Opal School Blog
Spreading Love While Marching for Love While Being Loved
On March 14, in solidarity with children all over the United States, Opal’s students and teachers walked out of school at 10 am, local time.…
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Love, Play, and Mail
“In play, children begin with their own set of premises and learn to follow through, step-by-step, scene by scene in the complex process of creating…
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Reflecting on Leaning In With Curiosity (Part One)
In the beginning of the year, Opal School teachers wrote letters of intention. As Matt wrote here, these letters are our North Star – our…
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Marching for Love
When I took the Opal Advisory Council’s advice to the Opal teaching staff the day after our meeting, I also brought the same reading material:…
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Doing Something When Nobody Knows What to Do
On Tuesday (3.6.18) this week, as we were preparing for our monthly parent advisory meeting, an email arrived from the Superintendent of Portland Public Schools.…
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Leaning in, Plunging Deeper: Going beyond Reading
I recently came across the following passage in The Sun: The less you are caught up in your own hopes and fears, the more you…
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Reworking Scary Experiences Through Play
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] A child’s play is not simply a reproduction of what they have experienced, but a creative reworking of the impressions they have acquired. –…
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Why Put Our Ideas Into the World?
The Cottonwood Community of kindergartners and first-graders has spent the last several weeks preparing to publish small moment stories that children have written from their…
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The most important word is yet
In Alder, a community of 3-5 year olds, we were curious how children approached problems. We noticed how eager they were to run and get…
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