It is with great excitement that we share the cover of our forthcoming book — Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers— available for pre-order from Heinemann next month! This book is the result of big questions, years of research, layers and layers of collaboration with colleagues, with children, and with families, and the imagination …
Read more “Announcing Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers”
We hope you enjoy this presentation, offered as part of The Early Childhood Assembly‘s Virtual Day of Early Childhood. We’re honored to be a part of the event. For those of you interested in diving more deeply into Story Workshop, we encourage you to explore Developing Your Story Workshop course, view the Equity and Access …
Read more “Story Workshop: A confluence of meaning-making, play, and the arts”
I’m interested in the ways in which these strange days of learning about teaching during a global pandemic serve as a kind of sieve, shaking loose the things we didn’t know we didn’t need and leaving behind the stuff we can’t do school without – exposed in ways it has not been before. Teachers are now …
This pandemic experience is a massive experiment in collective vulnerability. We can be our worst selves when we’re afraid, or our very best, bravest selves. In the context of fear and vulnerability, there is often very little in between because when we are uncertain and afraid our default is self-protection. We don’t have to be …
Read more “Getting Started: West Coast Global Pandemic Edition”
While discussion and debate carries on about whether and how to open schools safely, we know that children’s museums will be unlikely to see visitors for many months to come. As we work to determine the best ways to welcome children back to Opal School in the fall, our home and partner organization, Portland Children’s Museum, remains …
“From now on things will be described in terms of the times Before and After Corona. Right now we are in neither. This is a threshold time, the liminal time where everything is reorganized. Every small and big action now opens or closes possibilities of what the future holds.” Nora Bateson (@NoraBateson – Twitter – …
Story Workshop begins on the first day of the new school year. Here’s what it looked like!
Have you read the book Not My Idea by Anastasia Higgenbotham? Several weeks ago, Anastasia dropped by Opal School to speak with the 4th and 5th graders in our Willow classroom. She joined us there to talk to us about whiteness. The children were ready for her.
What rights do children have to think together about the world? Not our version of the world — but their own? What rights do children have to make sense of their world — and what are the implications — who benefits when there is little place for that in school? Children are, of course, aware …
This morning, as we move through the final hours of 2018, Seth Godin (we’re big fans) posted a forward looking piece that included a list of problems we might solve in the coming decades — that is, within the lifetimes of the young children we teach. Though I recommend you read the full article, I’ll …