Author: Katie Morris

Did you know that many schools are returning to a mandatory score report on college applications? While the majority of schools switched to “test optional” applications during the pandemic, we’re starting to see schools bring back their request for test scores. There are strong arguments for maintaining the test optional protocol, but some schools believe that test scores can provide objective crucial information about students. At the very least, test optional schools mean that students who are successful in their ACT or SAT scores can report these scores to increase their opportunities for merit based scholarship or financial aid.

Recognizing this increasing need to prepare students to test well, Lewiston-Altura High School has two teachers who are leading a junior year ACT Prep course. Our fund was excited to help support this important endeavor, and is providing funds for the teachers’ training as well as the ACT Books for all students enrolled.

For additional information and opinions regarding the change in test score reporting, here are some excellent resources:

PBS News Hour: Why Some Schools Are Returning to Standardized Testing

US News: Some Colleges are Requiring Test Scores Again

The Future of Testing

As we approach the final months of the 2025 school year, it’s time to look back on everything the fund has accomplished this year, along with some pivotal changes we’ve made.

While one of our most successful on-going programs has been the Youth Frontier Courage Retreat for 7th graders, we wanted to support the school’s interest in revisiting some of the skills and philosophies taught to these 7th graders, and agreed to fund a Respect Retreat for the 11th Grade Class this year, in addition to the Courage Retreat. These 11th Graders attended the Courage Retreat five years ago. The Respect Retreat pushes students to consider how school would be different if everyone respected each other – and themselves – and then pushes them to be brave enough to enact this philosophy every day. If you’re interested in more about Youth Frontiers, please visit their website:

We also successfully brought back the ACT Prep Program this year, funding both the teachers for their overtime instruction, as well as the purchase of ACT Prep books for every junior.

Finally, we made a significant change to our senior scholarship program. Previously, we’ve distributed between $5-7,000 in funds to several seniors in the amounts of $500-$1,000. While these scholarships were impactful, we ultimately decided that awarding a single student with a substantial amount would be far more impactful. For the first time this year, one senior will receive a $10,000 scholarship to be allocated over their first two years in post-secondary education. We are so excited to be able to provide such a meaningful award to a deserving senior, and look forward to posting about our recipient in June.

Below, Roz Laraway presenting the 2024 senior scholarships to our deserving seniors!

As always, we are grateful for your constant support and good memories of Mark.

With Love,

Katie, Dylan, Roz, Lindsay, Carey, and kids

Another year, another big thank you for all your support of our students in the Lewiston-Altura Schools.

Let’s take a look back on all the incredible things we’ve done together over the past year:

• In March 2023, 7th grade students attended the annual Courage Retreat.  This is our  8th Class we’ve sent to the Courage Retreat, which means the seniors we work with for college applications have now cycled all the way through our programming!
• In June 2023, we awarded 13 seniors of scholarships based on both merit and financial need, to the amount of $6,500.  These scholarships help fill in the gaps for everything from tuition to textbooks, and students can choose to use them for four year, two year, and vocational school, truly tailoring them for their best-fit educational needs.
• In October 2023, we put on our second annual in-person College Workshop, open to the entire senior class.  This all day workshop covered the online application process, FAFSA, writing a college essay, and scholarships.  All students began a college application during the workshop, and many were even able to submit that day.  Once again, I had the privilege of flying out to Minnesota to lead this motivated group of senior students and guiding them through this process.  It was a full day and I was so impressed with the attentiveness and work ethic of our group!
• This year, L-A High School had its highest number of college applications and acceptances ever.
• We are continuing to support our after school clubs such as the Outdoor Seekers Wild Club and the Kids in Motion Club
• We’ve also made funds available for educational field trips such as student and faculty trips to Washington, D.C.

While we continue to support all of our favorite programming at Lewiston-Altura Schools, we’re making a big change for the 2024-2025 school year that we’re especially excited about.  The 2024-2025 Mark Morris Senior Scholarship will one student for two years of post-secondary education, for $5,000 a year, up to the amount of $10,000! We are so excited to make this change, as we believe it will truly make a difference for a student, allowing them to pursue a college career that would otherwise be out of reach.  We will announce further details about the changes with this scholarship, but it will continue to be a need-based, merit-based scholarship for which the seniors can apply.

As always, thank you.  It is through your continued support and kindness that we are able to provide so many opportunities for these students, and continue Mark’s resolve to give extra chances to every student possible.

With love,

Katie Morris, wife to Dylan, daughter-in-law to Rosalind, sister-in-law to Lindsay and Carey, and grateful steward of this blog

Hello and welcome to our friends, supporters, donators, and those who have just discovered our fund.

It’s been a busy year for the Mark Morris Fund, continuing to support our most fundamental programs at the Lewiston-Altura schools, but adding in additional opportunities as well.

In the Spring of 2022, the Mark Morris Fund was able to award 15 seniors scholarships to assist with their financial commitment to both 4-year and 2-year college programs.  These scholarships help fund the gap for things like textbooks, food expenses, or travel.  One unique and crucial aspect of the Mark Morris scholarships is that students and their families can choose to allocate the money towards their education in a more flexible manner, which means the money doesn’t have to be earmarked specifically for things like tuition or room and board.

We’ve continued to support the Seekers Wild Program, one of our most popular extracurricular clubs.  Seekers pushes students to explore nature and the outdoors, and to learn basic outdoor survival skills including shelter-building, finding food and water, and friction-fire techniques.

In October of 2022, we were so excited to launch our first ever in-person College Admissions Workshop at Lewiston-Altura Senior High.  The entire senior class was invited to attend.  And for me, the best part was that I was able to fly out to Minnesota myself, and team-teach this workshop with one of our fantastic teachers at Lewiston-Altura.  It was a dream opportunity to use my background in teaching and my current skills in college admissions counseling to guide this group of motivated students through the entire process of applying to college.  We spent the day learning resume writing, financial aid basics, college essay writing, and the process of applying online.  Many of these students have been a part of the Mark Morris Fund since the earliest Courage Retreats, so it was a true full circle moment to see them at the end of their high school journey as well.  It will be equally satisfying when a handful of these students are undoubtedly recipients of our spring scholarships.

This spring, in 2023, a new enrichment club has formed: the Kid in Motion Club!  With a focus on health and wellness, the students have the opportunity to learn basic kitchen skills, but also come to understand more in depth aspects of health and nutrition, and independent healthy habits.

Looking forward, we are pleased to continue our ACT Prep program for seniors, providing the students with the materials necessary to study and take practice exams, and providing a stipend for staff members who receive training and then give their time to facilitate the prep program.  And I’m also very excited to plan another trip to Minnesota in the fall of 2023 for our second College Workshop.

As always, thank you for your support, your donations, and most importantly, for remembering Mark and everything he believed in.  Providing enrichment and opportunity for students was Mark’s passion and his gift.  We are grateful you allow us to carry on his legacy.

With love,

Katie Morris, wife to Dylan, daughter-in-law to Roz, sister-in-law to Lindsey and Carey, and grateful steward of our blog

We are so excited that the middle school Courage Retreat was back in session, in person this Spring!  This year, both the 7th and 8th graders were able to attend the Retreat, since the 8th grade class missed their opportunity last year during virtual learning.  The Courage Retreat is put on by Youth Frontiers, a national organization that sponsors middle school workshops that are dynamic and engaging, inspiring adolescents to make better choices and make changes to their behaviors and attitudes, overcoming their fears and anxieties, especially in middle school! We’ve been so proud to be involved in this successful workshop year after year at Lewiston-Altura Schools, and are pleased it could return this year!

(If you’re interested in more information, please visit the Youth Frontiers’ website.)

This fall, English teacher Ms. Laura Noll instituted an ACT Preparation course for any interested senior.  These students signed up to take a six-week prep course created by Ms. Noll, culminating in a full-length practice exam.  This is the first preparatory course of its kind offered at Lewiston-Altura Schools.  Ms. Noll reached out to the Mark Morris Fund to ask for assistance in providing the ACT Prep Books for the enrolled students.  In February and early March, Ms. Noll and Katie Morris worked together to provide interested juniors with a three-session workshop on college applications and essay writing.

We are so excited to pair with Ms. Noll on this important initiative and look forward to supporting her and her colleagues with the ACT Prep program as well as future college application workshops this fall.

The last year was one which, unfortunately, required us to suspend a number of our in-person enrichment programs, including two years of the Youth Frontiers Courage Retreat, the highly successful and popular after-school clubs, and the summer S’Mores reading program.

In a year that closed us off from each other more than ever before, students who rely on the commitment, community, and network of their schools and the school staff were even more underserved.  Many of us missed out on relationships, connections, and opportunities, but these students more than most suffered from this lack of enrichment.

We are so grateful for teachers and school staff who continued to go beyond what was asked of them to reach out to these students.  We are grateful to our donors who continued to support this fund so that, when opportunity did arise, the funds were still available to support our students.

We are proud that this spring, we were able to provide scholarships to more students than ever, in larger amounts than ever.  The Mark Morris Fund accounted for more than $6,000 of the total scholarship funding awarded at the Senior Ceremony this spring, with 15 students receiving awards.  In addition, we were able to resume funding for other enrichment opportunities this spring.  (You can visit the Fund Allocation History page for further details.)

We plan to award even more students next year, in conjunction with resuming our previous enrichment activities.  We couldn’t do that without the tireless efforts of our partners in the schools, and of course, without the continued generosity of our donors.  Thank you for looking outside yourselves in a challenging year to give opportunity to others.

We are so grateful for the donations that continue to support the Mark Morris Fund and are excited about some of the new programs it has been able to fund.

In March of 2019, the Youth Frontiers Courage Retreat came to the Lewiston-Altura schools for the fourth year.  The class of 2024 participated in the retreat, along with several mentors from the graduating class of 2019.  This retreat continues to provide invaluable confidence building and cooperative skills for the 7th graders participating.  We continue to look ahead, particularly to the 2021 retreat, when the first class of participants will get to return as mentors.

The Latino Club continues to thrive, with the assistance of local college students and the fund’s provisions.  Students meet weekly for conversation, homework help, and cultural or community-oriented experiences.  The Drawing Club (new to 2019) and the Inspiring Students Club also provided opportunities outside of class and after school for students to experience enrichment activities and camaraderie with classmates.

In the summer of 2019, the librarian for Lewiston-Altura schools started an incredible summer reading program for local students.  Please view our post on that event for more information!

Finally, we’ve continued to provide scholarships to seniors (for post-secondary programs) and middle schoolers (for enrichment opportunities).  The 2019 recipients are listed under Fund Allocation History.

Below is an excerpt from an email from the school’s guidance counselor, regarding one of the recipients:

“A quick email to let you know that [student 1]  is beaming this morning.  I overheard him in the hallway telling [his teacher] that he was the winner of the Mark Morris scholarship and how grateful he is.  He went on to share that with a fellow classmate as well.  I called him into my room to ask him about it and the smile on his face was simply priceless. He told me how he plans to take classes this summer, maybe golf lessons and hopefully a robotics/STEAM camp or class.  I encouraged [him] to look at opportunities that will challenge him and spark his critical thinking skills.”

We love hearing these stories, and sharing them with you; these moments are what remind us of the importance – and the joy – of providing  students with the funds to challenge and develop themselves.

It’s been a busy year for the Mark Morris Fund, and 2020 promises to deliver more experiences for the students at Lewiston-Altura schools.  Thank you for your continued support and interest in the program, and for continuing Mark’s legacy.