Morrow Preschool leans into teaching kids to be kids
It was a modest beginning.
When Morrow Memorial Preschool opened its doors in the fall of 1974, it was not yet certified and occupied a single room in the sprawling first floor of the grand church on Ridgewood Road. There were two classes. A 4-year-old class met for a few hours three mornings a week, and a 3-year-old class met on the other two.
1. The hallway in Morrow decorated with projects and art from the children. 2. Barb Illingworth with one of her early classes, on an annual farm visit. 3. The first classroom at Morrow, still in use and decorated by the children for a Mother's Day tea.
Maplewoodian Jessie Auth, who attended that year, (although she recalls two classrooms, not one) remembers one of the lessons. The teacher blindfolded the students and asked them to identify what food they were feeling or smelling. Auth got vinegar. “I said, ‘lettuce frosting,’ ” she recalls, at which point the teacher laughed. Auth, told to repeat the phrase to her mother as she arrived, burst into tears.
In the 50 years since, there have no doubt been plenty of classroom tears, though very few, one suspects, induced by the classroom guardian. Every teacher at the school has been there more than a decade and has loyal fans, most of them under five feet tall. The preschool also has grown to include four classrooms that are used all day, as well as a playground, a garden, and space for indoor recreation.
The underlying philosophy has not changed. Play is everything. Children design much of their day in real time, planning as they go. “It’s giving them the freedom to be creative,’’ says retired longtime director Barbara Illingworth. “Everything [everywhere else] is programmed.”
Illingworth, who originally trained as a physical education teacher, came as a classroom aide in 1979 and never left. She taught the 3s for years. After completing a degree and certification in early childhood education, she became the director in 1984. She served for 27 years until her retirement in 2011. She still runs “Lunch Bunch,” the hour-long play and story time that also is an institution.
“She’s the mama bear,’’ says current board president and parent Lauren Noonan. “All the students know her so well.” Indeed, Illingworth has a knack for remembering all the students who have graduated from Morrow, even after they have gained inches, curves and beards. She sometimes greets each student she sees with a hug. But her biggest impact has been on the teachers. “Oh, my God, Barb taught me so much,’’ says Maureen Davenport, who was at Morrow in the early 2000s. She later moved to Seth Boyden, where she taught kindergarten for 15 years before becoming its assistant principal. “To this day, I still gravitate to the philosophy of learning through play. As Barb says, ‘It’s the process, not the product.’ ”
Indeed, any new parent dropping their child off at Morrow might be a bit disappointed at first to find out their kid has nothing to show from a morning at “school.” Many kids leave each day empty-handed, no artwork, no worksheets and no cards for Mom or Dad. Nobody practices writing or reading.
Illingworth insists that 3 and 4-year-olds should be focused on social and emotional development, not academics. “Once you get socially and emotionally ready, you can go to school. We don’t have to do letters and all that stuff. It’s letting them play. It’s letting them develop their muscles, their fine motor [skills], and they do that all through playing and climbing....” “
We let them be self-sufficient. We’re teaching them how to take care of themselves, to learn skills and be daredevils,” says Illingworth. This can include spending an hour building a tower to knock it down, sorting cars or whipping up “food” in the kitchen with Play-Doh. “I don’t want to overprotect them in the playground. I want them to fail so they learn there is success after failure. Practice makes perfect.”
In her many years at the helm, Illingworth recruited a staff who thinks like she does. All the teachers at the preschool, except the current director Cynthia Hicks, were parents at Morrow first. Most of them served on the preschool board. All began their careers in Lunch Bunch.
Nancy O’Connell, who first met Illingworth more than 30 years ago, teaches the 4-year-olds and scrounges the church’s annual Turnover Sale for donations of machines that do not work. She brings them into school so interested kids can take them apart and find out how they are put together.
She scavenged a piece of lumber from a neighbor’s driveway during the pandemic and built the original outdoor “mud kitchen.” The kitchen – a board sitting on cement blocks – was equipped with pots and pans from the Turnover Sale, along with sundry teapots and ladles. In it, the kids grated chalk, stirred potions and concocted poisons. “They love poisons,” says O’Connell.
O’Connell loves that the children determine the curriculum. “Every class has a different culture, so you go where the kids lead you,” she says. No day is like another, no year exactly like the one before.
The co-op part of the school, however, remains central to the school. Hicks, who has served as the school’s director since Illingworth’s retirement, insists that the one thing Illingworth asked of her was “to keep the co-op going as long as I could.” Under the co-op model, a different parent is the class helper each day. The arrangement not only saves parents money, but it also allows them to see their child in context, playing with other children.
Hicks acknowledges that the co-op model is increasingly difficult because both parents are often at work during the school day. “To live in this area, you kind of have to be two income parents.” To compensate, the school has made it possible to attend without doing the co-op. Nevertheless, Hicks says most of the parents choose to join the co-op. Many come because of it.
Noonan spent five years at Morrow and is finishing her second term as president of the parent board. She says being in the classroom with her daughters was meaningful on many levels. “You get to see the ins and outs of their day and how they’re growing with their little minds.”
She adds that the teachers made her a better parent. “You want your kids to do the right thing. You want them to meet these milestones,” she says. Noonan values that the teachers help you understand there is no one path for everyone, that every child is an individual, that learning to share, for example, takes time, that “there’s no right or wrong way to do things.”
Noonan also found good friends and a community here. Maureen Davenport says the same. And so does Barbara Illingworth. And Patti Moore. Moore’s two daughters attended Morrow in the early 2000s. She has become an aide and assistant teacher there.
When her daughters were small, neither she nor her husband had family close by. She turned to the teachers and other parents to talk. “You didn’t feel like you were the only parent out there in the parenting wilderness,” she remembers. The close interaction with other parents and children sustained her. She calls it “a gentler, kinder introduction to parenting.”
Parents who spent time in their children’s classrooms recall those days with joy. “It was so much fun,” says Jessie Auth, who, despite the trauma of her day smelling vinegar, sent her daughter, Allie, to preschool at Morrow. “I loved that as a parent I got to be so involved,” she said. She and her late mother, Mary, served as helping parents on Allie’s 4th birthday.
Most of Morrow’s parents still find out about the school by word of mouth. At the start of this century, there were parents who camped out to be first in line when registration opened. Eventually there was a lottery for placement. One former parent remembers calling from the hospital to try to get on the list.
Now free, public preschool is an option for many parents. There are also many schools that do not use the co-op model. Other schools lean into academics because the public schools continue to make students read and write at an earlier age. In response, Morrow has lengthened its day and added enrichment classes. But they have continued to lean into play. Kids are outside for at least an hour a day. Enrichment classes are free-wheeling affairs, focused on doing, not listening.
Director Hicks thinks the pendulum is swinging back to that philosophy. This past year, Hicks invited internet sensation and play advocate Kristen Peterson for a day of professional development.
“It was like having a rock star,” says Hicks. “It is what we are already doing, but it puts you on a high.”
The day reinforced that Morrow is on the right track, she says. Preschool kids “should be exploring. They should be able to choose things for themselves.”
Recalling her free-wheeling childhood, when her parents would open the door and she would leave for the day to build snow forts, make up games, and patrol the neighborhood, she says, “That’s the kind of play we’re trying to get kids back to.”
She adds, “We’re hoping to keep Morrow going as long as we can.”
Tia Swanson sent all four of her children to Morrow. She is forever grateful for the advice given her by Barbara Illingworth, the best being that birthdays should be celebrated with one guest for every year marked.
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