Local Students Win Big on National Spanish Exam

Spanish Language Students at Seven Hills Win Prestigious Awards

All 8th Grade Spanish language students from The Seven Hills School in Walnut Creek attained national recognition for excellent performance on the 2016 National Spanish Examinations. For the first time in the history of the school, one student received a perfect score.

Students from Seven Hills earned a total of 8 gold, 4 silver and 8 bronze medals along with 4 honorable mentions. “Attaining a medal or honorable mention for any student on the National Spanish Examinations is very prestigious,” said Deborah Frerk-DeMaria, Middle School Spanish Teacher at Seven Hills. “The exams are the largest of their kind in the United States with over 160,000 students participating in 2016.”

Students from Seven Hills have a long history of high achievement on these exams as one measure of the school’s Kindergarten-8th grade Spanish program. Their teachers, Karen Begg and Deborah Frerk-DeMaria, develop the students’ language proficiency, while preparing them to be culturally competent graduates.

The National Spanish Examinations are administered each year in grades 6 through 12, and are sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

The Seven Hills School is an independent school serving preschool through 8th grade in the San Francisco East Bay since 1962. With its focus on “the whole child,” the school attends to the intellectual, physical, social/emotional and expressive needs of each child. High academic expectations are exceeded in an environment that encourages inquiry and employs a differentiated process of learning. Seven Hills instills positive values from the earliest age – integrity, collaboration, gratitude, respect and responsibility – and gives its students the skills to thrive in an evolving world.