Brightworks Reimagines School
Our School
At Brightworks, we put kids in the driver’s seat of their own learning.
Founded in 2011 with a simple but powerful question—how might school be different?—Brightworks has grown into a small school with a big impact. We are known nationally and globally for reimagining what’s possible in education, while remaining deeply rooted in the daily lives of the students and families who make up our community.
What We Do
Brightworks takes the best of project-based and experiential learning and expands it. Our students don’t just study subjects—they pursue ideas that matter to them, guided by collaborators (our word for teachers) who support and challenge them in mixed-age learning communities.
We break down the walls between school and the world outside. Partnerships with artists, scientists, makers, and organizations throughout San Francisco give students access to real work in the real world. Small classes mean that every student is seen and known, and has the freedom to stretch into their curiosity with confidence.
How Learning Happens
The Brightworks Arc is our framework for deeply engaged learning. Through cycles of exploration, expression, and exposition, students:
Explore questions and curiosities with depth and wonder. Here, they work with their peers to create one big group project.
Express their ideas through projects that connect creativity with rigor. In this cycle, students individually or in small groups pitch then execute a project they design.
Exposit their work by reflecting, presenting, and sharing with authentic audiences. Students practice sharing their findings with the community, building interest around their ideas and sharing out creations.
Along the way, students practice collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking in a community that values creativity, agency, and care. They learn not just what to think, but how to think—and how to bring their ideas to life.
Why It Matters
We tell kids every day: We see you. You’re capable. Let’s make your ideas real. That belief runs through every relationship, project, and conversation.
This approach not only prepares students for college and careers but also nurtures them as thoughtful, curious, and engaged human beings. Our graduates leave Brightworks confident in their voices, skilled in collaboration, and unafraid to tackle the complexities of the world around them.
Recognition
Brightworks has been named one of the “13 Most Innovative Schools in the World” and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, NPR, and The Atlantic for our distinctive approach to learning.
Join Us
Brightworks is unlike any other school—part workshop, part community, part laboratory for what learning can be. What we’re building together is magic. Come build with us.
"Create a meaningful experience, and the learning will follow."
-Gever Tulley, Founder. TEDxEast 2009
Using the Brightworks arc as a framework for deeply engaged learning, children develop the ability to find wonder and delight in the exploration of any topic, to practice working together to turn ideas into reality, and to learn how to communicate what they have done and why – all in the context of a diverse community of collaborators, families, volunteers, and supporters.
Our Mission
Brightworks reimagines school as a joyful, inclusive and antiracist learning community where students expand their curiosity and coauthor their education through meaningful engagement.
Our Guiding Principals
TRUST
Brightworks values trust. We see students as co-authors of their learning and view the relationship between student and educator as a collaboration. Students partner with educators and each other to set their own goals and evaluate their progress as they engage with experiences that reflect and expand their curiosity, and interests.
MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT
Brightworks values meaningful engagement and authenticity. We use real tools, to solve real problems. Students use real tools to engage with complex problems through projects that are important to them and impactful to their communities and the world.
CURIOSITY
Brightworks values curiosity. We see problems as puzzles and make time for failure, feedback and iteration. We believe that everything is interesting. This inspires students with the courage to challenge themselves and try new things.
EQUITY AND JUSTICE
Brightworks values equity and justice. We acknowledge, honor and celebrate our differences and individuality while amplifying and affirming marginalized voices, those of Black, Indigenous people of Color, LGBTQIA+, physically and mentally impaired and neurodivergent.
COMMUNITY
Brightworks values community, connection & care. We value people over product. Our community members work to know themselves, build empathetic relationships, navigate conflict using restorative justice and understand their sense of place and context in the broader community and world.
Our Vision
Brightworks, a vanguard of educational innovation, envisions a cadre of dynamically talented, purposefully empowered, socially conscious, and antiracist young people who have been encouraged to be curious, creative, and motivated throughout their Brightworks years and beyond.
Through our transformative project-based model, our learners have taken risks, failed, and iterated on their ideas leaving them equipped with tools for success. Brightworks alum are critical thinkers who work to become architects for a just, sustainable, and equitable future doing their part to dismantle systems of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, LGBTQIA+ discrimination, and the legacy of systemic injustice, oppression, and economic inequity for BIPoC, while acknowledging our place on unceded Native lands.
In a dynamic and changing world Brightworks alumni answer the call to engineer and design for a safer and more caring world through thoughtful application of their learning.
