What a (25th) year it’s been!

A few highlights…

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.

Student artists shared their work featuring just some of the Fund’s 20+ innovative courses and programs offered at BHS this year.

BHS parents, teachers, and other community members celebrated 25 years of innovation at BHS during the fall Gala. Read this Cypress article.

Program News

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.

New Leadership

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.

Hear from students and teachers about innovation at BHS.

Watch now