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BHS Innovation Fund 5K unites community to support learning

BHS Innovation Fund 5K unites community to support learning

Ana Lucia Rajpar, Staff Writer • May 27, 2025

The Brookline Innovation Fund's annual 5K race took place on Sunday, May 4 to raise money for the high school.

CONTRIBUTED BY LIV KLAWITER

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.”

Q&A: Erica O’Mahony, faculty liaison for the Brookline Innovation Fund

Q&A: Erica O’Mahony, faculty liaison for the Brookline Innovation Fund

Kiran Bhatia, Business Manager • December 3, 2024

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.”

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

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

Engineering Update – An Interview with Teacher Aubrey Love

Engineering Update – An Interview with Teacher Aubrey Love

Engineering Innovation & Design is a popular elective providing a student-centered, project-based curriculum that challenges students to interpret real-world engineering and design problems. Mr. Aubrey Love has been involved with this class, and building the Engineering elective pathway, for over fifteen years. Read more about this on our Programs page and in the BHS Course Catalog.

Q: How has the course evolved since its inception?

AL: It started off purely as an Engineering course but we realized that there was a need for students to learn about collaborative problem solving so we also now offer a new course called “Engineering, Innovation & Design.”

Q: So how does the new course differ from a traditional engineering course?

AL: Well, we encourage students to use empathy when problem solving and ask themselves: “who is benefiting from this?” and “how will the user feel?” In other words, they are being asked to apply unique perspectives to problem solving and also think about form and function. We want students to experience a real world collaborative endeavor.

Q: How do you get students to problem solve from a variety of lenses?

AL: We have students from all different pathways who bring unique, multidisciplinary perspectives to the table. Having a problem looked at from the lens of an art or English student is invaluable and the students learn from each other.

Q: So this course isn’t just for students who are strong in science or math?

AL: No, in fact, we encourage students with different skill sets to join the course but we do ask that students come with confidence and are strong in one area of study. This way, they know they have something to contribute to the course and believe their voice will be heard.

Q: What would former students say about your course?

AL: I have had former pupils tell me how they have been able to apply what they learned on the course to all aspects of life. Even an English major told me that they apply the processes they learned here, all the time, both in their academic life and in the real world.

9th Grade Physics Reimagined: A Spotlight on Experiential Physics

9th Grade Physics Reimagined: A Spotlight on Experiential Physics

Jen Spencer with Physics StudentsIn 2019, BHS launched Experiential Physics, a three-year pilot program to develop a new curriculum for 9th grade Physics, supported by a grant from the BHS Innovation Fund. The redesigned course develops scientific, engineering, and entrepreneurial skills and teaches students collaborative, real-world approaches to designing solutions to today’s scientific problems. We caught up with three physics teachers, Julia Mangan, Jennifer Spencer, and Stacy Kissel, who shared their views on the new Experiential Physics course curriculum and teaching approach. Their collective insights are captured in the Q&A below.

Q: Why was it important to redesign the physics curriculum?

State standards and practices now call for an increased focus on the skills students develop in 9th grade physics. As a result, we were inspired to reimagine learning in 9th grade physics to be more applicable to physics in the real world! Our approach has become less teacher-driven and more student-focused. We attended two intensive training seminars to learn more about the Modeling Approach to teaching physics and how to teach students to work together collaboratively, take risks, and communicate productively.

Students will participate in a variety of projects, activities and labs to give them a broad sense of what it means to “do” science—this emphasis was missing from our previous curriculum. We are developing the “story of physics” through multiple lenses including student learning through content, skills development, and the many different “hats” students wear throughout the year.

Q: What are some of the new ways you are covering physics material?

We wanted students to learn physics through doing and not just learning facts, placing greater value on the process of science. We’re spending more time teaching students more explicitly how to ask questions like scientists do and how to answer them right in the classroom. We’ve added more hands-on experiments in which students test hypotheses and carry out procedures, analysis of data, and online research.

We have created and piloted a new project across the 9th grade asking students to apply content learned in the waves unit (sound, light, etc.) to explain how organisms use waves to communicate and sense the world around them. Students can take a deeper dive into how the content connects to the real world, both with how human ears and eyes work as well as how other organisms have evolved different ways to use sound waves and light waves for sensing and communication.

We will also be doing a unit on nuclear physics at the end of the year. This is a topic we have not previously taught to freshmen.

Q: How does the new curriculum impact the experience of students?

The goals for student learning are to push beyond learning about science and to focus on learning how to do science. This involves many skills that scientists employ, such as learning how to ask good questions, using discussion skills to make good predictions, designing experiments that answer their questions, using research tools to see what other researchers have learned, and creating mathematical and computational models that describe the real world for the purpose of answering questions.

We’ve received informal feedback from students that they love learning this way! We are regularly hearing students refer back to the common experience of each unit as they make new connections that push their understanding deeper.

Our activities and projects are designed to better meet the needs of all students regardless of background knowledge. For example, students who typically aren’t engaged in the learning of science, but loved tinkering with circuits, spent time creating a complicated device that worked in unique and challenging ways.

Q: What have you learned in the first few months teaching the new curriculum?

It has been so exciting to have the time and opportunity to be creative in defining this shift in science instruction!

We’re still trying to cover the same breadth of physics material but deeper learning requires more time for students to both learn and practice the skills of a scientist. Students seem excited to apply their knowledge through in-depth projects (so far, building a complex working circuit and researching an organism’s ability to create and use sound/light waves).

Rolling out a new curriculum has pushed us to collaborate more closely across our 9th grade physics teachers to create a more consistent experience for students. We’re creating a central place and strategy for documenting the what, the how, and the collective wisdom of the physics department. We have managed to capture most of what teachers are doing in their classrooms and, in year 2, we will evaluate and refine this documentation.

Q: How will the BHS expansion with updated classrooms and the new STEM wing support this course?

The new classrooms will be larger and more effectively designed than the previous ones at BHS. Desk seating will be in the middle of the room and tall lab tables will be located around the perimeter. Separate instruction and lab work areas will allow students to set up and leave long-term experiments, or exploratory stations, out and accessible in the classroom for longer periods of time. This will provide students with more opportunities to explore something in the beginning at the surface level, and then go back to it throughout the unit as they learn more and are able to ask deeper questions.

Coding Update – An Interview with Math Chair Josh Paris

Coding Update – An Interview with Math Chair Josh Paris

Last summer, the BHS Innovation Fund provided a grant to enable coding to become integrated into the 9th grade math and science curriculum. Josh Paris (JP) is the Math Department Chair who, along with Ed Wiser, Chair of the Science Department, and Britt Stevens, Chair of Career and Technology, supervised the initiative. Mr. Paris discusses what excites him about the Coding initiative and its impact on students:

Q: How did the Innovation Fund enable you to integrate Coding into the 9th grade curriculum?

JP: We have had two coding elective courses called Python and SNAP at BHS for several years but this is the first time it is being integrated into the 9th grade curriculum. The grant began last summer (2020) and it was a collaboration between the math, science, career and tech education departments. Teachers usually teach four courses but the grant gave course releases to Adam Fried and Christine Shen (both from the math department) and Tyler Brown (from the science department) to instead teach three classes. This – and the hiring of another teacher – enabled them to spend time collaborating and modifying the curriculum so that they could implement coding into the 9th grade math and science curriculum.

Q: Are you intending to integrate coding into the curriculum of the upper grades at some point?

JP: Yes, we started with 9th grade and then will move to the older grades in the following years, one year at a time.

Q: Why is it important to have coding as part of the curriculum?

JP: It is very important to have coding be accessible to everyone for so many reasons; not only is it the way of the future and opens a lot of career doors but it also helps enhance math deduction and reasoning skills. For instance, the same logic is applied in both coding and formal proof in geometry. Furthermore, giving all students access to coding is important for equity reasons since it has historically been a profession dominated by white males. By having equal access to coding beginning in 9th grade we are hoping that will change.

Q: Since coding is integrated into the math and science curriculum does it mean you need to be strong in those subjects to be good at coding?

JP: Motivation and hard work – like many things in life – are the keys to success with coding. Coding is something that draws upon and enhances many life skills and cuts through many disciplines, for that reason, students often find something about coding that “speaks” and appeals to them!

 

Read a full description of the grant here

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  • 617-713-5201
  • 115 Greenough St Brookline, MA 02445

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