We always love getting Hanger Hall graduates at Asheville High. They are so self-assured.
Hanger Hall has been a wonderful experience for our daughter who is now moving into her second year. The school’s academics are challenging and have helped my daughter to stretch and grow. Equally important is the academic, social and emotional support she is getting from her small class sizes, skillful teachers, and positive school environment. When you visit the school, it is immediately evident that girl power is alive and well at Hanger Hall. We can’t think of a better place to help our daughter grow into confident, capable woman!
Our daughter came to Hanger Hall in 7th grade. Before making the decision to come to HH, I talked with some of the teachers and staff at her middle school. They explained to me that many children at the school are under challenged academically but that middle school is such a crazy time for children that their role is to really just get them through it. We wanted more for our daughter than boredom and a lack of social structure that caused anxiety. HH accomplished that in spades. My daughter immediately noticed how nice an all-girl environment was for learning. She benefited from the social structure in place (all school meetings, mentor relationship with a teacher, sister groups, and access to the Head of School when needed). She took risks and blossomed; and for the first time in years, she was challenged academically. This is a great place for girls to stretch and grow while becoming young women.
Once a Hanger Hall family, always a Hanger Hall family. As a mother of two teenage girls who have now both graduated from this exceptional school, I can attest to the high level of academics and overall commitment to the emerging woman’s emotional maturity that Hanger Hall embodies. We enrolled our oldest daughter in the school when it was a very small, new, growing institution, still finding its stride. In the six years we’ve been involved with Hanger Hall, we’ve seen enormous, positive changes taking place. As the school has grown, so has its reputation as the best middle school environment for girls in Western North Carolina. There are some of the most dedicated, hard working instructors here, who are truly able to teach in an engaging, innovative manner to students who are not distracted by typical middle school complications. I have always felt that my daughters were more challenged, had more fun and were simply safer at Hanger Hall than they would have been in public school. I have seen that my daughters and other Hanger Hall alumni are extremely well prepared for high school and college. I will always be grateful to Hanger Hall for making the middle school years less of a drama, more of an educational adventure, one filled with support from other girls and talented women role models. This is what middle school should be!
I started at HH when it was still split between Hanger Hall (the house) and the YWCA and there were three girls in my sixth grade class (me, Emily Samsel and Liz Elmore), eight years later, the three of us are still friends. It didn’t take Jamie very long to cure me of my longtime habit of reading outside books during class… maybe once. I think the most important thing I learned at HH was to take responsibility for my education, that class could be easy or challenging, boring or interesting, depending on what YOU chose to make of it, and that you can get out of any class as much as you put in.
