Announcing Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers

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 …

Story Workshop: A confluence of meaning-making, play, and the arts

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 …

Considering Risks and Opportunities

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 …

Getting Started: West Coast Global Pandemic Edition

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 …

Seeking Connections

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 …

What Do We Do When We Don’t Know What To Do?

“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 – …

Working on Whiteness

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.