Fall Updates from the Board Chair |
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Dear BHS Community,
With the school year now underway, I hope that you and your students are settling into a new routine. At the BHS Innovation Fund, our volunteers continue to work together remotely to provide the funding educators need to reimagine the BHS experience, as we all navigate the pandemic together.
I am pleased to provide an update on the COVID-19 Teaching and Learning Response Grant, which the Fund awarded to over 30 BHS faculty members over the Summer for important collaborative work that is being implemented with students right now. An overview of the work funded by the grant follows below.
I am also excited to share that we are funding a new multi-year grant for Coding @BHS, an innovative initiative that will create a new curriculum that embeds coding skills in all math and science classes to enable every BHS student to have hands-on experience in coding. And, we continue to fund program grants for Experiential Physics for Ninth Grade, Brookline Lens and Hub/Advisory. All three programs focus on skills-based and hands-on learning for students as well as building community and connections in the classroom.
On behalf of our entire team, I wish everyone a healthy and safe school year.
Ellen Rizika, Chair, BHS Innovation Fund Board of Directors
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BHS Faculty Innovate to Launch the 2020-21 School Year |
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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.
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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:
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How do we engage students in their learning and help students develop understanding?
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How should we blend synchronous and asynchronous lessons?
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How will we build relationships with students when not able to work with them face to face?
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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:
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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
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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.
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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 (image above), 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. Read more here...
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Sponsor Spotlights: Friends of the Fund |
The BHS Innovation Fund thanks Collaborative Psychology and Parterre Garden Services for their Gold Level sponsorship at our Gala-Rama last year. We are delighted to feature these BHS-parent-owned businesses as we launch this year's Annual Sponsorship opportunities. Would you like to see your business spotlighted? Learn more by contacting Chris Noe or Louise Shah at BHSIFSponsorships@gmail.com.
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Dr. Shari Noe is a BHS parent and clinical psychologist with a thriving practice in Newton. After ten years of working for others, Dr. Noe opened her own boutique practice, Collaborative Psychology, in 2011 to conduct comprehensive strength-based neuropsych evaluations with students ranging from kindergarten to graduate school. Working under the philosophy that testing sessions offer a unique opportunity for psychologists to help students understand their individual learning styles, Dr. Noe works to ensure that each session provides a validating and positive learning experience.
With one child at BHS and one in college, she and her husband, Chris, are strong supporters of the BHS Innovation Fund and are grateful to be part of a system that values novel experiences, healthy learning and teacher engagement. Dr. Noe shared that when she interviews students about school, answers are often dependent on a specific teacher’s personality or disposition. The Innovation Fund seeks to empower BHS faculty so they are fully engaged in teaching and are captivating students. In this way, Innovation Fund courses are a natural extension of Dr. Noe’s work and passion - including providing support for varied learning styles and outside-the-box thinking.
If you, or someone you know, is seeking a comprehensive assessment of a student’s learning, beyond what a typical neuropsych evaluation report may offer, Dr. Noe can be reached at drnoe@c-psych.com or 617-500-6540.
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Jason Harris, of Parterre Garden, is a BHS parent and entrepreneur with two thriving landscape and garden design businesses in New England. Parterre Garden employs more state-certified horticulturalists than any green industry company in Massachusetts and offers homeowners a unique ecological and aesthetic service. A dedicated team member works with you to create an enduring collaborative partnership that brings your landscape to its fullest potential all year round, maintains your evolving garden environment at a high level, and preserves design intent. With two BHS graduates and a junior, Jason, along with his wife Lisa Harris (a special education coordinator at BEEP), are deeply committed to our Brookline community. Mr. Harris shared that he and his wife feel very fortunate to live in a place where people with full time jobs volunteer tirelessly on behalf of children they may never know. They are invested in programs, like the BHS Innovation Fund, that are selfless and honorable and expose our younger citizens to experiences and resources they might not otherwise have.
To learn more about Parterre Garden, or to schedule a complimentary assessment, please visit www.parterregarden.com.
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Our mission is to catalyze innovation at Brookline High School by supporting faculty-driven curricular initiatives that will inspire our students and prepare them to thrive in a changing world. |
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BHS Innovation Fund • 617-713-5201 • 115 Greenough Street, Brookline, MA 02445
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