Estrella Vista assistant principal committed to helping bilingual students
Arizona Republic
April 23, 2008

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by Jennifer Kitson -The Arizona Republic

Cathy Hill taught elementary, middle and high school in Phoenix and Glendale for 14 years before joining the Arizona Department of Education.
"I've always enjoyed children," said Hill, the new assistant principal at Estrella Vista Elementary School. "I wanted to choose a career where I could make a difference."
Hill worked for the education department until last year, when she became the director for Structured English Immersion for the Arizona K-12 Center. SEI is a program that uses federal grants to equip teachers with the tools to provide bilingual education.
Starting in college, Hill said she spent her spring breaks working with different organizations in Mexico.
She developed an interest in Spanish while working in orphanages there, frustrated by her inability to communicate with the children.
One summer, Hill took Spanish at the National Autonomous University of Mexico as a second-language learner.
"It gave me a lot of compassion for what our bilingual students go through here," Hill said