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…
Tag: guiding principles
Articulating our intentions
Opal School has two primary classrooms, Maple and Magnolia, which include kindergartners, first graders, and second graders. The teachers from the two classrooms function as a…
Transformational Leadership
Last week, a post from Erin Dunn Baker showed how one teacher’s experience at Opal School influenced inquiry with the third graders she works with. Here,…
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…
Reconfiguring
I don’t think I’ve been so excited to begin a school year in a long time. Opal School’s continuous journey to develop an understanding of…
Interdependencies
As children journey through Opal 1 and Opal 2, they spend a lot of time considering with their teachers and their peers the ways in…
The Culture of the Atelier – Connecting minds, hands, rationality and emotions
In my last blog post, I talked about the Hundred Languages, the many ways of knowing and expressing that belong to children. The schools of…
The Social and Emotional
Re-reading this article tonight, after a particularly creative third grade Literacy Studio today, I was thrown against the cold reality of the mindset of those…
What does friendship look like in the first weeks of Preschool?
“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson In the first few weeks of school we have witnessed the…
Change
It’s August and at Opal School that means there are 3 of us here ready to begin the ball toss that will evolve into our…