Teaching and Learning
Focusing our intentions
Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense. -Ludwig Wittgenstein As Opal School staff reconvened last…
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The Gift of the Atecocolli
We are excited to have Alfredo Quiahuitl Villegas here for Summer Symposium 2016. This post, originally written in February of 2013, captures a memory of…
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All under one roof
To readers of Opal School Online, it might be easy to forget that Opal School was a project of the Portland Children’s Museum. To Portland…
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It’s not about the towers, either
I start this post with a shout out to Allie Pasquier, whose recent Bakers and Astronauts post catalyzed this one. Her post examined how the…
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Why we don’t do art in school (and why we should)
This post by Susan Harris MacKay first appeared on the Living in Dialogue blog. In these times, when the demolition of a place as historic…
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Living in Questions
Visitors to Opal School are oftentimes struck by the quantity and quality of the questions they encounter here. At Opal School, we aim to live…
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Expanding empathy; making change
Last week, I represented Opal School at Ashoka Changemaker Schools Network Summit in Oracle, Arizona. The Changemaker Schools Network is a global community of elementary,…
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Where do you get your professional development?
Magnolia Room (Grades 1-2) whole class doodle. “It’s like an idea seed…” The question comes up, at some point, during almost every study tour.…
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Art & Nature
Sure, it’s been raining in Portland – but we’re still getting out, because it’s good for our health.
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Schooling for a better world
My heart is heavy looking back on a violent year. In the past year, we’ve watched so many individuals gunned down, white supremacy viscerally stamped…
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