Climate Science and Social Change Archives - The Brookline High School Innovation Fund

March 2025 Program Spotlight: Climate Science and Social Change

March 2025 Program Spotlight

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

Learn about ALL the programs supported by the BHS Innovation Fund

Climate Education Now – Grief, Resilience and Empowerment – Facing Climate Change in the Classroom

How do kids reckon with climate change and activate to meet the challenges it poses? Roger Grande speaks with WBUR’s Barbara Moran about the transformative power of placing climate justice at the center of education. We invite you to participate in this community discussion with Barbara Moran, WBUR Environment Reporter, and Roger Grande, BHS Climate Science and Social Change Teacher and Innovation Fund Fellow. Students, parents/guardians, faculty, Brookline community members and all are welcome. This event is free of charge. Reception to follow.

Location: 22 Tappan Theatre, Brookline, MA 02445

Date and time: Tue, Mar 26, 2024 6:30 PM

Missed the event or still thinking about it? View slides here.

Mid-year Program Updates

Social Emotional Learning Tutorial (SEL-T): A representative from the Kevin Love Foundation, which created some of the curricula that inspired SEL-T, came to watch BHS teachers and students in action.

Rethinking Restaurant: Student chefs at Tappan Green recently donated 50 family-style meals, as part of a student-led project. Another student is hosting a “Fuel the Athlete” speaker series.

Climate Science & Social Change: Students recently presented their Re-Green the Streets Design Competition projects, which identified best practices for re-greening cities and mitigating the urban heat island effect.

And that’s not all…!

Engineering Innovation & Design: Work from last year’s Adaptive Technology project was showcased at the recent Day of Disability Education.

Queer Student Program (QSP): This month’s OUTstanding Speaker Series featured Andre Isaacs, a Chemistry professor from the College of the Holy Cross. Students from QSP, AP Chemistry, and the African American and Latino Scholars Program attended.

Global Leadership: In collaboration with the Food Justice Club and Tappan Green, students are planning for the upcoming TAP (Together Against Plastic) challenge to educate the BHS community about single-use plastics.

Hub/Advisory: Juniors and Seniors attended guidance seminars on post-high school planning, and all students attended a school-wide webinar on student rights and representation by the BHS Student Government. Up next? Healthy habits and stress resilience.

Feeling Inspired? Please donate today!

Sharing Innovation Fund courses, programs, and efforts as we conclude 22-23…

Dear BHS Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers,

I have pledged further communication as we end the year and am trying my darndest to follow through and share more information as we end the 2022-23 school year. One point of pride for me as I end another year at Brookline High School is how we create, refine, and institutionalize excellent courses, programs, and thinking. We certainly innovate within our high school and district budgets. At BHS, we are fortunate to have powerful, generous partners like the BEF, PTO, Brookline Community Foundation, and many more.

I write this afternoon to share about the impact of Brookline High School Innovation Fund programing on our students, staff, and school community. Below is an attempt at capturing which programs and courses the Brookline High School Innovation Fund helped bring us in 2022-23, including what we integrated into the PSB budget and what we have planned for 2023-24. These are exciting times, and I am glad to have the Innovation Fund as a key partner in creating the school culture and program our young people need and deserve.

Please note some of the course and program descriptions are pulled from the Innovation Fund website; while I sign this communication, my hand is one of many within the fund and across our school district who help our educators chase their best ideas for helping young people feel as though they belong and will be engaged, challenged, and supported to learn and grow as students, citizens, and human beings.

New Program for 2023-24: Queer Student Program

I am excited to announce the creation of The Queer Student Program (QSP), a new addition to BHS designed to support LGBTQ students throughout their experience at the high school. For decades, the student-run club known as the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) attempted to fill this role, but as the LGBTQ student body at BHS has grown, it has become increasingly necessary to also expand our support system for this community. The new Queer Student Program includes two course offerings: a new Wellness course and a 12th grade elective called “The History & Science of Sex and Gender.” The QSP also offers critical affinity programming.

Starting next year, there will be a 9th grade Hub/Advisory class specifically for LGBTQ students. We will also launch the “OUTstanding Speaker Series” in collaboration with other school affinity groups, such as African American and Latino Scholars Program (AALSP) and the AAPI Leadership and Affinity Program (LEAP).

The Queer Student Program is the brainchild of teachers Stephen Eesley (Social Studies), Kate Leslie (Social Studies), and Julia Mangan (Science). Stephen, Kate, and Julia worked closely together and with members of the Wellness Department to create programming and course offerings for our LGBTQ students. The QSP provides very concrete ways for our LGBTQ youth to be seen and heard, engaged and supported.

Using Innovation Fellow work to Re-develop Social Justice

During the 2022-23 school year, School Within a School English teacher Keira Flynn-Carson served as our Innovation Fellow. Keira has been at BHS since 2004 – as an English teacher, Special Educator, SWS leader, and force for goodness. As part of Keira’s Innovation Fellowship this year, she explored ethics as a critical force in driving change – primarily in the area of sex and consent education but also in a wide array of human relationship contexts.

This interesting and important work will now find a home in a reimagined Social Justice course at BHS. The program will involve academic study (Psychology, Ethics, History, Sociology) as it relates to social justice topics and movements and prepares students to take action through internships and school/community improvement projects – all guided by the ethics of care.

The Social Justice Leadership Program was conceived in 2007 with support from the Brookline High School Innovation Fund. Roger Grande and Kate Leslie have taught and led the program since then. With Roger now focused on Global Leadership (another Innovation Fund program) and Kate helping lead the newest Fund venture (QSP) Social Justice needed new leadership. Keira’s work on ethics within her Innovation Fellowship seems like an ideal lens through which to re-think Social Justice post-pandemic and impact Brookline High School students for years to come.

Continuing in 2023-24: SEL-T, Data Science, and Climate Science

Social Emotional Learning Tutorial (SEL-T)

In 2002, the Innovation Fund seeded BHS Tutorial to support students needing individual, content-based tutoring in academic subjects. With student social-emotional needs rising dramatically in recent years, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, BHS faculty will continue to pilot a social-emotional learning section in the existing Tutorial structure. SEL-T helps students with social-emotional challenges learn to identify stressors, and develop coping and self-regulation strategies to support academic and social success at school. From this pilot, BHS faculty plans to train more faculty in SEL pedagogy with the hopes of integrating SEL into courses across the curriculum.

Data Science and Social Justice

This data science course, proposed by the Math Department in collaboration with Special Education, uses problems related to a variety of social justice topics to learn the skills necessary to analyze data, understand sampling, distinguish correlation from causation, recognize bias, and use probability and modeling to create and support data-based arguments. Topics may include social justice issues related to racism, healthcare inequities, political underrepresentation, and gun violence. Students learn how to use spreadsheets, coding (python or R) and data analysis technology to aid them in their research.

Climate Science and Social Solutions

Climate Science and Social Solutions is an interdisciplinary, team-taught senior-year elective with instruction from both the scientific and historical perspectives. The course enables students to engage in project-based learning by analyzing real world policy options related to climate change, and then research and posit definable and effective solutions. The goal is to have seniors engage in advocacy campaigns designed to shape perceptions on climate change and encourage personal mitigation strategies.

Integrated into the BHS/PSB Budget

Creating new courses, programs, and curricula is part of the Fund’s core mission. As a school and school system, we need to figure out how to institutionalize what the Innovation Fund helps our educators create and refine. This way, Brookline students can continue to enjoy and benefit from Fund-born programming for years to come.

Hub Advisory

Hub/Advisory, supported by an Innovation Fund grant in Fall 2019, has as its principal goal community building among students and a faculty advisor in a non-evaluative setting. During the pandemic, it became an important source of support for isolated students and an opportunity for teachers to reach out to build connections with students in a different environment. As pandemic disruptions and construction delays limited the original vision of Hub’s implementation, this grant extension will allow faculty to train new faculty to be advisors and expand the program into a four-year experience for BHS students.

Rethinking the Restaurant (Tappan Green)

Rethinking the BHS Restaurant integrates a long-time high school program more cohesively into curricular and co-curricular experiences for the entire BHS community, with students taking the lead in running its business operations in meaningful and creative ways. Faculty are excited by the multifaceted opportunities for innovation where the restaurant has potential as a lab for interdisciplinary learning with a social impact lens. For example, the restaurant could be a place where English Language Learners could introduce dishes from their home cultures as a special menu item; World Language teachers and students could work with the culinary program to design “take-over” menus for cultural observations or holidays; and students in Social/Food Justice or Environmental Action clubs could team with our culinary program to understand and improve how to sustainably run our business. Rethinking Restaurant opens up outstanding experiential learning opportunities for students not only in the restaurant itself, but also for a diverse range of students in clubs, courses, and throughout the campus.

This summer, Britt Stevens, our Curriculum Coordinator for Career and Technology Education (CTE) is pulling together an Innovation Summit for high school faculty and staff that focuses on Beginnings and Endings. The summit, funded by the BHS Innovation Fund, will help us move forward with ongoing work to re-think ninth grade at BHS as well as how we might continue to re-consider senior year. Ninth grade and senior year are critical priority areas for Brookline High School in the next three years, and I am excited and grateful that the Innovation Fund will help us brainstorm ideas and eventually turn them into concrete, engaging learning experiences for our students, current and future.

Thanks much and take care,

Anthony Meyer, Head of School

New climate science class trains student activists

Roger Grande and Briana Brown have worked together to design a course that helps students fight climate change through both scientific and historical education.

Only 42 percent of teachers across the country are teaching about climate change, according to a NPR poll from 2019. However, science teacher Briana Brown and history teacher Roger Grande are pioneering climate change education at the high school with their new class on climate science and social change.

Brown and Grande started teaching the new Climate Science and Social Change class this fall. The class addresses the urgency of climate action: it gives students the political skills to make change in the community and a richer understanding of the climate crisis by covering historical and scientific content.

The class is the product of frustration from both teachers who are passionate about helping younger generations fight for their future. Brown said she was losing hope after teaching about climate change in her science classes for 12 years without significant change in the news.

“Collectively as a species, we really have not done anything that we need to do. There’s a little progress here and there. I was starting to feel really pessimistic,” Brown said.

Grande said he felt a personal sense of urgency in combating climate change.

“I think about how [my daughter’s] future is going to be a very different experience than my life so far and climate change is a major driver of disruption that she’ll be experiencing,” Grande said.

Brown said that the class develops both scientific and political skills. On some days, students learn about the science behind climate change’s effects while on others, they learn tactics to convince lawmakers to make policy changes.

“We really want to approach climate science from multiple dimensions,” Brown said.

Senior and student in the class, Evan Guttel, said the Climate Science and Social Change class is unlike any other class he has taken because of its historical and scientific duality.

“I think even in a town like Brookline where a lot of people are very cognizant of the issues surrounding climate change, having a class on it is very necessary and applicable because it’s going to affect all of our lives,” Guttel said.

According to Brown and Grande, climate change requires social action so teaching political skills is necessary to tackle the climate crisis.

“It’s not about the science that’s going to persuade people: it’s the politics,” Grande said.

From the class, Grande said he wants students to have a solid understanding of the science behind climate change as well as the skills to talk about it in a more political setting.

“I want students to become confident and competent climate communicators,” Grande said.

Both Grande and Brown are working hard to increase their influence on the community through training activists who can educate the school community on the climate crisis.

“I feel better that I’m going to be training people to be activists for change,” Brown said. “I can magnify my impact because hopefully a few people at least will go out into the world and start to do these actions that need to be done.”

Lia Fox, Staff Writer|November 13, 2021

GRAPHIC BY LIA FOX

New course plans holistic approach to teaching climate change

One of the most currently relevant issues is climate change. While classes have previously addressed this issue scientifically, they have neglected the other half of the story.

The new course “Climate Science and Social Change” is a unique approach to the ever-more relevant topic of climate change. If approved by the Innovation Fund, it will merge science with social, political and economic perspectives. Roger Grande, who proposed the course alongside Briana Brown, believes that students will be more empowered to respond to these climate threats with the experience they will receive in this course.

According to Grande, Climate Science and Social Change will spend the first semester of the year discussing the fundamentals of climate science. Students will study how the earth is changing and why these shifts are taking place. Grande also said the second half of the course will look at climate change from a social perspective. For example, students will look at case studies and think about innovative ways to address the impacts of our changing climate.

Grande explained that Climate Science and Social Change will spend time focusing on how the climate crisis is being addressed in the media.

“The course would look at how people discuss climate change, truth, objectivity, news and newsmakers,” Grande said. “We’re really focusing on information literacy, arming students with some of the skills needed to decipher the things they’re hearing and to understand what is true and what is not.”

This new course will also have students think about innovative ways to approach climate change. By looking at case studies, students will be able to examine the effect climate change has on various groups of people.

“We will look at a lot of issues around racial equity, class equity and just equity around the world. Who suffers the most? Who will suffer the most? Who will be most impacted, in contrast to who are the largest consumers of fossil fuels?” Grande said.

Brown, who (pending funding) will teach this class side by side with Grande, said it is important to learn the societal impacts of climate change as well as the impacts it will have on the environment.

“I think it’s important to really emphasize that this is not just a science problem. This is an everything problem and every aspect of society is going to be impacted by climate change: food production, where people can live, migration issues, etc. You can’t look at science in isolation,” Brown said.

Without enough institutional support surrounding our ecological crisis, Grande looks at Climate Science and Social Change as a fundamental step in preparing students to apply what they learn in his class to their lives outside of BHS.

“I’m a little bit stunned that there has been zero messaging from school leadership to begin getting students to think about how they’re going to thrive, financially, emotionally and socially in the future,” Grande said. “We give students skills to prepare for work, to prepare for college, but the largest existential phenomena of probably human existence is before us and we have decided to not address that.”

Students, as well as teachers, believe in the importance of learning the social effects of our current climate crisis. Junior Niovi Rahme believes that the Climate Science and Social Change course will be an effective approach to addressing this issue.

“I think learning about the social and societal aspect of climate change makes it completely different from any science classes we have,” Rahme said. “It makes it easier to know what’s truly going on in our world today and to prepare us for the future of fighting a climate battle.”

Junior Kira Wu-Hacohen first heard about the Climate Science and Social Change course when Grande pitched it to her social justice class. She hopes to take advantage of this educational opportunity next year.

“Right now I don’t really know what I can do and what difference it will make. Climate change is something that affects everyone in this school and everyone on this planet. We have to learn the consequences of our actions,” Wu-Hacohen said.

According to Brown, the impacts of climate change will accelerate in the coming decades. By studying climate change from new perspectives, students will come out of the class with a well-rounded understanding of the world they will live in and how they can change it.

“I hope to leave this class with a new, reformed understanding of climate change, how it is affecting different people and cultures around the globe and what we can do to help,” Rahme said. “It’s important to be educated about this because it’s something we will have to deal with our entire lives, so we might as well be knowledgeable about it and understand what’s truly going on.”

Elsie McKendry, Staff Writer|April 10, 2020

GRAPHIC BY ELSIE MCKENDRY

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