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

Carving Club Starts! Monday afternoons

Embracing Nature: Have you seen our Playground?

Summer - The San Francisco Library

Learning Naturally

Welcoming our New Head of School

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

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

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.