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…
Tag: playful inquiry
Creating TEDx (remembering how to jump)
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] When the organizers of the TEDx West Vancouver conference called to ask if someone from Opal School would like to share at their event,…
Supporting Habits of Heart and Mind in New Terrain
Since “retiring”, Opal School Founder Judy Graves has been busy continuing her efforts to inspire greater educational opportunity for all children. Here’s her report on her…
Pedagogy of Play
Each year the staff at Opal School thinks both together and individually about the pedagogical questions that will guide our research throughout the school year.…
Sharing what matters
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King, Jr. In observance of the Martin Luther King,…
Supporting each other to make faux leather historical journals
What happens when the children become the experts and they support each other in the creation of a special aritifact? And 28 children can work…
Thinking About the Role of Provocation
I am writing this blog post from an airplane at 35,000 feet, on my way to New York City for a three day visit with…
Balance
Teacher: I had a connection and wanted to bring this word back into our conversations. It actually came up first when we were thinking about…
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…
Negotiating Treaties, Negotiating Curriculum
The Separatists from England, via Leiden, Holland, finally took their very well known journey on the Mayflower, which, by the way, was exactly this long (see…