For the 2024–2025 academic year, Morrow House has focused on refining initiatives introduced last year to enrich student learning and increase student voice and agency.
Morrow House learning specialists now push into a variety of classrooms to provide targeted learning support for students and to support instructional best practices. The elective program has been combined to include all middle school students in a diverse range of offerings including teacher-directed activities, student-led clubs, and advanced studies. The social-emotional learning curriculum in the Advisory Program has been differentiated to provide developmentally appropriate topics and activities for students in grades 5-8. Morrow House has doubled the amount of time for students to eat lunch together, exercise outside, get extra help from teachers and learning specialists, and tackle projects in the iStudio.
Expanding their learning environment
LEARNING ENRICHMENT
Morrow House is a high challenge-high support learning environment. To challenge our students to reach the highest levels of academic achievement, we continue to offer honors electives in a revolving array of disciplines including math, English, art, and engineering. For the first time, Morrow House students can elect to enroll in independent, online courses offered through Apex Learning. Our middle school students are currently taking secondary school-level courses in psychology, finance, computer science, math, and Spanish.
LEARNING SUPPORT
Morrow House is committed to providing the resources and opportunities all students need. In order to widen the availability and effectiveness of our two learning specialists, Morrow House has embraced a “push-in” model of learning support in which students receive targeted help in the classroom that benefits from real-time cooperation between learning specialists and classroom teachers. In addition, our learning specialists are now available for extra help and enrichment during Learning Lab in the library on a daily basis.
STEM LEARNING
Morrow House now boasts a coordinator of robotics who offers robotics classes during the elective slot and through the auxiliary program and is developing an EMS robotics team to compete against other schools. In addition, we have modified our schedule to double the amount of time students spend learning computer science. Recognizing the dynamic nature of our STEM programs, Technology Integrator and ICI Department Chair Samantha Morra has recently been awarded the ISTE Making IT Happen Award at the NJECC Educational Technology Conference and was also selected as a semifinalist for the AI Educator Awards by MagicSchool AI.
VISUAL ARTS
Our students in Morrow House now regularly meet for visual arts twice a week instead of once. We are regularly offering honors electives in visual art that will help students develop a portfolio to submit to secondary schools.
Student Voice and Agency
Morrow House embraces student voice and agency as a powerful way to build confidence in students. There remains a vibrant student government program that brings together students in all grades to plan and execute their next initiative. To further provide space for student voice and agency, we have widened the options for student-led clubs in our electives program. Students can come up with their own ideas, build some excitement among their fellow students, and then apply to be recognized as an official EMS club. So far this year, Morrow House has welcomed clubs dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons, knitting and crochet, arts and crafts, and environmental protection. Morrow House faculty advise these clubs and help prepare them to present their work in front of the entire division during assembly.
Advisory
Morrow House has continued to develop an advisory program that promotes social-emotional intelligence and a sense of belonging. Taking into account the specific needs of our students, advisory now offers developmentally differentiated learning activities that address the questions and concerns appropriate to students in fifth grade through eighth grade. To complement advisory, students in fifth grade also enroll in MS101 – a mini-course that focuses on the social-emotional, organizational, and academic skills students need to excel in Morrow House. To monitor student wellness, Morrow House has implemented a student check-in survey in advisory that collects data on student wellness, belonging, and academic progress. Morrow House regularly reviews the data in monthly grade-level meetings to ensure that all Morrow House students are having the best possible social and academic experiences.
Secondary School
Morrow House’s secondary school placement program has continued to innovate this year. The division’s investment in high-quality test preparation services has provided eighth-grade students with more than 10 hours of targeted test prep which has spurred a remarkable increase of 30 points for each enrolled student. In addition, the program now offers three interview workshops for all eighth graders to ensure that they are presenting their best selves throughout the placement process.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR VISION AND GOALS FOR THE FUTURE OF EMS
Important 2024–2025 State of the School topics include updates from Chilton House and Little School, as well as Advancement, Auxiliary Programs, Communications and Marketing, Enrollment, Facilities and Operations, Finances, and Community Life, Equity, and Belonging.
