A Well-Lit Path: A Blog from Westtown School

Jessica Morley

Dr. Jessica Morley, one of Westtown School’s Psychologists, is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist who specializes in school-based neuropsychological evaluation and consultation. Dr. Morley has extensive experience working with school teams and families of children and adolescents from preschool through the transition to college. Dr. Morley specializes in gaining an in-depth understanding of the neuropsychological profile of students in order to support parents and school teams in understanding the impact on academic and social-emotional development. Dr. Morley has presented at the national and local levels on topics related to the neuropsychological development of children and adolescents, provides professional development to school psychologists and school faculty across Chester County, and currently works as an adjunct professor in the school psychology graduate program at Immaculata University.

Recent Posts

Summer Skill Building with Your Child

Posted by Jessica Morley on June 1, 2022

With summer on the horizon, it is a great time for parents, guardians, and caregivers to think about the social-emotional skills that they would like to foster in their child. To begin your thinking, here are a few ideas, skills, and strategies that we use in Westtown’s Lower School.  

  • Unstructured, unguided, and unplugged free play time: Providing children with the time to play without electronics is critical for fostering imagination, problem-solving, and resilience. Children today have access to a plethora of immediately gratifying, hyper-stimulating forms of entertainment such as on-demand television shows, video games, cell phones, iPads, etc. While this form of entertainment can be fun and enjoyable, it takes away from time that can be spent fostering skills such as focus, exploration, engagement, and problem-solving without the stimulation of the device. These skills are critical for success in school. As the summer approaches, think about how you can carve out time every day for your child to have unstructured, unguided, and unplugged free time. This may become one of their favorite times of day (and yours!).
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Topics: Help with learning, Inspiring the Best in Kids