Being Safe to Risk
What lives between the comfort zone and the danger zone? It’s a place where you feel safe to risk. It’s the zone we work to…
Tag: democracy
Speaking in Tongues
Who are these children? How can we bring their voices to the world? At our staff gathering to begin the school year, we read and discussed…
Public Gardens
As a big fan of the work of both Alison Gopnik and Peter Gray, a post written recently by the latter about a new book, The…
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…
Setting Intentions for Our Year Together – Intermediate Team
Opal School has two intermediate classrooms, Opal 3 & 4, which include third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. In many ways, the teachers from the two classrooms function as a…
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…
Matters of Opportunity: Does opportunity matter?
We love hearing from colleagues beyond Opal School’s walls regarding how Opal School is provoking fresh thinking. Today’s post comes from Sarah-Luella Baker, who presented…
What does holding a strong image of the child mean in a complicated world?
At the end of September, Matt Karlsen and I spoke to several groups in the Vancouver area about conditions that support playful inquiry. Over the…
Supporting empathy and agency
Opal School is part of the Ashoka Changemaker Schools Network, a group of schools distinguished in their efforts to support empathy and agency. Last year,…
Communities of Resistance – Where each member thrives
In a recent episode of This American Life, W. Kamau Bell struggles with how to talk to his young daughters about race and racism. As…