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.

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This is our campus. The @presidiosf is our playground. As you may have heard, spending time in nature has been linked to better mental health and a decreased risk of psychiatric disorders among adults and children. Dr Heather Eliassen, at Harvard,
A big Thank You to our visiting friends and educational scholars from the Future Classroom Lab at University College Copenhagen! We have hosted them in the past and were thrilled to see them again on their second visit to San Francisco and Brightwork
We grew a couple of new community members during Community Arc! Please welcome Cinnamon & Monica! These two most adorable creatures currently reside in our youngest students' band spaces where they are being tended to by loving and considerate
Memory Arc is underway and our younger middle schoolers went exploring! More precisely they went to #FortPoint to see Black Gold: Stories Untold, a #For_Site Foundation Exhibition. Our students explored the powerful works of contemporary artists te
In Community Arc we build our own chairs! We often start the year with this provocation, as it provides a fun opportunity to shape our own learning environment while introducing shop work and practices! Our students build confidence in their creative
We start every day in community with a morning circle! While our youngest students are granted a slightly different format, all our students from 3rd grade up contribute to setting their intentions for the day! First they invite everyone in with an
We are so lucky to call the Presidio of San Francisco home! So when we went exploring during Community Arc, that meant taking in everything our park has to offer! We explored nature preserves and play equipment, military & pet cemeteries as well
A big Thank You! to everyone who came out to see us @ the Bay Area Private & Parochial High School Fair this weekend! We had a blast! For more info and to sign up for open houses this fall please visit our website (link in bio) or sign up via Ra
brightworks Sierra Reading brightworks Sierra Reading

Foundry Day!

Today we wrapped up the Coin Arc by casting our coins! (Demar and Griffin were very missed!) Students got to cast their coins using the Brennans’ foundry outside of 1960 Bryant. Liam’s dad, Matt, taught us a lot about the foundry process, aluminum, the melting points of metals and more. He expertly helped the kids turn their purple styrofoam molds into beautiful shiny silvery “coins.” Below are some pictures of our process! Step 1- Safety! Matt introduces the foundry to the Green Band.Step 2- Melting aluminum. Piper puts an aluminum soda can into the foundry. We had to wait for the aluminum to become completely liquid. Aluminum's melting point is 1220 degrees F.Step 3- Putting the styrofoam mold into a pot of sand. Matt helps Phoebe fill in the negative space of her mold with sand before burying it in the pot.Step 4- Pouring the liquid aluminum. Matt transfers the melted aluminum in the crucible to the molds in the sand. When poured, the liquid aluminum will take the place of the styrofoam mold, and the styrofoam will vaporize.Step 5- Removing the aluminum. Lucy pulls out the now-hardened aluminum mold from the sand and places it in a bucket of water to cool it.Taa daa! Gita's cat.

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