Start a New Story
“Every story starts with the assumption there is some acceptable, canonical state of the world. What starts the story going is that the expectable, the predictable, canonical state of the world gets violated.” Jerome Bruner, Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, June 2006 “Opal School definitely got me out of my comfort zone… [It] goes against a lot […]
Pedagogical approaches and their political implications
Opal School led professional development workshops in Vancouver, BC last week. They were rich opportunities to connect and develop new ideas with educators in a region that has been inspired and transformed by Opal School’s work. Our second day’s session focused on play, the arts, and education for democracy. Before considering the role that play […]
Courageous and Collaborative Communities: A report from the workshop
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. Brené Brown Last week, we hosted the first of this year’s Opal School Visitation Days workshops. This one brought together 70 educators from diverse contexts – pre-k and elementary, rural and urban, public and private, multilingual and […]
Courageous and Collaborative Communities
Last week, I split my time between two groups. The first half of the week, Opal School hosted a Study Tour for a school from Miami Beach. On Wednesday, Susan and I went to Juneau, where we spent the remainder of the week working with another school staff. These are radically different demographic contexts: Other […]
On the edge of Symposium, thinking without bannisters
Opal School’s Summer Symposium begins Wednesday. It’s a frenetic time around the building: having said goodbye to students last week, teachers are setting up their classrooms for visitors, creating documentation panels, and writing presentations (not to mention annual academic reports). It’s a time of long days and nights consumed by deep reflection and meaning-making – of […]
Reading the World 2017: Literacy, Creativity, Sustainability, and the Principles of Engagement
In order to read the world, we must be moved by what we see. In order to create, we must have a strong desire to examine what has moved us. In order to sustain this world we have made and seen and read, we must understand why we were moved. We cannot be moved without […]
Getting the lights right for dancing
At Visitation Days, we explored this definition of Playful Inquiry with educators from across the United States and Canada – and we’ve been chewing on it here ever since. There is so much to unpack, as every clause crawls with meaning, opening the door to vital (and complicated) questions: Who is this community? How is […]
Finding the courage to think about utopia
I’m just beginning to put my thoughts together after the whirlwind of Opal School Summer Symposium. It was a provocative, transformative three days together: 250 people coming together to pursue third doors that offer greater possibilities for all of our schools. Tweets from participants, posted below, give you just a taste of what it felt […]
All under one roof
To readers of Opal School Online, it might be easy to forget that Opal School is a project of the Portland Children’s Museum. To Portland Children’s Museum visitors, it’s not always visible that Opal School lives within it. It’s an unusual organization, doing so much under one roof – exhibits, programs, an elementary charter school, an […]
Reflections on Opal School Visitation Days 2016
Two weeks ago, teachers and administrators from more than thirty schools across North America gathered at Opal School for our annual Visitation Days, dedicated to investigating conditions that support a “playful inquiry” approach to learning. Over two-and-a-half days, this diverse group of participants investigated classroom environments, observed class in session, responded to presentations by Opal […]