Brightworks Blog

Brightworks is a flurry of activity and we are thrilled to share peeks into the lives of the students, our school and the community.

Featured

Gender Expression & Expansiveness

Immersive Multi Day Event

Earth Day Clean-Up

May: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Planning for Next Year

Mixed-age Classes

Reimagining Education to Honor Children and Childhood

Spring Gathering & Updates from Leadership

How do we measure success?

Spring Celebrations

Brightworks School Receives Historic $10 Million Gift

Break and Build Recap

Happy Black History / Black Futures Month

Brightworks ABC’s

Spreading Love, Peace and Hope

We kicked off Pride Month by inviting Drag Queen, storyteller and author Lil Miss Hot Mess, @lilmisshotmess to read from her own work! And our kids loved it!

Take a peak at these cute snippets and see what this playful and imaginary approach can do

We love to see our middle schoolers providing support to our elementary students in a joint effort to share about their current project work! And we are very excited to see these kind of cross age interactions being so beneficial to all participants!

What is happening around Gever's desk?

Take a look at these snippets and imagine the rich culture of learning we work to cultivate on a daily basis!

At the heart of our teaching philosophy is the belief that developing students' agency is vital t

When our Middle Schoolers go camping they always return with an epic experience!

This time they visited Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and The Robert Ferguson Observatory for some night time star gazing, studies of native & indigenous plants, memor

This majestic visitor was spotted right in our parking lot this afternoon— a reminder that at Brightworks, nature isn’t a field trip, it’s our everyday backdrop.

Nestled in the heart of the Presidio, Brightworks students explore tr

We are on Fire! Today was our first day of a two-day, all-school workshop with @audiopharmacy ! These snippets only show the beginning of today! Stay tuned for more to come!

By elevating the meaning, sound and purpose of Hip Hop, Audiopharmacy are p

We celebrated Earth Day with a good clean up around our school!
Our Student Government organized it all and sent groups of students out to collect garbage around our buildings and into The Presidio! And along the way these kids knew how to celebrate

Melissa Nocero 11/11/17 Melissa Nocero 11/11/17

From the History of Fashion to NaNoWriMo

We began our exploration of the history of fashion and historical events that have influenced fashion trends, with a sort of clothing trends through the centuries and decades. We've begun weaving, but it isn't all just fun and crafts. Rich has turned weaving into a math provocation. After creating their looms, the band calculated how much yarn they would need to complete their personal weaving projects. Sometimes we take a moment to work on something unrelated to the arc. After learning about Jacob Thompson, a nine-year-old boy with Stage 4 high-risk Neuroblastoma, the Teal Band decided to make his wish for Christmas cards come true. These kids have such huge hearts. Jonah crafted a pop-up card. Jacob's favorite animal is a penguin and Natalie put her wonderful drawing skills to work immediately. What would the Cloth Arc be without an exploration into pattern making? After watching a video on pattern making and creating a step-by-step list of the process, the Teal Band set out to make patterns for an item of their own clothing. After creating the pattern, the band was tasked with calculating the area of their pattern to figure out how much fabric would be needed to create their garment. They explored the various shapes that made up their shirt pattern and the formulas used to solve for these areas. My friend Tiff, a costume designer and maker, came in to share her story and work with the Teal Band a number of others. We learned that she sewed her first successful dress at just age nine and has been designing and making costumes professionally for almost thirty years. We were certainly interested to hear about her time making a number of costumes for the Hamiton touring cast. Viggo jumped at the chance to be turned into a living paper doll in one of Tiff's costumes. We learned that she loves costume design because it's often just that much more fun than your everyday garment. They began a chemistry lab with Rich on Friday, making their own soap. (Check back for a more detailed story of this lab from Rich.) And I can't forget NaNoWriMo. They are writing every spare moment they have, that's on top of the time set aside just for NaNoWriMo. I'm pretty certain they would be happy writing all day, every day if I let them. Sometimes it's nice to get out and write in a new setting. This week, NaNoWriMo took us, and our friends in the Violet Band, to Maxfield's Cafe. It's pretty special and empowering to be writing next to a big table full of adults working on their own NaNoWriMo novels.