Brightworks: An Extraordinary School

paint. bugs.

Posted by Justine on October 12, 2011 in Brightworks, Cities, bands, bugs, canvas, cleaning, Expression, microscope, painting, play, writing

Back to school after a short break! The Expression phase is coming to a quick close, but after a much-needed staff development day on Tuesday, we as the staff feel confident moving forward. The kids were thrilled to be coming back to school! Carhartts and ideas abound.

Testing out canvas for the hammock.

After searching for bugs in the park, some of the kids examined their findings under the extra-strength magnifying glass.

Boys tell strange jokes, but I guess they know what they’re talking about.

Play.

Beginning the interior design of Kid City homes with paint.

A new clean-up challenge: instead of spending a good twenty or twenty-five minutes on clean up, the kids must tidy the school in ten minutes, and we’ll only ever spend ten minutes on clean-up every day. Thirteen minutes was the number to beat today!

And a new writing challenge: buddy up and interview each other for the day’s writing time. Today’s questions? Something you liked, and something you thought was gross.

Just another day in the life!

practicing with tools

Posted by Justine on September 26, 2011 in Brightworks, Cities, cleaning, drilling, Expression, foundation, hammering, kidcity, practice, sawing

We’re all really excited over here at Brightworks because the first day of the Expression phase has come! The kids are so ready to break out the screws and wood and start building their city and working on their very first projects for what we know will be a huge portfolio of work someday. But we start small, with one project at a time: it’s all in the doing.

Anthony and Camille worked all day Sunday to lay down the foundation for Kid City in the corner of the school.

When the Brightworks students arrived Monday morning, it was all tools, all the time. Everyone grabbed eye and ear protection and traveled between three different stations to practice using the tools that will soon become their extra limbs during Expression and beyond.

Inside, they drilled holes and drove screws with Chane and Sean.

With Mackenzie, they sawed pieces of scrap lumber with handsaws.

Outside on the sidewalk, they practiced hammering nails with Josh. While nails aren’t the joiner of choice at Brightworks – they’re too hard to remove – it was an excellent exercise. We calculated that the 20 Brightworks kids used more screws in a matter of hours than 150 kids used at Maker Faire earlier this year.

More drilling…

More sawing…

More hammering.

Every day the space that Brightworks lives in changes – some days more dramatically, others more subtly. It’s always exciting to see what new piece of artwork will go up on the walls, how the room dividers will be arranged, what kind of lunch table we’ll be sitting at… now we’re excited to see the changes in the buildings that go up and the changes in how our students treat tools and start to learn their secrets as they discover their abilities to build big!

Remember to check out more photos on Flickr!

staying in on friday

Posted by Justine on September 10, 2011 in Brightworks, Cities, cleaning, Exploration, goldrushgame, park, play

It seemed like everyone was a little relieved when the staff announced we were staying in the school today – who knew kids could have too many field trips in a week! Gever read the beginning of Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman” during morning circle and Chane led an activity to begin the conversation about having respectful, deep discussions. There was plenty to think and talk about from the week, beginning with the Gold Rush game we started playing yesterday, which was the first thing on the students’ minds when they walked into school.

The Gold Rush game began, new rules were established…

A quick break in the park

And then back to the game.

San Francisco wasn’t just about gold mining in the 1870s…

What kinds of things can you sell in the General Store? There was talk of selling giant teleporting snails, but the consensus was that the game should stay as historically accurate as possible. It was great to see the rules and regulations of the game evolve and end up following the course that early San Francisco history took: a rush of emigrants, lawlessness, bad behavior, followed by a return to order and developing a system of living and working together.

The cleanup at the end of the first week of school. We’re all filled with elation at the success of this week. We’re already learning new things about how to conduct ourselves as educators and how to conduct the days – whether the kids are talking to an expert, heading out on a field trip, or doing amazing things in the school.

Thank you to the volunteers that helped get the school ready for this first week and to our supporters for cheering on the sidelines, thank you to my fellow staff for the support and incredible work, thank you to the kids for being so willing and ready to participate and learn with us, and thank you to the parents for letting their kids hang out with us every day, and for being some of our most dedicated supporters! See you next week!