Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/catching-the-spirit-training-teachers-to-be-playful/5008937/
As an adult college student earnestly preparing myself to teach young children, it never occurred to me that I was unlearning a basic element of successful early childhood education - immersion in play. I was very serious about being a good teacher: teaching children the skills they need to be successful, helping them with problems, shaping their values and attitudes toward responsible adulthood.What influenced my return to the delight of play was not my teacher education program, but a friendship with two gay men. On Friday nights they coaxed this serious college student out of the library and into a mountain of leaves gathered on the October campus. Games of charades, theme dinners, and trips to the store in costumes soon lightened my step, loosened my laughter, and imbued me with a new sense of inquisitiveness about the world. I even went to register for a physics class.
Some 30 years later, I find myself drawing on these memories as I come across teachers who are misguided in their understandings of "school readiness." Seeing little time provided for open-ended exploration in their classrooms and "free time" viewed as the transition spaces between the real curriculum, I ...