The Brookline Innovation Fund’s annual 5K race took place on Sunday, May 4 to raise money for the high school.
The starting buzzer rings and 250 runners race towards the finish line, marking the beginning of the Brookline High School Innovation Fund’s third annual 5K fundraiser.
The Innovation Fund, a nonprofit organization created by teachers and parents that helps create innovative classes and electives for students, held a friendly 5K race to raise money for the high school. The race started at 11 a.m. and ended roughly an hour later on Sunday, May 4, and was either free to run or cost $25. The money raised is used to create a wide range of classes that refine the student experience. The event featured lawn games, such as cornhole and a sack race and offered food from local restaurants for runners and volunteers.
Sophomore Leigh Niedeck, who volunteered at the race, said she helped during the event and with its preparation.
“I helped set up the finish line with all the flags and then also the markings on the ground,” Niedeck said. “During the race, I was around the course directing people where to go so that they wouldn’t get lost.”
Mona Mowafi, who is co-chair of the Innovation Fund, and mother to two Brookline students, said that they used a “GoFundMe model,” which gave people the option to make small donations at various points during the event. Mowafi also said the benefits the event would bring were far beyond money, contributing to their decision to make it free.
“When you sign up, you can also opt to donate; you can opt to run for $25 instead of for free,” Mowafi said. “I think it’s also important for people to know that the high school benefits from the innovation fund that does this sort of unique thing. So it is free and open to the public.”
Cher Duffield, a Brookline parent, former member of the Pierce school PTO and third-year runner for the event, said she was inspired to continue in order to support the cause that the Innovation Fund represents and to strengthen the Brookline community.
“The Brookline Innovation Fund is a great organization that actually makes a huge difference in the high school and makes it one of the top public high schools in the country,” Duffield said. “This brings people together.”
Duffield also said that the small details helped amplify her experience and made it enjoyable.
“It was a beautiful day, and [the volunteers] made it really easy. It’s right here, there’s refreshments and it’s super fun. You can run it competitively or you can just walk it,” Duffield said. “They make it really clear that it’s much more about building community and raising money.”
According to Mowafi, it is important that Brookline continues to have events raising awareness about organizations such as the Innovation Fund, which contribute greatly to the well-being of the students.
“We really want it to be a community-wide event and not just at the high school. Not just for the high schoolers,” Mowafi said. “But for and with the high schoolers and also the K-8, and for the general community.”
Dear BHS Community, At Brookline High School, we strive for students to learn by doing. An excellent example is the Climate Science and Social Change course supported by the Innovation Fund. This class offers students an interdisciplinary, hands-on approach to understanding climate change and its social implications. Currently taught by Roger Grande, this senior-level class moves beyond traditional coursework, challenging students to engage in real-world problem-solving. A recent project, Re-Green the Streets: Design Competition to Fund Urban Tree Canopy Expansion, demonstrates how students are pushed to explore the intersection of climate resilience, racial injustice, and urban planning. As part of this innovative project, student teams representing major U.S. cities — Los Angeles, Baltimore, Louisville, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee — researched the impact of segregation and social vulnerability on urban heat disparities. Their goal: to design a strategic plan to expand tree canopies in historically redlined neighborhoods, mitigating the urban heat island effect. Each team analyzed environmental and demographic data, crafted a mission statement, and proposed a sustainable urban greening initiative eligible for a seed grant. Their work culminated in a presentation to community evaluators, where students showcased their findings and solutions.
Students find the course to be eye-opening and empowering. Senior Sophie Finklestein, pictured above left, says, “I was looking for a science credit with a different approach than traditional courses. Climate change can feel overwhelming, but Mr. Grande shows us smaller ways we can actually make a difference.” Fellow student Nex Thompson, above right, adds, “I think it’s especially interesting to look at climate change through a lens of racial injustice and how it impacts communities differently. I never would have thought about that.” Here is a link to Sophie, Nex, and Gianna Gravina’s presentation.
This project exemplifies the power of hands-on, inquiry-based learning — giving students the tools to address pressing environmental challenges while deepening their understanding of social equity. The Climate Science and Social Change course is but one of many Innovation Fund classes that prove how education can empower the next generation to think critically, act, and create meaningful changes in their communities. Thanks for reading and supporting the Innovation Fund, which helps make Brookline High School a special place. Please remember to sign up for the 5K Run/Walk for Innovation on Sunday, May 4. It should be a fun event, with costumes, prizes, food trucks, and more. With appreciation,EricaInnovation Fund Liaison
As a BHS Spanish teacher, I’m thrilled to shared to share this update about our new Heritage Spanish-Speaker Pathway. It’s a wonderful opportunity for BHS students who speak Spanish as a native or home language to celebrate and strengthen their Spanish language skills while exploring their cultural heritage. Wishing you all happy holidays. Warmly, EricaInnovation Fund Liaison
Heritage Spanish-Speaker Pathway
Taught by English teacher Eric Colburn and Spanish teacher Marta Fuertes-Rodriguez, the Heritage Spanish-Speaker Pathway is part of a two-year sequence to foster both skill and pride in the Spanish language, heritage and Hispanic/Latinx identity. Through critical reading, essay writing, and meaningful discussions, students engage with texts that reflect and honor their unique experiences. In a short time, students give the course positive reviews, both academically and personally. “I like how it’s good to be in an environment where there’s people like you. It’s also good that everyone has something in common with their heritage.” —Natalia Griffin “At first I was a bit intimidated because I was like, oh my god, they probably know way more Spanish than me. But I realized there were other kids in my situation, and we’re growing together while also learning about our heritage.” —Eliani Williams
Through collaborative projects like personal slideshows about their cultural backgrounds, students find pride in their heritage while honing academic skills. The course also focuses on independent reading where students select texts that resonate with their interests and experiences. For example, Eliani, who values the opportunity to learn at her own pace, says, “I think independent reading is really helpful for me because I write down the words or phrases I don’t know, and then I recognize them later.” Natalia added how reading books she chooses has helped her become more confident with the language. By immersing themselves in literature that reflects their identities and interests, students develop their language skills and deepen their connection to their cultural heritage.
Erica O’Mahony has been a spanish teacher for six years, and she recently became the faculty liaison for the Brookline Innovation Fund.
Erica O’Mahony is a Spanish teacher at the high school, where she has taught since 2018. Last year, O’Mahony became the faculty liaison for the Brookline Innovation Fund, a nonprofit organization that raises private funds to help develop new programs at the high school that are not funded by the Brookline school district. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Describe your new role with the Innovation Fund. “For the Innovation Fund, I am the faculty liaison. The Innovation Fund is essentially an incubator; we expect some things to fail. It’s an experiment where teachers get to experiment with new programs that other districts don’t get to. My role is to be the liaison between the parent volunteers who donate and the teachers who have ideas for new programs. I have to help decide which programs get funded. We look at whether it’s feasible and whether it’s innovative and if the district can’t pay. I work with the programs as they continue on to assess their progress.”
What made you want to take on the role of Innovation Fund Faculty Liaison? “I just really love our school. I love people. I know a lot of parents and people in the parent community, so I find it really energizing, and I wanted to get to know more of BHS than I currently do. I get really excited by Roger Grande, for example, doing several initiatives on climate change, or the Queer Student Program. I want to be able to help create new programs like that and know what my colleagues are working on outside of the World Language department. I’ve started to get to know so many people, and I think BHS is full of amazing, innovative teachers.”
Have you worked with the Innovation Fund before on any specific projects? “Astrid Allen, who’s my very close friend, was the faculty liaison for seven years. Then, Brit [Stevens] took it over. I worked on a project with Dean Allen over the summer that the fund founded called the Summer Summit after Covid, where we collectively paused and came up with ideas and takeaways from remote learning, asking ourselves, ‘What do we want to do?’, so I mostly know about the Fund from Dean Allen and Brit.”
What do you hope to accomplish in this new role? “I’m really excited by all of the projects, and I wish I could help them all get funded. There’s potentially a course about belonging and friendships, there’s a criminal justice course, there’s an outdoor garden initiative that would bring hope and action to students around climate change where students would be climate ambassadors. There’s a proposal on how to help students use AI responsibly and for good, and there’s another one where the librarians are working on educating students on misinformation and how to teach students to get accurate information. So I hope to help all of those projects and the students they would support.”
A circuit project designed by ninth grade physics student. Photo by Elliot English.
November 11, 2024
In an icebreaker activity on his first day of ninth grade physics class last year at Brookline High School, Ilya Tagiev told his classmates he hates physics.
“It was true, I did hate physics,” said Tagiev, now a 10th grader. “I was expecting physics to be really hard, and then I went to Ms. Kissel’s class. It changed my perspective.”
Stacy Kissel is one of eight educators who teach ninth grade physics using a curriculum she developed alongside two other BHS teachers. The curriculum, first piloted in the 2019-2020 school year, is experience-based and highlights labs and observational learning instead of prioritizing theory and math.
It flips the order of learning on its head, replacing the standard “confirmation lab,” which proves what students have already learned, with experiments that inspire questions.
The curriculum encourages collaboration and has unified teachers and students, Kissel said.
“It used to be very much that the lab was at the end of the unit, whereas now we have activities as introductions to units,” Kissel said. Students “learn the science of ‘why.’”
In one experiment new to the curriculum, students learn about circuits. They create themed displays using donated holiday lights — strands with some working bulbs and some non-working ones. They build switches with cardboard, aluminum foil, bottle caps and other materials and must produce different brightness levels.
The curriculum overhaul was supported by the BHS Innovation Fund, which provides grants to school faculty to create initiatives such as new curricula. The fund pays for educators’ time, allowing them to use one of their class periods to work on new ideas instead of teaching a class.
The curriculum thrived during pandemic learning, as students brought experiments to their homes, according to Jen Spencer, a physics teacher who helped develop the curriculum.
“We were able to have lessons for kids doing a pendulum at home while some kids are in the classroom,” Spencer said. “We had circuit projects that kids would bring home with them and then take back to school.”
The curriculum also shifts the order in which physics concepts are taught, saving algebra-based modules for the end of the school year to allow teachers to refresh their students’ memories in math class, Spencer said. In the new curriculum, students use math to explain their observations instead of the other way around.
Experiential learning like this project inspired Tagiev to continue his study of physics in his free time and changed his outlook on the subject. Tagiev, who moved to Brookline from Russia two years ago, said he hopes to become an aerospace engineer.
“Compared to Russia, there was absolutely nothing, it was all textbook,” Tagiev said. “In the U.S., it was all hands-on experience.”
Spencer said she has witnessed the way the new curriculum has transformed physics from an intimidating subject for students into an exciting one.
Fund-supported Rethinking the Restaurant continued to engage the BHS community with innovative programs like Top Chef. See this year’s winning menu and chefs.
200+ people registered for the 2nd Annual 5K for Innovation. Watch them go!
Students shared their perspectives and class projects from Fund-supported programs at a recent showcase. See some of their comments below.
2023-2024 Champion of Innovation Roger Grande spoke with Barbara Moran about climate education in a packed auditorium.
The Fund is thrilled to be funding two new programs next year:
Heritage Spanish Speaker Pathway.
Three Spanish teachers (Marta Fuertes-Rodriguez, Kevin Whitehead, and Pedro Mendez), in collaboration with a Spanish-speaking English teacher (Eric Colburn), have designed a two-course pathway tailored to the needs and proficiencies of heritage Spanish speakers at BHS. The goal is to foster community, identity, and pride in learners’ heritage while also building stronger literacy skills to provide a faster pace of progress toward Advanced Spanish courses.
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Public Memory Innovation Fellow.
As the Fund’s 2024-2025 Innovation Fellow, Social Studies teacher Mark Wheeler will partner with librarians Bridget Knightly and Shelley Mains. They’ll identify opportunities in BHS social studies courses for students to think more deeply about what “history” is, how it is constructed, and how we choose to remember and convey particular events.
We’re excited to continue supporting these three popular programs:
Data Science and Social Justice.
This popular course uses problems related to a variety of social justice topics to analyze data, understand sampling, distinguish correlation from causation, recognize bias, and use probability and modeling to create and support data-based arguments.
I saw the class and I just thought it was so different from any other math class. I had this perception that math was a lot of lecturing.
We constantly get to talk about and analyze what’s going on in the world, why it’s happening, why it’s important. – BHS students
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Queer Student Program (QSP).
The QSP was designed to support LGBTQ students throughout their experience at BHS through special course offerings and affinity programming. The QSP offers a wellness course and a 9th grade Hub/Advisory class specifically for LGBTQ students, and helped launch the “OUTstanding Speaker Series.”
One of the things we often talk about in the queer community is the notion of found family and how that makes us feel like we belong. And then, when you feel comfortable in a space, your ability to succeed academically [improves] too. -BHS student
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Social Emotional Learning-Tutorial (SEL-T).
During SEL-T blocks, students learn to identify stressors, and develop coping and self-regulation strategies to support academic and social success at school.
I think that the main thing that I have learned is that I can go to adults and other students, and I will get the support that I need. And I don’t have to do it all by myself. Before joining SEL-T, I wasn’t as willing to go talk to teachers and advocate for myself. – BHS student
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We’re proud to announce another success:
Climate Science and Social Change.
This popular and impactful course is rolling off the Fund and has been integrated into the 2024-2025 BHS course catalog! This is exactly what we hope for at the Fund: We support faculty to develop and/or refine an innovative course or program, and then it becomes part of the Town-funded curriculum. Congratulations to passionate educators Roger Grande and Briana Brown, who created the course for our students (and our planet). Read more.
Spanish teacher Erica O’Mahony (right) will be taking over the role of Fund faculty liaison next year from long-time liaison Britt Stevens and Zac Broken Rope (center and left). We thank Britt and Zac for their dedication to the Fund, and we’re thrilled to have Erica onboard.
Several dedicated, longtime Fund volunteer leaders are also passing on the baton this year: Maureen Fallon, Mary Beth Landrum, Polly Ross Ribatt, Bill Nancarrow, and Masu Haque-Khan. We have several board members stepping into leadership positions, including new Board of Director Co-Chairs Rob Lawrence and Ben Stern, and Vice Chair Mona Mowafi.
Please join us at our fall Gala-Rama, Nov. 14, 2024. Mix and mingle with parents, teachers, and Fund volunteers – all while supporting the BHS community and the Innovation Fund. Save the date today, and stay tuned for more information!
At the Brookline High School Innovation Fund, our mission is to catalyze innovation at BHS by supporting faculty-driven curricular initiatives that will inspire our students and prepare them to thrive in a changing world.
BHS Innovation Fund • 617-713-5201 • 115 Greenough Street, Brookline, MA 02445
Whether a frequent patron, a one-time visitor, or merely a passerby catching a delicious scent of cookies in the halls, most students have heard about the Tappan Green Restaurant. But do they know how the restaurant really operates?
The student-run restaurant opened under its new name in the fall of 2021 in a custom-built facility located on the first floor of the STEM commons. It is staffed by students taking Restaurant and Culinary classes, which are categorized as a Career and Technology Education Elective. The class is under the supervision of three chefs, who function as the teachers of the class, while also working alongside the students.
In Restaurant and Culinary, students alternate between various stations. Stations such as bakery, prep, salad and barista allow students to gain valuable experience in a wide variety of the tasks involved in running a restaurant.
Restaurant and Culinary Careers teacher Divonne McCoy, one of the restaurant’s three chiefs, said students gain worthwhile experiences in the restaurant.
“After this class we’ve had students that went on and got a job because they have experience working on a register or in the bakery or making wraps or sandwiches,” McCoy said.
Career and Technology Education Curriculum Coordinator Britt Stevens said the value of the real world experience students gain from Tappan Green is helpful for many students.
“The Restaurant is one of our only remaining truly vocational programs in that it’s entirely work-based learning. So students are getting Career and Technology Education credit to be operationally running the restaurant. So it’s a very hands-on class,” Stevens said.
According to Stevens, the class allows students and teachers to interact in a work environment, rather than an academic one.
“The relationship is very different with the restaurant teachers because they really work side by side with students and rely on students to be able to execute the operation of the restaurant,” Stevens said.
Junior Selene Yo, a Restaurant and Culinary Careers II student who worked breakfast last year and now works lunch, details the unique relationship between the Chefs and restaurant students.
“They are your boss, you’re doing tasks given to you and you’re working with them, as well as them telling you what to do,” Yo said.
The restaurant functions as an independent business. Financially, it is self-sustaining, meaning that profits offset the cost of operations, according to Stevens. Additional profit is kept in the restaurant’s revolving budget to be saved for future expenses.
The restaurant also has a catering team that second and third year restaurant students can apply to and join. This paid job takes place after school where a small group of students caters local events, according to Stevens.
In addition to giving students culinary opportunities for their figure, the restaurant gives its students important lessons in leadership, according to McCoy.
“They come in and learn work ethic and how to manage, and if you’re here for more than one year we give you more responsibility for a leadership role,” McCoy said.
Zach Ellinor, The Cypress. Staff Writer • April 10, 2024
