Ryan’s Poetry – Our Grandson Get’s an “A” at Galileo

Our 15-year-old grandson Ryan Hill attended the nineth grade at the Galileo Magnet High School.  We are proud of an “A” grade that Ryan received for a creative writing class for the 2008 school year. 

The Galileo School is in Danville, Virginia, and according to the school website, Galileo “offers a curriculum that provides challenges and opportunities to the students that one may not otherwise find in public education. The students, faculty, and administration create a unique educational experience that is found nowhere else.

 

The school’s program allows for expression of self, critical thinking, and personal development that can assist students when they enter the world after high school. Galileo’s technologically-focused study programs are on the cutting edge of the constantly evolving technological world of the 21st century.

 

As an International Baccalaureate school, Galileo is part of a world-wide academically challenging program whose rigorous courses provide aspiring students with avenues to pursue a more in-depth education that is recognized across the world. A thematic-based curriculum offers three strands of study, Advanced Communications and Networking Technology, Air and Space Technology, and Biotechnology, from which students can choose. After being listed in national magazines as one of the best high schools in America, Galileo faces the future with a history of proven accomplishments and many exciting challenges.”

Ryan and classmates at Galileo in Danville, Virginia.

 

Ryan is reading some of his literary works which were recently published. 

Above is an old photograph of the 1911 Robert E. Lee Junior High School that once stood on the property where the Galileo School is now.

 

The Galileo school slogan is: “Not just a school, a whole new generation of education!.” 

 

Actually, I worked in this same building when it was not a school.  In the fall of 1960, after I graduated from George Washington High School, I worked a few months at Dan River Mills and then in the Automotive Department of Sears, Roebuck and Co., which was located in the same building on South Ridge and Loyal Streets. 

 

And believe it or not, there were two schools at the same location before Sears.  Public education began in Virginia in 1870.  In 1880, Danville built a three-story brick schoolhouse here at Ridge and Loyal Streets.  The second floor served as a high school. My grandmother Annie Pruett Jones, who was born that same year, came to Danville in 1888 from Halifax County.  She was only eight years old when they moved.  The Pruetts first lived on Patton Street and Annie attended the Loyal Street School on this corner.  This school was torn down and the Robert E. Lee School was built here in 1911.   The high school was also in that building until the Danville High School was built on Grove Street in 1916.  I remember attending a fun night with someone in the 1911 building, in what was then Robert E. Lee Junior High School.