“Through Mr. Morris’s enthusiasm for the classics and his dedication to the success of his students, our school’s Latin Club scurried from a small gathering into one of the largest and most active organizations on campus. His willingness to coordinate massive undertakings such as participation in the National Latin Convention in 2014 provided unparalleled competitive opportunities within the greater classics community for his students. Mr. orris was considered by many to be a force of nature.
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“Mr. Morris is a teacher who both fosters talent and builds interest, enabling the student to develop true motivation. In my own case, Morris created an environment in which I could succeed in both of these undertakings. I found the tests, exercises, and assignments in his class to be well rounded and varied, and he moreover encouraged me to give presentations and write papers on subjects that interested me personally. Without overdoing it, he was not afraid to talk about Rome and Latin within our popular cultural context – I fondly recall earning extra credit by hunting down and decoding Latin grammar errors in an episode of The Simpsons, for example, relying on the problem solving skills we had been building in class. He always had a relevant story to tell. The Latin came alive, motivating me to motivate myself.”

“I want to thank you for providing such a fabulous classroom environment and taking the time to
talk with me and the other future Latin ll students about a little of what we will be introduced to next year. I always looked forward to period 7, and it was nice to conclude each day with material that I enjoy. The Latin language continues to fascinate me with its vocabulary, grammar, and structural organization; your class showed me how it seems embodied by a certain melodic rhythm that I feel the English language lacks.”

“I just had the opportunity to read your letter of recommendation for Katie. You made me cry. Thank you so much for taking so much time to write such a wonderful letter. You captured her perfectly. It has never ceased to amaze me how quickly and thoroughly you figured her out when most people just watch her in confusion.

I was re-reading some old Facebook posts and thought you might enjoy my post from 2011:
”Gotta love a teacher who truly understands your child. After class this week, Katie’s Latin teacher gave her a 3 page banquet speech from the 1957 Nobel prize winner for Literature, simply because he thought she would like it. She was in raptures over it for days. What teacher takes the time to do things like that anymore? This guy gives her books and papers all the time, and not just Latin. He has become one of her favorite teachers.”

Just so you know, she still has that speech. I can never thank you enough for all you have done for my girls. You are truly an amazing teacher.”

“Thank you for being an amazing and devoted teacher and person! We appreciate all your hard work and that you push us to do our best.

Thank you personally for helping me discover my passion in life and for encouraging it, and for always putting up with my bad moods (and for giving me a hug when it happens). And for helping with my applications. Us Dhanukas are always here for you, too.
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“He has great enthusiasm which transfers and inspires us. He speaks directly, but is focused and concise with his information. He seems to me to have far more knowledge about his field than any teacher I’ve had so far at the University.

He is also always there to help his students, even re-reading their tests. To teach an upper-division class even when you are a master’s student, you have to be good, and in my mind this man is tops. He has that unique quality of a brilliant mind that makes connections, points out references, and is always thinking. You can tell that he is committed and it’s one thing to be professional in your field but to be able to teach well is great for us students. Above all this, Mr. Morris took the time to show concern with each student’s knowledge of the course. He gave some of the finest stylistic analysis of sculptures I have ever heard and could point out details I could not have recognized.”

“In the fall of 2005, I decided to take a Latin class at the local junior college (Solano Community College) so I would be better able to continue teaching my son Alex Latin at home. I feel very fortunate that Jude Morris was the instructor for that Latin 1 course I took. His enthusiasm for the subject made me even more committed to teaching my son Latin, so I went on to take Latin 2 and 3 from Mr. Jude Morris. In 2008, my son, then in eighth grade, began taking Latin from Mr. Morris while I sat in on the classes a second time to assist my son and reinforce my own knowledge of the language.

Alex found Latin much more interesting with Mr. Morris teaching. In fact, Mr. Morris’s pedagogy made my assistance to Alex unnecessary. I still attended classes for my own sake, but Alex’s ability to translate Latin, write, and communicate clearly thrived under Jude’s methods. Alex enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of Mr. Morris’s class and felt safe translating and answering questions in front of the class. After a literal translation Mr. Morris would ask for a more modern way of communicating the same idea. Alex especially liked that.”

“I realized just how much you impacted our lives, and that despite being at a different school, I still considered you to be a mentor to me because of the lessons you taught us. I’m evidently not the only one either, no matter what classes they go on to take, or what schools they go to, or even whether they graduate, you have this amazing ability to impact your students in a way that stays with them forever. And that, that is something really incredible, for you to be able to have that effect on your students in such a short period of time shows what an incredible teacher and person you must be. You pushed us to learn and did it in such a way that we didn’t even realize how much you were teaching us. Not just future perfect form of irregular verbs but life lessons as well. I’m not sure what it was but when people ask me what’s so great about Latin, I don’t know how to answer them and truly convey what it was like. Your time at Uprep will be remembered as nothing short of an era, from the rubix-pancake, to your indie records that could be heard clear down the hall. So I wanted to thank you for allowing me to be one of those students that you impacted so greatly. Allowing me to be a part of all the memories, and fun we had in Latin as it became less of a class and more an integral part of our everyday lives, and for being one of the greatest teachers, mentors, and people I have ever had the good fortune of knowing. I hope those other prep school kids realize how freaking lucky they are to have you. ”

“Mr. Morris was my English teacher during freshman year, and he was honestly one of the best teachers that I have ever had. He was always excited and interested in what he was teaching, and that made the whole class engaged. One of the ways he kept the class interested was by spending time on the background related to each of the stories we read, particularly when we read the play Antigone. Mr. Morris spent a class period explaining the story of Oedipus, which had to do with the background of Antigone. This class was so incredible, and not only did I learn a lot, it was a fun and enjoyable class experience. Mr. Morris’ passion really shined through when we talked about these stories.

Mr. Morris was almost always available to talk about essays, our books, or just to chat and check in. One of my many one-on-one experiences with Mr. Morris was also about the play Antigone. I came in one day after school having too many ideas for my essay about the play. Mr. Morris spent around an hour helping me develop a more focused idea. He helped me through my thought process and how to discover themes I was thinking about but unable to synthesize. He helped me put my essay together in the best way possible but made sure that I was doing the work on my own and learned from the process. This was just one of the very positive experiences I had with Mr. Morris working one-on-one.”

“Each academic year we ask students admitted to MIT to share with us the name of a teacher who been especially influential in their development. It is a remarkable achievement and a great honor to change a life, so we congratulate you on being named this year by Nathan Hernandez.

Most importantly, thank you for your time, patience, expertise, love, discipline, and all the the other qualities which have made such an important impact on your students. All of society benefits from the work that you do.

Congratulations again on your excellent work! We at MIT are deeply grateful. ”

“I can truthfully say he is one of the most talented, invested teachers I have had in my academic career. He gets to know you personally, then draws analogies between concepts in the classroom and concepts in other aspects of your life that he knows you would understand. He is excellent at breaking down the bigger picture into more manageable chunks, and is definitely the sharpest intellect I have ever gotten to know personally.
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“I wanted to thank you for being such an incredible teacher & role model to Finn. You are one of those rare teachers that your students will always remember and Finn is so fortunate to have had you for 2 years. Thank you for helping him become a more diligent and conscientious student. Despite how challenging your class was at times, you were by far his favorite teacher and favorite class. ”

“Mr. Morris is an outstanding person both as a teacher and as an individual; he is a role model for many of his students, being a figure of strict discipline and mental ability, but also one of proper ethical beliefs. Mr. Morris has devoted countless hours to his students, he would often reply to our Edmodo posts or enter our grades during the early morning hours, the next morning coming in sleep-deprived but still enthusiastic and happy to teach us all about the wonders of Latin. Mr. Morris has a great sense of humor and often lightens our serious translations with humorous and hip synonyms. He truly is an outstanding individual and whoever reads this should seriously consider him, as I can only fit a finite amount of his outstanding works in this small text box.”

“Professor Morris was an amazing teacher not only to me, but my whole class. Before every test he would set up study review sessions and meet with students individually. Every day of class we were to hand in a homework assignment, which he would promptly correct and hand back to us the following class. He would go through each individual assignment and suggest things we could do to improve the next assignment. All my other classes at the University only gave us tests and did mot measure how much we had learned by any other means.

Morris’s class was hard and labor intensive, but he made sure that each and every one of us were successful in the end. I was triumphant in my Latin career at the University of Colorado at Boulder, finishing Latin one and two with a B average: better then any of my other class at the University. I continued onto Latin III this past semester and found that I was able to use the techniques Professor Morris had taught me to be a success in that class, even though he wasn’t teaching it. ”

“What I admire most about you is how you have managed to strike a perfect balance, a golden mean if you will, between being a chill yet effective teacher. I can talk with you about similar interests, like Community (I’m still hurting from its cancellation), Star Wars, Firefly (also still hurting). Off the top of my head, I can remember when you, Justin, Matt, and I had a free period during STAR testing, where we ended up spending an hour talking about movie trailers and Star Wars VII, with you transitioning, like you always do, to something educational and meaningful in life (that Carl Sagan video explaining dimensions, a video which I still quote to this very day). That might not have struck you as odd at the time, but you’re probably the only teacher I’ve ever approached and talked with outside of class.

Since you only have me for 50 minutes each day, you may not realize it, but you’ve been integral in molding who I am. I mean, if I had to rank the most influential people in my life, it’d look like 1. Family 2. Mr. Morris. You demand perfection from me like no other teacher I’ve ever had, but that just makes it all the more rewarding when I can earn your praise.
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“What makes Mr. Morris different from the various other potential Latin teachers and from other teachers in general? Most teachers only teach their subject be it chemistry, English, or Latin. Mr. Morris is capable of teaching more than just Latin, he taught a relatively closed individual how to widen his gaze and look at the world, me. On his own, Mr. Morris decided that UPREP needed a group of students to look at the world as a whole and want to change it for the better.

And thus, UPREP’s TEDx team was born. If you are unfamiliar with TED, it is a nonprofit conference organization that seeks to share Technology, Entertainment, and Design in the effort that it diffuses and inspires grassroots community action to make this world a better place. Mr. Morris was the brain behind establishing that at UPREP and it has definitely fostered within me and a couple of friends a desire to create positive change.

Without Mr. Morris that may have never happened. It is difficult to place such feelings into words, but he sparked something within me and he will light that fire again with the students at your school. It is for that gift that I am most grateful.
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“I used to sit in the back of the class, in Latin 3, an awkward freshman transplanted across coasts not entirely sure what she was doing or why, and I’d listen to you talk about giants. “This student got perfect scores on every quiz”, “she was the best at synonyms I’d ever seen”, and I envied those achievers who had found their place, their niche.

Now, here I am, studying to be an artist and entrepreneur, scholar and humanitarian, and I have found my place, and it was you who helped me see it. You gave me that place in your classroom, and now I feel courageous enough to try to find it in the world.

Its a surreal experience, like gazing up at stars every day until the day you wake up and realize you’re part of the constellation too.
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“I cannot truly express what you mean to me as a person nor what you have taught me as a teacher. All I can say right now is that you have impacted my life in a way that very few have. I will see you at the Banquet tomorrow. Mane alsus
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“Thanks for the awesome year Morris— I’ll never forget my experience in Latin and am sure I’ll be talking about you and your sayings- Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Be smarter than the hamster, rubix it, etc , long past high school. So thanks for the great experience and all of your work you put into the class. All of us will miss you.
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“A while back, Sylvia shared with us your email about the Rime of the Ancient Mariner project. She had put a lot of thought into it, and had bounced various ideas with me. She was very excited when she finally decided to utilize the albatross origami to capture the significant and irreversible transformations that occur in the poem. I felt very moved by Sylvia’s completed piece and thought that it was very clever that it forces the viewer to actively engage physically and emotionally in an irreversible change too. The email you had sent to her captures the power of her piece much more eloquently than I can. I know that it meant a lot for her to receive that reaction from you. I believe that your positive commentary will bolster her courage as she goes on to study design in college, and perhaps may face challenges to take on artistic risks. I just wanted to take this opportunity to share that I appreciate that you took the time to write that for her.”

“One sunny day, he took us all outside the classroom to read excerpts of a book to each other in dramatized voices so we could better understand how different a character can seem to other people. Before we started reading “the Catcher in the Rye”, he had us all spread out blankets and listen to a podcast on how infinite our universe is, to give us a feeling for how lost Holden felt. Another day, he had us all reorganize the desks in his room to recreate a bar scene from “the Catcher in the Rye”, which we then acted out. Although these teaching methods may seem crazy at first glance, they really worked and helped us to understand the characters, setting, and author more than any normal class could.

And just in case all of this wasn’t enough, Mr.Morris always made sure to meet with his students outside of class. There was a point when I met with him twice a week, every week, just because he is that helpful. He would give me advice on what I was working on in class, and he would also direct me towards other books and challenging pieces of literature that he knew would expand my learning and that I would definitely enjoy. For example, he suggested I read “Man and His Symbols” by Carl Jung, and then he took the time to discuss it with me during lunch one day. Also, his feedback on all of our writing was phenomenal. We would turn in a piece of paper, and get it back color coded and absolutely covered in comments. He would then make a point to meet with us and give us focused feedback to improve our writing even more. ”

“While the influence of former teachers is truly valuable, students do not often have the opportunity to express their appreciation. With this in mind, Stanford University is pleased to sponsor the Teacher Tribute Initiative. This past summer, the members of Stanford’s class of 2020 were given the opportunity to acknowledge one former educator who played a significant role in their intellectual, academic, and personal development. I am delighted to inform you that Erick Blankenberg has chosen you for this honor. Please accept the accompanying certificate as a token of our enormous respect for the work you do.”

“My son Alex particularly enjoyed the relaxed and supportive atmosphere of Mr. Morris’s class, and felt safe translating and answering questions in front of the class. This helped him develop the confidence to express himself and address and learn from challenges as they arose. For example, after a literal translation Mr. Morris would commonly guide him to more modern ways of communicating the same idea, and help his students understand the nuanced meanings of different words and phrases, so that they could better understand how to articulate their learning more clearly and effectively. Alex especially liked that.”

“I left the meeting with a solid understanding of the interaction that took place within your classroom. Additionally, It was evident in our discussion that you treat your students with high respect and demand their best. Additionally, it would be a blessing to have Zach take Latin III next year with you.”

“Given my long experience as an educator, I am well acquainted with the requirements for a good teacher, and Jude Morris met them all. First, he is extremely knowledgeable about Latin (as well as Roman history). His competence in the language is dazzling, but even more significant, is his ability to convey the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the subject. One of the classes I took from Jude was scheduled in the evening, and even after a long day’s teaching, I found myself riveted by his presentations in the classroom. Jude is especially adept at pacing the presentation of his materials, and he does a splendid job varying approaches to learning the Latin language.

I have gone on to have other Latin teachers and professors (all of them most worthy, but I have had none since that worked so hard and so effectively in conveying the subject matter.
I now teach one class of Advanced Latin (high school level) at Louisville Classical Academy and am also an adjunct member of the Classics Department of the University of Louisville. Jude Morris is the reason I have continued to ‘carry the torch’ for the Latin language. I can’t recommend him highly enough.
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“Although in Morrisdor we have always found a way to connect our most obscure humor to Latin and the great web of philosophy, being your student has enlightened me to a different outlook of the world, an outlook filled with beautiful contradiction and chaotic symmetry, rather than boxed-in categories and hamster-wheel thinking. In fact, being under your instruction has utterly rubixed my thinking, and while most of the world would believe our ragtag band of Latin misfits to be a crazy bunch of misfits, you have taught me that we are indeed a crazy bunch of misfits, but that we should embrace the crazy in as a natural and healthy part of life. Mr. Morris, I cannot think of a single day in Latin where I haven’t laughed, learned, and possibly cried because of our brilliant conversations and your entertaining lectures.
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“Professor Morris was a very organized and well-prepared professor, which is a quality in a teacher I highly value. Although it was an intensive class, he managed the time he had appropriately so as to give the students as much information as the institution allotted.

One attribute of Professor Morris’ class that I found highly effective was his use of many slides. This gave the students a visual aid to help with the lecture and discussion. It was clear that he had spent a lot of time preparing these, but the extended effort was well worth it for the students. ”

“Ultimately the world does not need an up-and-coming mass of future Latin teachers or even Latin readers. What we need is a generation of people who can think critically and write coherently and who possess an appreciation for the arts, histories, and languages we are surrounded by. This generation is precisely what Jude is building in his classroom. While Latin language is of course the primary focus, I know that I personally learned more from Mr. Morris about writing and the English language than I have from any other teacher before or since. The time and consideration he dedicates to providing feedback on student assignments is invaluable; I believe that the high level semantic and rhetorical work I did with Jude when writing my National Merit Scholar application essay was ultimately the deciding factor in my receiving the award.

Jude Morris is a dynamic and devoted teacher who truly delights in the work that he does and in the subjects he studies. He unceasingly searches to do more, to learn more, and to fully engage in the world that he is a citizen of. In doing so he also elevates his students and inspires them to achieve the same.”

“I have to tell you, I may already have, but after she found out you were leaning there was a couple weeks where she would cry and say she was quitting Latin. Like a good mom of a teenager, I let her cry and mope and then asked her what would Mr Morris think? Did he only inspire you for the now? Can you not see a future in Latin without actually getting to have Morris as a teacher? (Sorry for this one) what if it had been an accident and he was gone gone?? What would you do then? She decided obviously to give this new guy a chance Thank you so much for investing so much in Sierra and seeing the goodness in her. I will make sure to video the opening of the gift!! Laurel selfie together will be a great treasure for her! You are a great teacher! Thank you again!!”

“I want to make special mention of Rachel’s Latin 3H teacher — Jude Morris. Change is hard and I think she was concerned about who would be her Latin teacher this year especially after having such a great year with Dobbie Vasquez last year. Mr. Morris is truly something special. He is confident, engaging, organized and funny. Rachel is a self-described science kid but people like Mr. Morris and Ms. Vasquez will encourage her to keep her mind open to other possibilities and strive for excellence. We are so pleased that she has teachers to help nurture her skills, challenger her, and insist that she keep an open mind.

As the Dean of Teaching and Learning we thought you might to know. Please feel free to share this feedback with Mr. Morris.”