Opal School Blog
Human Knots and Tangles
The Sitka Community’s year started in a unique position: all of the students and the teacher had a history of being together. Although this group…
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Setting the Table: Loose Parts
How might materials support young authors and thinkers? Teacher-researchers Lauren Adams and Kathryn Ann Myers explore how processes of growing and and revising big ideas…
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Setting Intentions to Guide Our Learning
Last week, Opal School staff came together to revisit our thinking about teacher-research. We cracked open “teacher-research” to unpack the varied meanings the idea holds…
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Setting the Table: Tempera Paint
What does tempera paint do? So many investigations of a material start with a question just like this. This time is essential for developing the…
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Join our book club?
We believe that educators—like children—have a vast capacity for deep dives of mind, heart, and spirit. Their thoughts are “ample and greedy”; they seek substantive…
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Setting the Table: Not just filling the space
We design for beauty because we know that helps people slow down and notice. Listen in as teacher-researcher Nicole Simpson-Tanner reflects on the choices she…
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Blocks (and unblocking)
This year, the Primary Team is framing their intentions through a study of self. During the first week of school, teachers set intentions and committed…
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Blackline Drawing and Perspective-Taking
We enter the school year filled with assumptions – about each other, about ourselves, and about the world. How might the arts help us bring…
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Exploring The Nest
“Children are not cherished but detained at national borders, treated not as radiant beacons of our shared future but as criminals. To any conscionable human,…
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Setting the Table with Watercolor
Following last week’s workshop in Hong Kong, I received this message over Twitter from @LewisNewman12: I don’t think I have ever attended a PD with…
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