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February Featured Grant: Taiwan Travels: An Immersive Understanding of East Asian Culture Emma Siver teaches 11th grade English and the 9-12 grade African-American and Latinx Scholars program at Brookline High School—a program for students who identify as African-American or Latinx with a history and identity curriculum. When she received a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, she saw an opportunity to transform how her students understand immigration, cultural identity, and assimilation. Her five-day journey to Taiwan this year would become more than a personal adventure—it would be a teaching tool that brings new depth to her classroom. What made Siver's trip [...]

January's Featured Grant was presented to the BEF community at this year's Green Apple Event, graciously held at the home of board member Neda Toloue and her family. Driscoll kindergarten teachers Deana Shea and Kayte Lenahan reported on their grant titled  Collaboration, Connection and Learning at the 2025 NAEYC Conference. Deana has taught in the Public Schools of Brookline since 2011, and Kayte has been teaching in the district since 2017. Neither had applied for a BEF grant prior to last spring. They shared the broad array of takeaways from their trip to the NAEYC conference, including very specific new skills [...]

In December, the BEF Board heard from Catariny De Pina and Dana DeIngenis Kenwood, Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) at BEEP who received a BEF grant to attend the Black Association of Behavior Analysts (BABA) Reclaiming Our VIBES conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. This national conference offered sessions on cultural humility, equity in schools and innovative behavior-support practices. Because BCBAs receive no district-funded professional development, despite state licensure requiring ongoing CEUs, they typically pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket each year. The BEF grant helped reduce that burden and allowed Cat and Dana to broaden their professional networks, deepen their expertise and [...]

In November, the BEF heard from Teacher Grant recipient Chima Ikonne, a special education teacher at the Hayes School and the beloved instructor of a popular after-school baking class. This summer, Chima spent ten days in Paris studying authentic French baking techniques, strengthening his French language skills and deepening his appreciation for France’s culinary traditions and history. His goal was to bring baking into more of his teaching—using it not only in his cooking class, but also to make lessons in his special education classroom more engaging, hands-on and connected to the real world. While in Paris, Chima took three intensive baking [...]

During our October meeting, the BEF had the pleasure of hearing from Jill Arnold, a recent Idea Lab Grant Winner and recipient of the Elizabeth Ascoli Award for Innovation in Experiential Learning. Jill is a speech language pathologist at Pierce School and her goal was to infuse theater, reader’s theater, puppetry and pretend play into speech and language therapy for K–4 students. This Idea Lab Grant enabled her to bring her lifelong love of theater into her therapy sessions, a dream she had always hoped to realize. After taking a "Making Puppets from Nothing" course at the Puppet Showplace Theater in [...]

Teaching about Roland Hayes in Brookline Music Classes In our May meeting, BEF Board members heard from music educators Meredith Huntley (Hayes), Melodie Linhart (Lawrence) and Becky Vinci (FRR & Lawrence) about two grants from this year, a Collaborative Grant:  Teaching about Roland Hayes in Brookline Music Classes, and a Teacher Grant: Indian Music Immersion. Who is “Roland Hayes” of Hayes School? Roland Hayes was a trailblazer in Afro American choral in the early 1900s, but his influence is ever present in music and social justice today. “The beauty of what could be done with the voice just overwhelmed me.” – [...]

Runkle Middle School Spanish teacher Colleen Doyle participated in the 'Classroom in the Real World' program at the University of Alicante last summer. Thanks to a BEF grant, Colleen spent three transformative weeks in Spain during June 2024, immersed in language and culture.  Colleen developed valuable insights that continue to shape her classroom approach. She particularly valued the program's emphasis on peer collaboration, cultural context and creative teaching methodologies. The intimate cohort size created meaningful professional relationships that extend beyond the program, providing an ongoing support network for curriculum development and teaching practices. Colleen, along with a cohort of teachers from all [...]