VPerspective
Bring back play
Apr 24, 2008 7:32 PM
UFT’s early childhood conference stresses its key role in education process
Michelle Bodden (left), UFT vice president of elementary schools,with home child care provider Damaris Perez at the UFT’s early childhood conference.
Parents always ask the same question of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and host of the PBS show “NOVA Science NOW.” How can they help their kids become scientific geniuses?
His answer?
Let them play. Playing is essential in exploring the world, becoming curious about how things work and asking a lot of questions.
Dr. Tyson was the keynote speaker at the UFT’s incredible early childhood conference on March 26 called “Child-Initiated Learning: How Play Works” that brought together elementary school teachers and home-based child care providers — our newest members — for an exhilarating day of learning.
Dr. Tyson told a story about his toddler, who had accidentally spilled milk on the table, becoming completely fascinated with the milk flowing onto the floor. He was amazed at watching his child make discoveries about physics just by watching the milk pour down.
In the afternoon plenary, another talented educator, Dr. Suzanne Carothers from the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, led a powerful segment on how to deeply connect with how children learn. What was the essence of that connection?
Play.
Dr. Carothers had all participants think back on their own experiences playing when they were children, recall their favorite things to do and ask themselves how they give their students the opportunity to play in the classroom.
Denise Mazzarisi leads the “Can I Live?” workshop.
So what’s all this emphasis on children playing? Isn’t it stating the obvious? Isn’t going to elementary school synonymous with playing, painting, stacking blocks, gluing, coloring and running free during recess?
Unfortunately, no. Not with this generation of our youngest students. We’re structuring away our children’s unstructured time.
Outside school, kids’ time is also over-structured. Even playtime is structured, with playgroups and play dates, for one example, which never existed in the past. Everything is managed. What happened to just good old playing, without adult intrusion, with pretending, daydreaming, running away from monsters and skipping over cracks in the sidewalk? Having every activity be achievement-oriented is a tendency in our society and as educators we must be vigilant and push back against it.
Every single one of the conference’s work sessions — whether about cognitive development, values, literacy or social graces, to name a few — focused on how play is the seed of all early learning experiences.
The conference was affirming for elementary school teachers, who know in their hearts and minds that play is essential to early education. It was empowering for them as well, as workshops such as “The Value of Play” gave them tools to convince their administrators to bring back play into the classroom.
It was also the first opportunity for elementary school teachers to learn side by side with home-based child care providers, who nurture and educate the children of low-income workers whose day care is subsidized by the federal and state governments. Child care providers are the first link in the chain of education that a child receives so it is vital that they, too, have access to quality professional development. Now that the providers are part of the UFT family, they are starting to get the training that they need.
Child care provider Bettie Lunnon asks a question.
It was affirming for all of us when we looked around and saw who was sitting with us in the UFT’s auditorium: Sheila Evans-Tranum, the associate commissioner of the New York State Education Department, the renowned educator Debbie Meier, a founding principal of the enlightened Central Park East elementary schools and a key player in New York Voices for Childhood, and Randi Herman, first vice president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the principals’ union.
Their presence meant a lot, because we want administrators to get the message that play is important.
According to Dr. Carothers, play is not going to make a comeback unless we as educators value play. That was the point of her exercise in taking us back to our childhoods. If we as adults forget how to play, we tend to devalue play in children and expect them to be little adults.
And listening to Dr. Tyson you realized that being an astrophysicist has everything to do with keeping a playful spirit as an adult, with looking at the world with a childlike sense of awe.
It’s that spirit that we must invite back to early chldhood education. It scares easily. It should never have been chased out of the classroom in the first place by testing, testing and more testing.
We have to see that it doesn’t get lost. So join us in the movement to bring play back into the elementary schools.
And as you go through your day in the classroom and as you unwind at the end of it, don’t forget to play.
Renee Dinnerstein of PS 146, Brooklyn, makes a comment.
Role playing at the “Making Connections to Literacy Through Play” workshop are (from left) providers Tammie Miller and Gladys Jones, teachers Angela Cutri and Blair Kaplan, and provider Carolyn Roman.
