It's been an incredibly challenging year for young people and educators. And in hundreds of schools, Morningside has been there for them, providing concrete support. Please give to Morningside - and be there for young people in 2022!
In all of our 40 years, we have never seen the level of need in schools that we've seen this year. That need continues to rise now, along with Covid rates.
We've also never seen a higher level of demand for our work.
It's no wonder: Students, teachers, and even school leaders are craving community. Connection. Empathy. Kindness. Equity. And of course joy. All this is exactly what we work so hard to deliver! (See below for what this has looked like in 2021.)
If you have already donated to our #BrooklynGives campaign, THANK YOU.
If you haven't yet given, now is the time: Donate here! With your gift, you'll be delivering palpable joy and a dose of justice to our schools in 2022.
Thank you so much for being part of the Morningside community!
December 2021
Demand: This school year, we have experienced an unprecedented level of demand, as hundreds of schools turned to us for help in addressing the stress, uncertainty, dislocation, and loss that students and staff are experiencing. In our 40 years of working in schools, we have never seen educators as distressed as they are this year.
Reach: Since the start of the 2022 school year, our team has already delivered our training and/or coaching to over 200 schools, promoting a sense of connection and belonging through social and emotional learning, restorative approaches, and culturally affirming practices. We also provided training to prepare staff from 38 after-school programs to foster SEL and self-care.
Impact: “Creating this welcoming space of feeling safe, feeling heard and seen at school…that has been powerful,” said one principal, describing the impact of our work at his Washington Heights school this year. We continue our longstanding partnership with researchers to measure our impact and learn from our experience.
Expansion: In addition to working in schools across New York City, we are working in two districts in upstate New York and with two national networks of schools around the country. We hired six new staff developers to handle our growth.
Resources: We shared free resources worldwide on TeachableMoment, posting 56 new lessons over the year. The number of website users has jumped 50% since 2019, with over 800k pageviews this year. Our 9/11 Teaching Guide received tens of thousands of hits. We shared our approaches for teaching on 9/11 and other challenging subjects in interviews on NPR and NY1. We also released a new animated video that gives people a glimpse of what Morningside’s magic looks like in schools.
Updates: We made our extensive preK-12 curricula available online to educators in our programs, and are updating and enriching all our curricula with additional activities to promote culturally responsive classrooms, reduce stress, and bring joy.
Honors: We ended 2021with the happy news that we are a finalist for the Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Spark Prize, which goes to organizations that have demonstrated a commitment to equity and racial justice, as well as “strong institutional values, and a dynamic vision for the future of their organization.”
Gratitude: Thank you for being part of our Morningside community and for making this work possible!