Pressing the Reset Button
As teachers we are continuously reflecting upon promoting healthy and productive classroom cultures. In designing experiences for children, we consider what we know about optimal…
Tag: social and emotional
What lives inside of joy?
In the days before the children arrived at school, my colleagues and I considered how to prepare the classroom environments and we developed our intentions for…
Seeing Ourselves in Clay
As you know from our recent blog post that included our letter of intention to families, the Primary Community is focusing on research into the…
Sharing Strawberries
In the spring, because our third graders had become so engaged with statistics of our global population, we decided to share some of the Material World…
What brine do you soak in?
Students in Opal 4 have been working to seek connections between some of their experiences in Opal 4 this year, the questions we’ve been exploring…
The Power of Illusion
The opinion piece is a famously third grade writing assignment. It is, in fact, Common Core English Language Arts Standard 3.1: “Write opinion pieces…
Constructing new ideas through dialog and the arts
During a recent Opal School Mentorship Program gathering, a group was discussing the quality of conversation they hear in Opal School classrooms. They were intrigued by the…
Expanding empathy; making change
Last week, I represented Opal School at Ashoka Changemaker Schools Network Summit in Oracle, Arizona. The Changemaker Schools Network is a global community of elementary,…
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…
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,…