate and kinder.