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Gelfand Fellowship

THE ADAM RUSSELL GELFAND FELLOWSHIP

The Adam Russell Gelfand Fellowship is a specially named teacher grant program administered by the Brookline Education Foundation. Funding for the program was provided with the generous support of the Gelfand's friends and family members and the Adam Russell Gelfand Family Trust. Recipients of the Fellowship are Brookline Public School teachers. Each year, teachers apply to the Brookline Education Foundation as part of its Teacher Grants Program, and a teacher and his/her proposal that represents all or many of the goals of the Gelfand Fellow Program is selected as that year's recipient.

THE ADAM RUSSELL GELFAND FELLOWSHIP GOALS

  • To commemorate the life of Adam Russell Gelfand and his love of education and to create a lasting tribute to his memory
  • To honor each year an outstanding Brookline Public School teacher
  • To provide the financial resources to support the professional development of each Gelfand fellow through a grant, such grant to be used for continuing education/training, travel, curriculum development/ enrichment, or other similar pursuit
  • To recognize the importance of geography, mathematics, and poetry as part of the elementary curriculum in the Brookline Public Schools and to encourage innovation in their teaching
  • To acknowledge the unique relationship that can exist between teachers and their students

Recipients

alicia hsu

2009
The 2009 Adam Russell Gelfand Fellowship was awarded to Alicia Hsu, a third grade teacher at Lawrence School, and 25 additional Brookline educators who will form  a literature study group focussing on issues relevant to Brookline's Asian American student population.


kiernan

2008
Lawrence School's Sharon Kiernan toured Barcelona, Spain, documenting the city's numerous architectural styles, including that of Antoni Gaudi and the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. Through her photographs and observations, she will take her third grade structures classes on a virtual tour of Barcelona that illustrates the role of imagination, form, function, and design in the building process.


amyneale

2007
Amy Neale, the librarian at Driscoll School, participated in a two-week Primary Source study tour of Ghana. Her goal is to enhance grades 2, 6, and 7 units about West Africa.

 

Justin Brown receiving Gelfand award

2006
Justin Brown, a 4th-grade teacher at the Lawrence School, attended a 4-week intensive Japanese language summer program at the Boston Language Institute. Through this program, Mr. Brown hopes to increase his ability to communicate with the many Japanese-speaking students, parents, and teachers at Lawrence, which is the home of Brookline's Japanese ELL Program.

 

Patricia Rigley

2005
Patricia Rigley, a 7th- and 8th-grade English teacher at the Lincoln School traveled to key locations featured in the literature of John Steinbeck, including Salinas, Monterey, and Soledad, California. She also visited the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas and the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose University.

 

Deborah Allen & Skye Kramer

2004
Deborah Allen, Devotion School's 7/8 grade science teacher traveled to the high-desert ecosystems of northern New Mexico and Arizona to explore the natural and social history of the region.

 

Liz Cook

2003
Elizabeth Cook, Lincoln School's literacy specialist, spent a week at Harvard University at the Teachers as Scholars Summer Writing Institute. Participants completed one poem, one non-fiction piece, and one fiction piece.

 

Roger Grande

2002
Roger Grande, a BHS Social Studies teacher, traveled to Spain to study the 'Convivencia'—the period from the 8th to the 15th centuries when Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together throughout the region—sometimes peacefully and other times at war.

 

Suzanne Zobel

2001
Suzanne Zobel, a Lincoln School 7/8 grade science teacher, traveled to Churchill, Manitoba to participate in the Earthwatch Institutes's research expedition 'Climate Change in the Arctic.' The expedition focused on the impact of global warming on the arctic ecosystem.