Hello My Name Is...
Mrs. Henley
Welcome to Morrow High School and the 2023-2024 School Year! I am Jennifer Henley, one of Morrow High's Social Studies teachers. This school year is my 25th year as a teacher in Clayton County and my 23rd teaching at Morrow High School. My college field experiences include time at both Adamson Middle and Morrow High Schools. I serve as the Gifted Lead Teacher and the Social Studies Department Chair for Morrow High School.
This year I will be teaching AP Government and Politics: United States (Fall 2023), AP Seminar (Spring 2024), AP Human Geography (Spring 2024), and American Government (Fall 2023). In 2017, Morrow High was chosen by the College Board to offer the AP Capstone Diploma, this prestigious program rolled out at Morrow High during the 2017-8 school year and I am proud to teach the first of the two required capstone classes, AP Seminar. The first Capstone Cohort graduated in 2020, with 5 Full Capstone Diplomas, and almost 20 Capstone Certificates. The class of 2027 will by our eighth Capstone Cohort.
After graduating from City Honors School in Buffalo, NY (normally ranked as one of the top public schools in the United States by various national news organizations), I attended the State University of New York: College at Brockport. At Brockport, I earned a Bachelor of Science with a double major in History and American Studies with a minor in Political Science. After undergrad, I moved to Georgia and attended Georgia State University for graduate school. My graduate degree is a Masters in Social Studies Education, concentration Geography. I earned my Gifted Education Endorsement for my teaching certificate in the 2005-6 school year and have been one of Morrow High's designated gifted teachers for the past 18 years. This school year is my eighth year as designated Lead Gifted Teacher for Morrow High School and my 17th year serving as Social Studies Department Chair. I was also a member of the committee that saw Morrow High School gain national certification as a Magnet school from the Magnet Schools of America in 2020.
In the fall of 2021, I was selected as the 2021-2022 Morrow High School Teacher of the Year and chosen as one of the top six finalists in Clayton County Public Schools.
In 2013, I was chosen as the 2014 Daughters of the American Revolution Outstanding Teacher of American History for the State of Georgia. In 2014 I was selected to be the Morrow High STAR teacher and the Clayton County Public Schools STAR teacher. In the spring of 2014, I was recognized by Clayton State University with its Teacher Excellence Recognition Initiative, a program designed to annually recognize two high school teachers from Clayton County Public Schools who demonstrate excellence in teaching and exemplify the Clayton State learning experience. In the summers of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023 I attended the AP Human Geography Reading in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the summers of 2020 and 2021, I served as a Distributed Table Leader for the AP Human Geography reading. During the summer of 2015, I participated in two teacher institutes/seminars. The first was the George Washington Teacher Institute Summer Residential Program at Mount Vernon, the home of our first President and the second, a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for School Teachers studying Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition and Ideas of Progress. In the fall of 2015, I attended an Ashbrook Colloquium at Montpelier, the home of America's 4th president James Madison. In the 2015-6 and 2016-7 school years, I participated in the James Madison Legacy Project, an initiative through the Georgia Council of the Humanities. In 2017 I was chosen as the National Society Daughters of Colonial Wars Teacher of the Year and as the 2017 Morrow High School Star Teacher. The summer of 2017 involved me participating in another NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop in Deerfield, Massachusetts studying African Americans and the Making of Early New England. For the 2017-8 school year, I was chosen by the American Geographical Society to be one of 50 2017 AP Human Geography Teacher Fellows. During the summer of 2018 I participated in a teacher seminar about the Civil War at the University of Virginia through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and a National Endowment for the Humanities institute about the early American Factory System in Lowell, Massachusetts. In the Spring of 2019, I was chosen as Colonial Dames Outstanding American History Teacher for Georgia. During the summer of 2019, I traveled with a group of 6 students to Baltimore to participate in the Presidential Academy while my students participated in the Congressional Academy. We spent two weeks studying American History and Politics and visited Gettysburg, Fort McHenry, and Washington DC. During the summer of 2021 I participated virtually with the Vermont Archeological Society for a National Endowment of the Humanities program titled Freedom and Unity: The Struggle for Independence on the Vermont Frontier. During the summer of 2023, I traveled to Washington DC t participated in the Supreme Court Historical Society/Street Law Supreme Court Institute. During the institute I attended a reading of SCOTUS decisions along with attending a reception with one of the current Supreme Court Justices. I also attended a teacher's institute at Stratford Hall in Virginia about religion in Colonial America.
Yearly, my students participate in National History Day and the Georgia Council for the Social Studies Social Studies Fair. Over the past decade, several of my students have won first place at the GCSS Social Studies Fair at the state level. In 2018, 2020, and 2023 my students won National History Day at the state level and competed at the National Level. In 2021, two different groups of students won at the state level, competing at the national level in June 2021. In the Spring of 2022, students in my class placed third and fourth at the state level. This school year all my fall semester AP Government students will be participating in National History Day and I expect them to be just as successful as students in past years.
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