Friends of Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (FOCRLS)’s 2023 Faculty Innovation Grantees
(l-r) Leah Gordon (with PASCO cart), Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah (with FOCRLS mascot Friendly the Falcon), Drake King, Nicholas Yeh, Brenda Divelbliss, Margaret Hans, Allison Wade, Josh Marden, and (front) Brendon Snyder
Friends of Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (FOCRLS) recently awarded their 2023 Faculty Innovation Grants to energize learning and expand services for students at the city’s public high school. Seventeen teachers, club advisors, social workers, and administrators received grants up to $1,000 per proposal, with a total of $9,296 for twelve individually-led and collaborative projects. The grantees, who were notified of their awards on February 1, will implement ideas across an array of courses and programs at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS), the Rindge School of Technical Arts (RSTA), and the High School Extension Program (HSEP). See the list of Faculty Innovation Grantees here.
Academic subjects include calculus and AP African American History while events include a poetry festival and a modern dance performance featuring interactive projections. Also among the recipients’ plans are community-building gatherings, social skills development, and prizes for students who submit the top designs for a math department logo.
Physics teachers Leah Gordon, Joel Tenenbaum, and Afrah Farrah will purchase PASCO equipment for students to experiment with gravity and velocity. “Since all 9th-graders take the same course, this grant has the potential to benefit almost 500 students per year,” wrote Ms. Gordon in the collaborators’ proposal. “The material is reusable indefinitely, so it will benefit students every year going forward.”
English Language Arts teacher Brendon Snyder will establish a classroom library for his Comic Studies elective. “Students of different cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds are able to converse about, debate on, share an enthusiasm for, and bond over the world of comics,” wrote Mr. Snyder in his proposal. “It’s exciting to see students who are academically high achievers connect with students that have traditionally struggled academically and see them hear and respect each other’s opinions.”
FOCRLS has been awarding Faculty Innovation Grants since 2007, with the recent grantees bringing the total number of recipients to 248. FOCRLS estimates that Faculty Innovation Grants have enhanced the educations of more than 10,000 students over the past decade and a half.
Faculty Innovation Grants as well as the College Scholarships, Student Travel Fellowships, and other awards FOCRLS presents are made possible by contributions from donors, sponsors, and grantors. For more information about FOCRLS, visit focrls.org, email info@focrls.org, or call 857-235-9290.