Playing to Learn is for Grown-Ups, Too! A Summer Graduate Course on Play at a PDS Summer Camp and Teachers Bringing Play Back to Their Classrooms

Headnote

ABSTRACT: At the heart of this paper is a well-founded belief in the importance of play in the lives of children; play that leads to social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Teacher educators have the responsibility and opportunity to educate and enlighten in-service and pre-service teachers on the role of play in schools. At our university we offer a graduate level course entitled The Educational Foundations of Play. Conveying the role that play can have in today's classrooms is imperative since many new teachers did not have the opportunity to themselves have a play-based education even in their earliest years in school. Learning about play in a graduate-level course is appropriate as well as honorable, admirable, and worthy; the addition of an opportunity to enact play-based strategies takes it a step further and helps ensure the practices take hold. We had precisely this opportunity through a summer camp for rising K-8 students from the local school district, which grew out of a well-established Professional Development School District partnership. As part of the camp, the Play class, and other college of education courses, were taught on-site and included daily opportunities to interact with children and enact a play-based curriculum. Children thoroughly enjoyed the play-based sessions and graduate students appreciated the opportunities to practically apply play strategies and engage firsthand with theories of play. While this was positive and could be painted as a win, our work was not done. We went on to challenge the graduate students, a mix of beginning teachers and recently certified teachers, to bring play back to their classrooms in the fall. Enacting play in a summer camp was one-thing; implementing these same strategies in a public-school classroom would require dedication and creativity. Multiple teachers took up this challenge to bring play back to the classroom. The work of two teachers working in PDS-affiliated schools will be highlighted for their valiant attempts to uphold the notion that children learn through play and that teachers can find a variety of ways to facilitate this process. Recommendations for other teachers and teacher-educators are offered based on our findings that have implications for play, practicum experiences, and graduate coursework in PDS work.

At the heart of this paper is a well-founded belief in the...