Miss Morna (far right) with students in 1956. Left to right:
Kerry Pendleton, Anna Kitzelman and Karen Doering.
Happily it was not very many more years before she was able to focus on
math, for which she was better suited. If need arose, Morna was quite willing
to step in to teach other subjects. In addition to those already listed she taught
Geography, French, Latin, Biology, Human Body and General Science.
Continuing her education during the summer, Morna earned a Master’s
in Teaching High School Mathematics from Columbia University. She also
attended several week-long programs at other universities, and was regularly
involved in state and national educational and mathematical associations.
She also participated in and chaired a substantial number of Middle States
accrediting visits to other educational institutions in the area.
In an interview a number of years ago, Morna, with a smile, stated that her
chief claim to fame was that she was the one who discovered the Benade Hall
fire one night in November of 1948. I suspect that many of us would assign a
very different source of fame to her.
Although Morna understood and enjoyed math, she knew that many of
the girls she taught did not have the same response. In 1951 she wrote:
For the most part, it is impossible to explain to high school girls what algebra and
geometry will do for them. We frequently point out situations in which they will
find them useful – if they remember the proper theorem, or think of using x for the
unknown. But these applications fall a little flat, because the number of times each
situation may arise in any one girl’s life is admittedly small. . . The girls feel like [a
fictional] pupil . . . who, when told “We are going to prove that the square on the
hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides,” asked, “Is that
a likely thing to happen?”
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