Preparing Materials: Setting the Table

Since September, we’ve been sharing short videos exploring the power of materials in connection, expression, and understanding – with the hope of strengthening your ability to engage that power in your setting. One of these videos is available here for streaming to everyone. Over the next two weeks, you may find yourself with a little …

Setting the Table: Graphite

School is oftentimes a place where certainty reigns – but it can be a place where people develop comfort with uncertainty. New experiences with the arts can play an important role in building that relationship. In this video, a group of fourth and fifth graders reflect on their first experiences exploring graphite.

Building nests together

Opal School has a long relationship with Alise Shafer Ivey and Pedagogical Institute of Los Angeles. We’ve admired and contributed to the important work that they’ve led with teachers in Los Angeles and Nest centers serving young refugees in Greece, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and, now, the US/Mexico border. Here, we offer insights …

We are influencing our own play. Yes!

Periodically, Opal School’s community of staff, parents, and children come together. Recently, the community tended to its outdoor space as the sun came out of hibernation.  The children moved like a team over mounds of dirt and bark chips, fully engaged in their work. Inspired by the beauty of this moment, I stopped and pulled out …

Listening to children listening to trees

As we aim to create a school founded in a strong image of the child, we need to constantly consider our image of childhood and its relationship to adulthood.  What might it mean to create curriculum based around the unique gifts of childhood?  How can we embrace children’s capacity to see beyond the limits of the …