“Teachers at Hill truly care about their students and the kids know that. But they might not have known what that felt like until they came to Hill.”
Sara Gray Horne has a heart much bigger than the classrooms in which she taught. In the decades she dedicated to Hill Learning Center, she focused on helping students – especially those who struggled with reading – feel treasured and supported.
Ever since she can remember, she has enjoyed working with children – helping them feel valued and understood while inspiring them to reach beyond their assumptions about their capabilities. Throughout her career, she has inspired thousands of other teachers to do the same.
After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s in special education, Sara Gray secured a teaching position in her hometown of Washington, North Carolina, but in the months before beginning her assignment, the name “Hill Learning Development Center” kept crossing her radar.
“The more I learned about Hill, the more I felt drawn to it,” she explains. So she decided to forgo her original assignment and apply to teach at Hill “for just a year.”
Sara Gray discovered something special at Hill, and fortunately, she followed her heart and that single year turned into 40 years within the organization.
Over the years, she served in many different part- and full-time roles, from middle school language arts teacher to level coordinator to activities coordinator to the liaison to contractors as Hill’s current school building was being constructed. At one point, she even drove the shuttle bus between Durham Academy and Hill.
But her favorite roles were the ones that allowed her to foster a love of literacy in her students and to coach other teachers to do the same.
“I love to read,” she gushes. “It’s one of my greatest passions. I was one of those nerdy little kids who read all the time. I think reading is a gift and I wanted to share that with my students.”
Sara Gray often used book discussions as a way to impart character education, emphasizing the real-world value of literacy.
She explains: “Reading is a social justice issue. Every job depends on reading, and being able to read is a survival issue.”
Sara Gray was inspired to extend her literacy-as-empowerment attitude to other teachers by becoming a trainer for HillRAP, or Hill Reading Achievement Program, the school’s multisensory literacy program.
Sara Gray names her involvement with HillRAP as one of her central professional accomplishments.
What started as a humble-yet-effective, paper-based literacy instruction system is now a web-based application available on any device. Since its acquisition by the 95 Percent Group, the program is now being used in schools in 30 different states.
“What makes me feel most proud is the impact RAP has had not just at Hill, but across the state and now across the country,” she beams. “It’s nice to see our little program from our little school now has national recognition.”
Sara Gray was instrumental in developing and continuously refining the HillRAP methodology as well as training teachers to use HillRAP in their classrooms, starting with her appointment to Outreach Coordinator. In this role, she not only trained teachers to use HillRAP, but also performed classroom observations, helped secure grant money for districts wanting to implement the program, and established Hill Learning Center as a go-to resource for organizations supporting struggling readers.
Once she began collaborating with public school teachers and heard them express sympathy for students who struggled with reading, Sara Gray felt called to focus her professional energy towards “sharing that gift of reading.”
Starting with her earliest teaching experiences, Sara Gray understood that confidence, encouragement, and community were at the heart of solid student-teacher relationships. She sensed that when students feel cared for, they are empowered to stretch beyond their own assumptions about their limitations.
“If you don’t have rapport and trust, you’re never going to get anywhere with students.”
Even though Sara Gray retired from her full-time role at Hill in June of 2024, her work is far from complete.
“I’m only semi-retired,” she clarifies, adding that she continues serving in a coaching and training role for schools implementing RAP in Davie, Stanly, Ashe, and Avery Counties.
Enjoying a more flexible schedule nowadays, she looks forward to more time with her family, especially her beloved nieces and nephews. She hopes to travel more regularly and looks forward to a trip to Disney for her husband’s 60th birthday.
“Really, I’m just happy I have more time to read now,” she says, adding with a wink.