Roxbury Latin is proud to be playing a significant role in Boston STEM Week. This remarkable one-week program, which runs from October 3-7, is transforming 36 middle school classrooms in Boston (including 30 public schools) into learning labs, where students are working in teams to solve real-world problems that encourage hands-on experimentation and critical thinking.

This past summer, Roxbury Latin’s campus was the training ground for more than 200 Boston Public School teachers who are implementing the Boston STEM Week projects with their sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students this week. The two-day professional development program, presented by instructors from i2 Learning, prepared teachers across all subject areas for leading STEM projects in their classrooms.

For five consecutive days this week, regularly scheduled classes in the 36 participating schools are being replaced with immersive, hands-on STEM curriculum developed by MIT and other leading STEM organizations. (“STEM” is an acronym for the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.) 6,500 middle school students are becoming scientists and engineers, collaborating on projects that range from “Building A Lunar Colony,” “Digital Game Design” and “Building an Interactive Friendly Monster” to “Kinetic Sculpture,” “Urban Farming,” and “Surgical Techniques.”

i2 Learning and Boston STEM Week are both the brainchildren of RL alumnus Ethan Berman ’79, who believes that the school-age years are crucial to the development of children’s skills and interest in STEM disciplines. Mr. Berman approached Roxbury Latin back in 2012 as a partner in his vision for a camp. The following summer, i2 Camps launched in Boston, New York, and New Jersey. Today i2 Learning has expanded to include summer camps in 23 locations across the US as well as Jordan and Kenya, and STEM immersion weeks in more than 60 schools, with more joining each month. Mr. Berman served on RL’s board of trustees from 2010 to 2016.

On Monday, October 3, Headmaster Kerry Brennan traveled to the Oliver H. Perry K-8 School in South Boston to attend Boston STEM Week’s kickoff event, at which Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Boston Public Schools Superintendent Tommy Chang were featured speakers. Following their opening remarks, Mr. Brennan joined other key sponsors to tour classrooms where STEM projects were getting underway.

“Ethan Berman was concerned about the kind of science education his own children were receiving, and he correctly thought it should be more hands-on and investigative,” said Mr. Brennan. “We had the same interests at RL. As a Trustee, Ethan knew that and also that I was interested in expanding RL’s educational footprint beyond our own students and beyond the school year. Thanks to Ethan’s energy and vision, i2 was born and we were proud to be one of the three inaugural sites for their summer programs. We were even more enthusiastic about forging stimulating partnerships and are pleased to have played a part in enabling the Boston Public Schools to offer this remarkably innovative experience to all their students.”

Roxbury Latin hosted the first inter-scholastic debate of the 2016-17 academic year on Sunday, Sept. 18.  120 debaters from 17 independent schools participated in the parliamentary-style tournament.RL won 3rd place in the overall School awards.  Andrew Steinberg II was the 3rd-place Advanced Speaker; Trey Sullivan III and Kalyan Palepu III were the 3rd-place Novice Team of 2.

Eton House Master Michael Grenier contacted Headmaster Kerry Brennan to report on RL’s latest envoy, Kevin Zhu ’16, whose selection as a Roxbury Latin Scholar at Eton College provided him with a gap year at the school founded by Henry VI.

“Here’s Kevin in his Eton finery—it’s only 30 degrees (Celcius) at the moment so he’s enjoying that lovely feeling of black wool and humidity. He is an absolute delight to have around and a real credit to RL and his parents ….”

The Roxbury Latin Scholarship at Eton College, awarded annually to an RL graduating senior, was established in 2005 by Margarita and Jack Hennessy ’54. Past Scholars include Matt Wang RL ’05, Fernando Rodriguez-Villa RL ’06, Sam Klug ’07, Jake Connolly ’08, Brendan Hanrahan ’09, Michael Beam ’10, Michael Rosengard ’11, Collin Epstein ’13, and Sam Balthazard ’14.

Kevin will matriculate at Harvard in the fall of 2017 after his year in England.

In July and August, 200 boys and girls, ages 5-13, participated in Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp at Roxbury Latin. The School’s 117-acre campus includes more than 50 acres of beautiful, undisturbed forest, where campers – ninety-five percent of whom were from the City of Boston – explored and learned about the natural environment. When campers weren’t outside investigating vernal pools, picking blueberries, or exploring wooded trails, they created and played in the classrooms, art studio, theater, and gymnasium.

“The partnership is almost too good to be true,” says Elizabeth Carroll, an environmental science teacher at RL who helped spearhead the alliance. The School had been actively looking for ways to share its unique, urban forest resource with a broader community, and Mass Audubon wanted to reach a greater number of city kids via their Nature Center Camps. The two organizations’ philosophies about access to first-class educational programming, regardless of a family’s means, also overlapped perfectly. Mass Audubon’s sliding scale of camp tuition, based on household income, enabled seventy percent of campers to receive a significant camp scholarship this summer (almost half of campers paid $60 or less). At Roxbury Latin, where the admission process is need-blind, thirty-five percent of students receive financial aid, with an average grant of more than $22,000. 

“Starting a new camp at Roxbury Latin allowed hundreds of Boston children, with limited exposure to nature and forests, to start to fall in love with the outdoors,” says Erin Kelly, camp director at Mass Audubon’s Nature Center Camp at RL. “It gave them a summer filled with fun, hands-on and minds-on outdoor activities in a beautiful, natural setting—right here in the city.”

The Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp, which employed eight RL students, was one of several camps and clinics at Roxbury Latin this summer—including soccer, football, and basketball clinics, a classical studies camp, and STEM and biotech camps.