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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
Carving Club Starts! Monday afternoons
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Embracing Nature: Have you seen our Playground?
Embracing Nature: Have you seen our Playground?
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Summer - The San Francisco Library
Summer - The San Francisco Library
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Learning Naturally
Learning Naturally
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Welcoming our New Head of School
Welcoming our New Head of School
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Gender Expression & Expansiveness
Gender Expression & Expansiveness
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Immersive Multi Day Event
Immersive Multi Day Event
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Earth Day Clean-Up
Earth Day Clean-Up
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May: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
May: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
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Planning for Next Year
Planning for Next Year
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Mixed-age Classes
Mixed-age Classes
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Reimagining Education to Honor Children and Childhood
Reimagining Education to Honor Children and Childhood
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Spring Gathering & Updates from Leadership
Spring Gathering & Updates from Leadership
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How do we measure success?
How do we measure success?
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Spring Celebrations
Spring Celebrations
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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
Students who feels safe, seen & valued learn better and use their creativity in the process! That's why we spend the first few weeks every school year on a mini Community Arc! 

Building friendships, establishing bands & rules of interaction,
brightworks Kimberly Besst 1/19/18 brightworks Kimberly Besst 1/19/18

Cloth Update and Tool Training

The hive has been so lucky to have Daniel Gill, a master puppeteer, visit the hive once a week to make different kinds of puppets and show us how to tell stories with them.Last week, Daniel brought some marionettes!This week, Daniel taught us how to make our own marionettes.Now that we've begun tool training, we can begin to work on our second iteration of the puppet theater.Speaking of tool training, Sylvester shows us proper eye protection while using a clamp.Before the tool challenge, we practiced using the drill to make holes and drive screws. We're working hard on keeping control of the drill and using two hands.Dash loves drilling holes!This week, our tool challenge was to build a cube using drills, clamps, and your team.Just because you're not using a tool doesn't mean you can't help. Calvin held wood for his team so it wouldn't slide around so much while driving screws into it. 

In other news...

We began writing "small moment" stories about things that happen in our lives. A small moment isn't a big long story about your day or the trip you took on vacation. A small moment is one part of your day, like breakfast or going to the park.Khalilah noticed she needed a better spot for writing so we started finding comfortable writing places around the band space where people could work.Ronin is writing a story about New Zealand.Dash is writing about moving into the Sunset house. He's really excited about his families' new home.We're also exploring place value and addition during centers. For this activity, kiddos are building structures from base-ten blocks and adding them up.  

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Get In Touch: 682 Schofield Road, San Francisco CA 94129 // (415) 701-8700 // Office Hours: 8am-6pm // School Hours: 9:00am-3:30pm (MTThF); 2:30 (W)

Brightworks is an innovative K-12 project-based school and a project of the Institute for Applied Tinkering, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Brightworks holds diversity of opinion, lifestyle, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and race to be the cornerstone of our school community. Brightworks does not discriminate in its services, programs, or admissions on any of those above criteria.

(c) 2025