Teaching Educators How to Play

Click this image to watch the video - Tim Brown Teaches Us How to Play (27 min)

We’ve been talking about developing Learning Communities for Educators.  Perhaps in order to effectively engage in a learning community and learn from each other we need to re-learn “how to play.” I want to make the argument that more teachers need to learn how to play and see  the importance of “play” in learning and education. More this play can encourage constructivist learning in both students and teachers.

A few weeks ago I watched  this inspirational video on the Importance of Play to developing innovative ideas over on the TedTalks website.  IDEO, which is responsible for developing many cutting edge technologies and innovative products that touch our everyday lives is a company that believes deeply in the “Power of Play” to learn, explore and create.

As educators we should really be growing crops of  ideal IDEO employees to meet the needs of the new “Creative Economy.” Sir Ken Robinson argues that our current  education system and methods don’t foster creativity and innovative thinking.  He argues that our current educational system was designed to meet the needs of “Industrialism.”

Currently, more educators are investigating the value of  the “constructivist” approach to education. The King School, which I featured in an earlier post is an example of  a school that takes such an approach. Students focus not so much on formal learning such a s learning strictly from textbooks, dittos and teacher lectures.  Instead, the engage in meaningful work and apply their learning to their work projects such as writing a school newsletter, developing a documentary video, etc.  In a sense, these students are engaging in constructive play as they work to develop their products. The teachers no longer lecture as “the sage on the stage,” instead they act more as active guides or community leaders who help students apply their learning and develop their end products. In such a learning environment, the teachers help maintain order during this creative play and guide and mentor students to success.  As Tim Brown says in his talk, “Play is not Anarchy.”

Many of us have heard that phrase, “It take a village to raise a child.”  I believe that it takes a strong community of teachers who can work together to help grow creative and productive young minds, and it is possible to do this. From my own experience,  I remember teaching once in a middle school where we, as teachers of different subjects,  worked together in a ‘pod.’ A large group of students were assigned to this pod.  The English, Social Studies, Science and Math teachers worked cooperatively with each other to connect curriculum and lessons in an interdisciplinary fashion.  Students studied units on Ancient Greece or Medieval Japan, and all classes explored links to the topic in focus. The best part of this system was that we  teachers presented a ” unified front”  when it came to motivational and disciplinary approaches. If the first period teacher saw that a certain child was having a ‘difficult’ start to their day, they quickly alerted the other teachers in the pod with a heads up. We could then adjust how we approached this student. We were working together, learning and even playing as a very small but effective community of teachers. We found strength in our unity. Though to be honest, this wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t learn how to cooperate and play with each other.

Though to be fair, so much of the education infrastructure today doesn’t allow students let alone teachers to engage in this type of creative play.  How can teachers care about engaging their students in exploratory activities  where they act as a guide when they’ve been tasked at making sure that their students do well at standardized tests?  There are still many questions that need to be answered, and perhaps a rethinking and an overhaul of the current education system as it is. Though I think we can learn more about building stronger teacher communities for educating “Creative Economy” members by looking for examples like the “King Middle School.” It is possible to build such teaching and learning communities, we just need to re-think our approaches.

Additional Resource:

National Institute for Play – description: “The National Institute for Play is a 501c(3) non-profit public benefit corporation committed to bringing the unrealized knowledge, practices and benefits of play into public life. It is gathering research from diverse play scientists and practitioners, initiating projects to expand the clinical scientific knowledge of human play and translating this emerging body of knowledge into programs and resources which deliver the transformative power of play to all segments of society.”