October 2023

Morning Assembly – Daily Inspiration

Every morning, nearly 500 middle and high school students gather in MacLaren's Commons for Morning Assembly.

Far more than a place to take attendance and hear announcements, Morning Assembly provides an opportunity for students to observe their teachers as lifelong learners and share in some of the well-loved traditions that define the MacLaren experience.

Head of Upper School, Benjamin LaBadie explains, "We begin the day by drawing students into the community of learners. Assembly helps lead students to consider something good, true, or beautiful and encourages them to be awake and alive to the world." Sophomore Noa Fuller says, "It's a nice launching pad to your day. It gives you something to enjoy before you go to class."

At the beginning of each school year, a series of Morning Assemblies highlight core topics that help define the MacLaren experience. One explores the school's namesake – who was Thomas MacLaren and why did his life inspire the naming of a school? Another highlights the design and significance of MacLaren's logo. Another still explores what it means to live in a community where members honor each other and treat one another with respect.

This idea of honoring finds expression in several traditions throughout the year, including end of year assemblies where teachers take turns honoring the goodness they have seen in each grade as a class.

Other core Morning Assembly topics include commemorations of significant events, such as 9/11, Veterans Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Of each, speakers highlight the historical significance of those events and stories of people whose examples continue to inspire decades later. In January, a Martin Luther King, Jr. themed week will focus on his life, his speeches, and those of his notable contemporaries.

Mr. Hensley and the sport of ultramarathons.

MacLaren faculty are committed not only to lifelong learning, but to model the practice for their students. Teachers take turns leading Morning Assembly, introducing to the student body a topic they find interesting. Whether presenting a topic from history, science, the arts, or a leisure activity, assembly speakers model how to lead a fully human life and engage students as fellow members in MacLaren's community of learners.

Morning Assembly gives students greater insights into their teachers – their personal interests, hobbies, and sometimes, their hidden talents. Mr. Hensley, for example, shared the history of ultramarathon running and explained how the sport challenges him as an athlete and as someone with growing appreciation for the natural world.

Mr. Cooper has students laughing with bear updates during October's Fat Bear Week.

Morning Assembly topics are as varied as the teachers themselves. Past topics include the discovery and preservation of medieval manuscripts, the expansion of the universe as observed by the Hubble telescope, and the relocation of beavers into the Idaho wilderness by parachute. Some topics return each year and have students eager with anticipation. In the fall, students look forward to Fat Bear Week, a bracket-style contest that tracks the pre-hibernation weight gain of bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park.

Dr. Holiday highlights Mole Day

Dr. Holiday invited students to consider the mole, a unit of measurement in chemistry studies, in a humorous way. He displayed for the student body Avogadro's Number (6.02 x 10²³), or a mole, with the equivalent of small mammals with the same name.

Dancers at the Nationwide Latvian Song and Dance Festival (left). Mr. Lilley shows images of OSIRIS-REx (right).

Dr. Redpath enlivened students' imaginations with pictures from his family's visit to the Baltic nation of Latvia. He explained the important role of choral singing and dance to the country's culture, national identity, and its past struggle for independence. Mr. Lilley highlighted OSIRIS-REx, a recent NASA expedition, which was the first to collect samples from an asteroid.

At MacLaren, each sixth grade student takes a semester of Public Performance. In addition to learning and performing a play together, these students each memorize and recite a poem at Morning Assembly. Mr. LaBadie explains, "We think there's something beautiful and worthwhile in memorizing and reciting a poem." While bringing a bit of beauty to the start of the school day, these traditions are unifying for the student body.

Of this tradition, MacLaren graduate, Andrea Cascaval shared with fifth-grade students, "One of the most amazing things you're going to experience [in Upper School] is reciting a poem in front of the whole school. When you get up and recite your poem, there are other students in the audience who have learned that same poem. They are silently reciting that poem with you. You are with the community." This is especially true of poems like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, a fan favorite among students.

High school and middle school orchestra students perform their pieces at separate Morning Assemblies.

Each orchestra gives a Morning Assembly performance. While providing the opportunity to rehearse together for an audience as they prepare for Fine Arts Night, these performances help remind students of their shared experience. When Orchestra II students play a beloved piece, such as Richard Meyer's Dragonhunter, older students are filled with nostalgia, remembering their own experience with the rhythmic music. This sharing of music – classmates practicing together and performing together – is a key part of the MacLaren experience.

Ms. Smith and Dr. Kolb perform a flute and cello duet. MacLaren teachers and staff sing "O Magnum Mysterium" together at Lower School Assembly.

MacLaren teachers have the opportunity to share their performance talents with students throughout the year. Orchestra faculty are regular Morning Assembly guests, modeling the heart of performance arts for their students. Various faculty share their love of music or poetry, some of which have become MacLaren traditions. Each December, Head of Lower School Nicolás Alvarado, delights students as he reads "A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote. Alumni have been known to return to MacLaren to hear Mr. Alvarado declare perhaps the most famous line from the story, "It's fruitcake weather!"

Our Vision

We believe all students should be immersed in the best our tradition has to offer. We believe all students can be active and useful participants in the ongoing and enduring conversation that is a vibrant civilization. We believe all students can be formed in a habitual vision of greatness that makes lifelong learners of the doctor and the mechanic, the homemaker and the professor. Thomas MacLaren School strives to build a lasting community of learners in which each student is the agent of his or her education.



Our Mission

From the seminar to the science lab, from the music room to the playing field, we begin with the conviction that all human beings can know truth, create beauty and practice goodness. To that end, we expect students to develop basic tools of learning, ordered basic knowledge, moral seriousness, breadth and depth of imagination, artistic ability and sensitivity, and a sense of wonder.

We believe all students can be active and useful participants in the ongoing and enduring conversation that is a vibrant civilization. Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher, described education as a human awakening. The goal of Thomas MacLaren School is to develop young men and women who are fully human and fully awake to the world.