To help celebrate the Fund’s 25th anniversary, BHS Senior Stella Charbonneau created this series, featuring several Fund-supported courses and programs. Do they look familiar? We’ve showcased them as lawn signs around campus and town, and displayed them at the 25th Anniversary Celebration this fall.
Want one for your home or business? Just email us and we’ll deliver it to you. Senior Katherine Dougan also created a series, which we’ll share in a future email. Stay tuned!
Brookline High School alumna Maya Rozen interviewed current students about their experiences participating in BHS Innovation Fund courses. Hear the impact of the Innovation Fund at BHS in the students’ own voices.
Many of the courses offered at BHS revolve around a curriculum that students are required to take, which is why many students relish the academic opportunities that grant them more freedom to explore other areas of study more on their own terms. For students interested in engineering, Engineering by Design is a great class that allows students to explore different areas of engineering and design and to pursue projects that they are passionate about. Other classes like Social Justice and Racial Awareness provide a safe space for students to learn about important topics with the freedom to share their own thoughts, experiences, and beliefs. Many of these classes allow students to explore new subjects that aren’t always covered in the required curriculum.
In your opinion, what makes your Fund class different compared to your other classes?
“Something that stood out to me about the class was the amount of freedom we had because I kind of expected it to be really structured with a lot of rules, but I found that with all of the projects there was a lot of room for our own ideas and a lot of room for creativity, which I liked.”
~Sarah S., BHS ’21, Engineering by Design
“I think since you have to apply, everyone who is in the class is really interested in social justice and wants to be there. It’s not like people are taking it just to check it off the list or just to say they took it. I can see people who were in my class that are now doing things on their own time, whether they have an internship, or they’re volunteering, or they’re just doing research and finding ways to work on the issues that we learned about. I also think that since everyone wanted to be there, people really opened up because we’re all so passionate about it. Everyone’s open to hearing the perspective of other people who are passionate and I think a lot of that comes from Ms. Leslie because she has so much passion. You can see when she’s teaching that she wants to be there so much and she wants to give us all this knowledge of what is actually happening, and then give us the freedom to talk about what we think, and that is something that I often don’t find in a class.”
~Aine D., BHS ’21, Social Justice
As a ninth grader entering BHS, the thought of graduation seems as if it is a million years away. Freshman and sophomore years pass by in the blink of an eye, and then suddenly you’re in your junior year and it’s time to begin figuring out what your next steps will be after you graduate high school. Some students go through high school with a clear idea of what those next steps are whether it’s pursuing a certain career or studying a specific major in college, but for many students this is not the case. Having the opportunity to try out different classes can expose them to new subjects and inspire new interests. Many students find that classes like Social Justice can lead to new interests that they are excited to continue pursuing after high school. Aside from exposing students to new topics, these classes also teach students very valuable skills that they don’t always learn from their required courses. Tutorial helps many students learn how to better manage their time and their work, teaching them valuable skills such as organization, time management, and how to plan out their week. Other classes like Racial Awareness can help students feel more comfortable going out of their comfort zone through being exposed to new points of view or learning how to have tough conversations. All of these skills are very important to have during their time at BHS and beyond.
How has the class shaped who you are as a student? How have you grown as a result of this class?
“As a student, I noticed as I was taking this class that before I tended to make more assumptions about people, and this class has helped me think about the reasons I’m doing that and how not to act on those assumptions, and I think I definitely have grown from taking this class.”
~Kate C., BHS ‘22, Racial Awareness
“I think I’ve grown a lot in the way that I feel like I can voice my opinions more if someone brings up an issue. I feel like I have the knowledge and the power to actually voice my opinion because I’ve learned about it. I think that a lot of times now I’ll hear conversations going on and I’ll actually know what they’re talking about which I think is really cool because I can participate in the conversation. Now more than ever I feel like I can help. I have so much of an understanding of what’s going on, so I can really help and try to help other people try to understand what’s going on.”
~Zoey F., BHS ‘22, Global Leadership
“I think I’ve grown in my abilities to ask for help and to make sure that I have a plan for the week for my assignments and projects and when I should be doing them. I think my experience would be a lot harder, I would be less organized, and I don’t think I would get as much work done without tutorial.”
~Declan T., BHS ‘22, Tutorial
“I think that I’ve been able to want to have the uncomfortable conversations. A lot of times people don’t want to talk about a certain thing because they know people have conflicting points of view or that it affects someone personally and they don’t feel like it’s their place to talk about it. This class made me realize that you can have a voice, but it’s also really important to listen, and listen to the uncomfortable conversations and be able to ask questions and be able to talk about it even though it might be uncomfortable.”
~Aine D., BHS ‘21, Social Justice
Many classes like Global Leadership and Social Justice offer students the unique opportunity to learn about current, important topics while simultaneously engaging in real world problem solving and solutions. Fundraisers, volunteering, and peaceful protests are some of the many ways where students can feel like they are not just doing the important learning, but also feel like they are making a real difference and contributing to the solution.
Can you describe some of the most memorable parts of the class and talk about a couple of your favorite assignments?
“We were having a lot of meetings and conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement. We got to talk about them as a class and getting to hear from other people about what they’ve been doing and how they’ve been using the things that we learned from this class to contribute to this movement was great.”
~Kate C., BHS ‘22, Racial Awareness
“I think a lot of people will say this but definitely learning about the incarceration system. The prison trip is always something people talk about for a really long time. I was excited about the trip because I think the incarceration system isn’t something that we see on the news every day. When I sit down to watch the news, I don’t see them talk about all the oppression and discrimination that exists in the incarceration system. I think that it’s overlooked a lot so I really wasn’t aware of what was happening in the system, and being able to go to a prison and then talk to inmates was really cool because we could hear their first hand experiences and they were really honest. They talked about the guards there and how they’re not nice to them and what it’s like in solitary confinement. They were just really really honest about what’s happening, and being able to see that after watching movies about the incarceration system and what happens was really powerful, so that was the night that really stood out to me.”
~Aine D., BHS ’21, Social Justice
“One of the assignments we did was called the TAP Challenge which was where we raised money for clean water in Nicaragua, and we did that by starting a school campaign to have everyone bring their own water bottles and not use plastic water bottles for 25 days. We sold reusable water bottles and tumblers and also stickers. I thought it was really cool because it really felt like we were making an impact instead of just learning about the issue. I actually felt like I was doing something about it while still learning about it in class.”
~Zoey F., BHS ’22, Global Leadership
In Spring 2020, the BHS Innovation Fund awarded a special COVID-19 Teaching and Learning Response Grant to Brookline High School educators, led by the Curriculum Coordinators, to support their work in preparing for the current school year with the goal of rethinking educational approaches to teaching and learning during the ongoing pandemic. This past Summer, more than 30 Brookline High School teachers, administrators, program leaders and specialists met remotely over the course of three weeks as part of this first-ever multi-departmental collaborative curriculum programming initiative. Representing the Departments of English, Math, Science, Social Studies and World Language, as well as Special Education and Career and Technology Education, participating educators conducted an important assessment of their experiences teaching remotely this past Spring in order to prepare for the school year. Acknowledging the many challenges that the pivot to remote teaching had required due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they used an inquiry model to explore these questions:
- How do we engage students in their learning and help students develop understanding?
- How should we blend synchronous and asynchronous lessons?
- How will we build relationships with students when not able to work with them face to face?
- How should we adjust assessments and diagnostics in a remote learning environment?
Throughout the project, educators used these guiding questions to research and develop best practices and a collaborative, holistic approach to teaching that will:
- More effectively engage students in the remote and hybrid learning process by focusing on strategies to develop executive functioning skills to teach students how to learn remotely as well as approaches to introduce experiential learning work; and
- Support social-emotional learning by incorporating community building activities into each and every lesson to establish student-to-student and student-to-teacher connections in classes.
“I am grateful to the Brookline High School Innovation Fund for making this critical work a positive and productive reality and to BHS teachers and staff for working together to identify the gaps and opportunities to strengthen the remote teaching and learning experience as we continue to navigate the changing academic environment.”
~ Anthony Meyer, Head of School, Brookline High School
Grant Work Yielded New Opportunities & Inspiring Outcomes
BHS faculty members who participated in the project presented and shared their research with colleagues in early Fall in multiple professional development day demonstrations and workshops using the BHS Remote Learning Toolbox, a best-practices online resource designed to help staff teach students effectively while remote. While the Toolbox was not outlined as a deliverable in the grant proposal, teachers quickly realized that the best, most innovative way to share these important recommendations would be to build an online toolkit and make it accessible to all faculty at the high school. It is already proving to be an invaluable resource to many educators.
Topics in the Toolbox include:
- Building a Digital Classroom: Strategies and tools to set up a hybrid classroom
- During Planning: Strategies and tools for taking the analog to a digital environment
- Tech Tools: Tech Tool support from PSB and colleagues, and tech support for students
- Research and Synthesis: A deep dive into the research and synthesis completed by subgroups
Curriculum Coordinators share that working collaboratively across departments yielded several inspiring outcomes. As teachers began to envision the initial back-to-school period, they were excited by opportunities that remote learning presented. With a more flexible block schedule this year, teachers can engage students in assignments and activities that give real-world meaning to school, and increase connection and rigor. Then, moving into the year, teachers anticipate identifying new, experiential work that can involve students in their community. Rethinking teaching in this way will have benefits beyond the pandemic response. Remote strategies can be used when presenting digital material even when BHS returns to in-school learning. If students are unable to be present, teachers will have a menu of activities that students can still follow at home. Because the grant funded inter-departmental work on a large scale for the very first time at BHS, and contributed greatly to creating connections across curriculum, students will benefit by experiencing a more coordinated approach and manner of communication with all their teachers.
Founded in 1998, the BHS Innovation Fund is a community-supported 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is unique for a public high school because it offers grant funding to faculty and administrators for initiatives that aren’t covered in the current curriculum and budget.
“The BHS Innovation Fund has supported teacher-driven curricular initiatives that are innovative, interdisciplinary and forward-thinking for over twenty years. As an organization, we are constantly evolving and responding to the academic needs identified by BHS teachers across departments. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we were thrilled to be able to partner with educators and provide the necessary funding to support this important work during this challenging time at BHS.”
~ Ellen Rizika, Chair, BHS Innovation Fund Board of Directors
