We enter the school year filled with assumptions – about each other, about ourselves, and about the world. How might the arts help us bring those assumptions forward – and to begin reimagining those possibilities? In this short video, Nicole Simpson-Tanner talks with Kathryn Myers about how she is using observational drawing to introduce perspective-taking …
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 so many engaging speakers, wonderful provocations, big questions being explored, that also provided so many real life examples of best practice and tangible takeaways. I simply love the idea of …
Story Workshop began at Opal School many years ago with teachers and children working together to research the question, What is the relationship between literacy and the arts? Over a decade later, this question continues to guide the work we do during Story Workshop. When I was first learning about Story Workshop, I remember how …
Friday, a frustrated colleague texted me this worksheet that a teacher in her school had given to the kindergarteners she works with on an “accountable walk” that day. My colleague wrote, “This is what the testing craze has done. Kids can’t even go for a walk without a worksheet! At my school, a ‘failing’ one, …
Last night I was reading a story to my two-year-old son. On each page he stopped to ask me a question. Sometimes I tried to answer with what I thought, sometimes I asked him what he thought, and sometimes I told him I didn’t know. No matter what I said to him, he followed up …
In his column this week, David Brooks writes, “this year, we’ve been so besieged by Donald Trump’s shriveled nature that we sometimes forget what full and courageous human life looks like.” In response, he introduces us to John Stuart Mill, who he says “demonstrated that democratic citizenship is a way of life, a moral stance …
After cracking open the word friendship, we started investigating emotions through literature, materials and dialogue. After reading When Sophie Gets Angry — Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang, we asked, What happens in our bodies when we have a big feeling? And what do you do when you have that big feeling? The children offered strategies, …
One day recently, 4-year old Eliza was busy with an array of materials. Her teacher paused to observe her just in time to catch her words: “Materials, I love you. They can turn into love when you give them away.” From the time babies can wrap their hands around an object, materials play a powerful …
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 …
Read more “Pedagogical approaches and their political implications”
In the Cottonwood community, one of our main focuses in the beginning of the school year is community building – which is foundational to all of our other curricular work. With each new group of children, we try to make visible to them our complex process of becoming a “we”. As teachers, we know that …
Read more “The Importance of Documentation and Reflection in Building Community”