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 team.  As a first collaborative effort, the Intermediate Team composed and sent this letter to parents before the first day of the 2016-2017 school year.  We’d love to hear the reflections of Opal …

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 team.  As a first collaborative effort, the Primary Team composed and sent this letter to parents before the first day of the 2016-2017 school year.  We’d love to hear the reflections of Opal …

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, Susie Morice describes how her study of Opal School is shaping her thinking.  Susie’s post first appeared on the blog of the Santa Fe Center for Transformational School Leadership. Transformational Schools by …

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 on their crumbling bodies; the revolving door of mass shootings, reminding us on an almost daily basis of our feeble inability to enact arms restrictions; we’re forced to listen to …

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 Reggio Emilia, Italy have given us what Vea Vecchi, who was the atelierista at the Diana Municipal Preschool in Reggio Emilia for 30 years, calls, “The Culture of the Atelier” …

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 who really would have us believe that control, certainty, and the dehumanization of the students in our care is the way to a more robust economy and stable society. In Creativity …

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 children’s joy, wonder, curiosity and strong desire to be in relationship with their classmates and teachers.  Immediately we noticed children finding ways to connect through common interests and mutual experiences, …

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 13th year of school. Every year, this ball we toss first is a little different than the one we tossed the August before. At Opal School we listen, we pay …