Episode 1 Part 2: Adventure is in the Mind of the Child

In part 2 of the premiere episode of Playwork the conversation continues with American playworker Alex Cote. Alex shares the first, and the worst, loose parts on her school playground. 

Playwork is the podcast for people who love play. Erin, Morgan and Maayan are play advocates, collaborators and friends. Each episode of Playwork features their candid interviews with playworkers, teachers, play theorists, parents, and more doing the (literally) dirty work of creating spaces for play. More at PlayworkPodcast.com

Transcript

ERIN :   0:04
I'm Erin  

MORGAN:   0:05
and I'm Morgan  

MAAYAN:   0:05
and I'm Maayan.  

ERIN :   0:07
And this is play work Podcast for people who love play.  

ERIN :   0:13
Welcome back to play work. This is part two of our first episode. So if you haven't heard Part one Pause stop. Go back in your feet and listen to the first part of our conversation with American Playworker Alex Cote.  We talk to her about her skillful playwork practice and specific things that you could do right now to make more way for play. Here in part to we're gonna hear more from Alex about the question that we get all the time, which is how can I do this at school?

MAAYAN:   0:39
But first, this show is a resource, a place to talk about play, work and providing for play. So I'm gonna start right now being a resource for all of you listeners. If you or your friends or anyone you know is excited about supporting play, you should read the Playwork Primer.   

ERIN :   0:58
I think the Playwork Primer was probably one of the first documents that I read about play work, and I remember it being this like Oh, that's what play work is like. Now I understand this philosophy in this approach. And like obviously, there's lots more to read and lots more to learn about after you read the primer. But it's just elegantly written and just sort of lays everything out.

ERIN :   1:19
I love the play work primer. It's short. You can read it over coffee. Um, you know, I definitely remember early on in my play work journey, sort of printing it out and taking it to a cafe with a highlighter and just sitting and spending some time with it. It's easy to read. It's easy to share with your friends, your fellow teachers, another parent that you know. So it's a great resource. Definitely recommend it.

MORGAN:   1:40
It's on our website. You can go to play work podcast dot com and download it. It's free, and it's the best place to start. In addition to listening to our podcast, of

ERIN :   1:49
course. Okay, let's get back to our conversation with play worker Alec's coat and as a reminder, Alexa, play worker at the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. Like most great play projects, especially in the US, this one started with one passionate person, and in this case, leading the charge was kindergarten teacher Joe to go, Paul. So, Morgan, you were one of the first people that jokey reached out to to sort of expand the play provisions on the playground. Do you remember those early calls? Yeah, absolutely. She was doing some really beautiful place support in her classroom and then with the kids in her kindergarten group. Lots of really interesting stuff around, like rough and tumble and loose parts. But she wanted to be expanding those ideas in the recess playground as well and just reaching more kids through the school. So we did some workshops with all of the staff, and she'd been building momentum for a while, and suddenly it seemed they were ready for a full time member of staff, and Alex Kota seemed the natural choice. Here's more from our interview with Alec's coat. How

MORGAN:   2:59
is it different tohave a play worker, a trained play worker on the site on the playground, from just having like teachers on the playground, watching like don't the kids already do whatever they want on the playground,

ERIN :   3:12
huh? How

MORGAN:   3:14
does it feel different?

ERIN :   3:16
I think it's

MAAYAN:   3:16
more about the school caring about having someone who could devote their time to thinking about this stuff because, like they were really excited when Joe T. Was sort of spearheading doing some new stuff on the playground. But she already has a full time job teaching kindergarten, and she can't devote the time to training staff or thinking about materials in the way that I could be very like, conscious and like planned about this, including things like making five year plans or, um, like talking to the facilities, people about the grounds and what we're able to put out there and all the all the nuances of a large system, which is school is.

ERIN :   3:56
Can you say some of the early materials that you introduced to the fixed place space and like what has worked well in your context? Mm. Adding a water source was one of things that was pretty early on. And that was really exciting, because this,

MAAYAN:   4:11
I mean, this school is already very playful, like they've been doing little steps for many years before I came. So, for example, like the kindergarten teachers let their kindergarten kids go into their classrooms like Philip cups of water and bring them back out to the playground. So I just sort of formalized that and made it accessible to other grades. Also, by putting um, like there's a water top right there on the lake and like putting a little drip faucet that turns off automatically So there doesn't have to be any sort of like reminders to turn the water off for fear about water spraying everywhere. It's just there now, and the kids know that it's there and they can get it when they want. Um, how much does that cost? Flick? Six bucks.

ERIN :   4:56
It's just It's It's like a dog. It's called. The brand name is licks it. It's like

MAAYAN:   5:00
for dogs to drink from the hose without their owners needing to turn it off and on. But that's it lets out a little bit of time. So it's not a big flood, and you just like press a little lever and the water comes out and then it automatically stops when the kids or the dog doesn't want it to be running anymore. So it works really well for a playground. What's another Another? I mean it just adding more pots and pans. There's already lots of wood chips on this playground, and that makes it impossible to, like, dig and do lots of flake. Yeah, pots and pans and spoons to make stuff.

ERIN :   5:37
Sorry. Yeah, just to, like, really dig in on this context thing. Was the water choice. Were you responding to the fact that the kids were already bringing water outside? Or do you think that that's like a good standard place to start? For example, I was

MAAYAN:   5:47
responding to that. That was already something that it seemed like the teachers were pretty comfortable with, and they already felt like they're already doing it. Um, and I did like I didn't just turn it on one day. I, like, talk to the teachers about this happening and, like what if they get wet like we'll figure it out like we discussed stuff beforehand. And the answer is that, like at a school, sometimes you can't be wet when you go to your next class and the all the teachers are sort of managed that themselves. They remind the kids that you know you can't have a water fight today because we're going to reading. That's really good practice. That's a great example, because it's something that the kids were already trying to do and that the adults were already allowing. But you could make it slightly easier. Yeah, and accessible to the other kids, too, because the kindergarten classrooms air right off of the playground. So it's easy for them to go in their classrooms and get water. But it's weird for 1/4 grader to be going into kindergarten classroom to get water. So there was a barrier there, like an actual physical barrier took going inside. Um, and now, honestly, like the fourth graders or some of the ones that do the most like restaurant and, like cooking, play with the mud.

ERIN :   6:58
You guys have a backfire at some point, didn't you not like an actual, like tires, was it? So, um, because you can sort of do too much too fast, it gets exciting, right? Yeah, the, uh,

MAAYAN:   7:11
before I got there, um, they the teachers were excited to introduce tires, which is something you see on a lot of adventure playgrounds and add a lot of schools that do loose parts play. Um, but the the way this school is laid out is that their playground is at the bottom of a very steep hill. Um, so when they introduced tires. One of the afford Ince's of tires is that they're really good at rolling and they pick up speed. And we haven't talked about this much. But, like Children who haven't had access to a lot of loose parts, sometimes are not used to managing their own play A. And there will be some like necessary like mishaps until they figure it out. And the mishaps when there's a heavy tire hurtling down the hill were a little too much for this school toe handle. So they ended up taking them back away again when a child got knocked over by a tire rolling down the hill.

ERIN :   8:07
Yeah, what's the end like what ended

MAAYAN:   8:09
up happening? We said, like the tires were gone now, and that's not something that I have brought back because it doesn't they. I mean, we could probably use tires at some point once everyone trusts that this is actually working. But it's not something that needs to happen now when this school and everyone at the school is still learning about what this means.

ERIN :   8:31
So I want to hammer home on this a little bit, too, because this is this is a great I would think moment for people who like this is a terrible idea. Cleanup done. You know, um, to what degree are like mishaps inevitable, cause this school is taking a risk by experimenting. Um, and you know, other people want to know how to take risks and experiment as well. So what's the lesson here? You think? I think the

MAAYAN:   8:56
lesson is to fold and one is just like setting up everyone in the community with the expectation that it is a process of like Children. Figuring things out for themselves is an important part of play and to trust that they will learn from and get through it and to know that s O staff will attempt to prevent link serious harm. But that, like bumps and bruises and scrapes, are part of figuring out where your body ends and the stuff begins and it will happen and the kids can do it. The other part is just setting the kids up for success and like anticipating that if you have something that is heavy and rolls well that they will roll it. And if a school can't have that happening yet, don't put that stuff out, and I think it's I don't know who originally said it, but like, don't put things out that you can't say yes to, um, if you feel like you're gonna need to be hovering over that thing, that's not the time

ERIN :   9:48
for that thing yet. We've got a really good example process for finding a good starting object and a good example of well, over Yeah, which is water and an example of, like how that can and will let go wrong, which is tyres. How will you find the next loose pot?

MAAYAN:   10:12
Um, I mostly looked to the Children to see what they're showing me that they wish they could do. So an example of that would be We have a few pieces of cloth out in the playground now, and there are no swings on the playground. So the Children immediately turned the cloth into swings, and I only put out a few at first so we can see how it goes. And the swings have been up for most of the year now, and it feels to me, at least like now they're just part of the landscape. Um, so I think it might be time soon to add a bit more because it's something that the kids have shown me that they obviously really care about. And it's something that the teachers have seen at this point, how it can work. And it's then it's just thinking about like like, what opportunities does a certain part provide? And that's where afford INS theory comes in. And also just in a general thinking about, like, what makes a good, loose part like, Is it open ended? Like can the Children manipulate this themselves? Is it made of a material that we can leave out because we leave most for materials out now? So it needs to be like we don't put cardboard out because it just melt in the rain. Yeah, so durability. Like, can we get enough of this? Um, so that it's not just one thing that everyone wants to use, although that could be fun

ERIN :   11:23
to Just to tie back to something we talked about earlier about talking. Yeah, like about the adults talking in the space like the tire thing when I just imagine that I just imagine so much finger wagging and wait or you know that's gonna fall on you. You know that kind of advice. So yeah, or honestly, even

MAAYAN:   11:43
worse, which I think was what was happening instead, was the teachers or feeling like I guess the school wants us to let this happen now and not saying anything at all in being scared and not feeling like they had any control over what was happening to their kids on beast of like, every teacher cares so much about the kids that are with them every day. So that's been part of this process to is making sure that they're part of it.

ERIN :   12:11
I'm curious and I guess, to hear how you how you view like your responsibility towards the Children. What do you hope that this does for them in their day? It's really

MAAYAN:   12:21
lovely to work in a school because as many complications as it brings in, I know that there is going to be that bit of time every single day that the kids will have to play, and I can't know that about the rest of their lives. I hope that they're playing when they go home also, but I know that they're playing when they come to school every day.

ERIN :   12:59
One of the things that's nice about school. Being a place for child directed play is that it's the same kids every day. They can leave something, come back to it that, like, place to return to. How important is that, huh? It can be incredibly important. You build up a relationship with a place over time and and the the other people who you see in that place and schools incredibly potent in that, you know, we all went to school. What do you think might have been different if your school it had a play worker? There was kind of a myth at my school because my school had a big hill in the backyard. And there was this myth that, like sometimes on a snow day, the teachers will let you take lunch trays out and slide down the hill and go sledding on the hill like that happened once. And that was sort of like this legend in the school that the kids were always like, maybe we'll get to go slip, you know, in a very snowy day, and that never that never happened while I was there. But it must have happened once because it was sort of, you know, in the It shows how long that, like memory, can be thinking flaking Children's cultural memory like that could have been years before on also with regards the time like school and pop ups. The thing that they have in common, like recess, is this sort of like thing where the kid is on a schedule that's not their own right. Like the parents brought them here. Or like it's 11 30 or whatever time it's like, Okay, it's time to have fun Now go. You'll have fun now until I say that the time for fun is over. It's like hard to have fun on demand, you know it is. I sometimes think it's like as a comparison to those friends that, like force you to get up and dance. Yeah, when, like you don't want to get up and dance and you're not ready to get up a dance, But like sometimes it turns out fun anyway. But it's still like not the best way to get a part. Theo Alternative that the way to have fun on your own time right is to have lots of time. Well, that also sounds like like the Technicolor fantasy of many things that I know what does like, Ah, whole day off at home? I think, cause I think normally kids kids experiences with time these days are like tightly, tightly regulated. You know, it's like down to like, the 20 minutes if you're lucky. Most recess on Dhe then and then it gets taken away if you've got in trouble to write for a lot of kids. So like, I think our concept of how much time is necessary sometimes it's like I don't know, like people have asked with pop ups what we like, how the length of time that we suggest. And we usually say three hours because, like it's long enough for people to come and feel like they've stayed for for a long chunk of time. It's short enough that you're volunteers don't like, hate you, and it seems to work. But similarly, when people have asked sometimes like, well, I only have a tower because I'm in a school or I only have ah like half an hour. We like to do that like do do whatever you can because the kids are gonna get something out of it and they always do. Yeah, Hopefully that permission kind of resonates, right? Like they came to the pop up adventure playground for 1/2 an hour or they were had 20 minutes at recess to work in a mud kitchen. And then when they get home and they see you know, a pot or a pan, they see more opportunity in it than they might have if they hadn't had that experience earlier. I hope so. I've read some of that from kids sometimes, Um, like one of them. One of them brought in a frog that she caught at home after she learned how to catch frogs and adventure playground. I was like, Well, this is going in the annual report. So if if you're listening to this podcast, then chances are we have a few other interests in common, too. Like all people we have are interested in a bunch of different things at any given time. And so now we're gonna introduce a little section called If you like this, then you'll like in which we each tell you one thing that we are super into right now. My on what do you recommend?

MORGAN:   17:22
So my recommendation is fostering kittens

ERIN :   17:27
actually add Mayan has kittens all over his house.

MORGAN:   17:30
I have literally I don't know if you've heard them in this recording because they may have. I have a mama cat and three baby kittens and they're so adorable

ERIN :   17:41
so much You got the kittens when they were like could fit in the palm of your hand and their eyes weren't even

MORGAN:   17:46
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. We got these kids and they were three days old and mama was taken care of them. She was feeding them. They didn't even look like cats yet their eyes were shot, their ears were shut their blind and death and they were just They squeak and they walk around tiny bit and they're the most adorable things and on And then you watch them, like, grow into kittens that you would recognize otherwise. And they like progressively explore the house and walk around tentatively and look around, and then they play with each other. And and the other thing that I would say is that especially in the context of play work like, for me, watching the mother interact with these three kittens is like a lesson and play work. It's like she sort of is there. She always knows where they are, but she doesn't intervene when they're playing. Unless they're sort of calling out for help to her, she'll come and and check on them. And she doesn't always even grab them to take, um, typical up. She'll just sort of be a presence to make sure they're okay. Um, and they do some crazy shit, Let it like they will wrestle with each other and bite each other and then fall off of wherever they're they're wrestling on onto the floor. And But the other thing that I would say that's really cool is like watching their play process is really interesting where they'll like, they'll chase their tail, they'll play with each other. But they also, like, explore things that this really tentative way that kids sometimes do, where they'll be like, Oh, I don't know if I can do this whole thing yet, but I'm gonna, like, try as much as I feel comfortable with and then back off and then, like, do it again a little bit more and then back off again and then try and fall and, like, try it again and do it this way and It's just a really cool thing to watch, especially because they're kittens.

ERIN :   19:43
I I would watch and listen to your like voiceover kid like close kitten observations with my ass every Thursday tweets. Um, kitten pictures are, and

MORGAN:   20:00
I will do that. I will definitely tweet some some videos or some bridges.

ERIN :   20:05
Kittens. God, they're cute. Cool. I'll recommend another podcast that I listened to and really was delightful. It's called bees Big Laughs, bees, big laughs podcast, And it's an interview show hosted by a 10 year old girl, and she interviews women actor comedians. So you know Carrie Brownstein from Sleater Kinney and for Atlantia, Abby Jacobson from Broad City and other really funny women. And it's just six super charming and sweet. So if you have a work commute or go the gym or a person who listens to podcasts other than this one, I definitely recommend these big laughs. It's very cute.

MORGAN:   20:42
That sounds like so much fun.

ERIN :   20:44
I want to listen to that. I love all those people I know. The people are cool and the girl is delightful. Be age 10 interviewing bad ass women. Funny ladies. My My recommendation also includes a badass woman. Oh, Ella Fitzgerald. Yes, Um, and her her version of Paper Moon, which is a really lovely song that you might I don't know. I feel like a lot of people knew and then forgot that they know, like a lot of old tunes, and it's always been in my mind, like on unofficial anthem for play work. And even as I say that I can hear a couple of flavor is being like, that suggests to highly interventionist of a relationship. But there are times when kids do, like, look to us to support their dream. And for me, like paper Moon really gets at that moment when like having somebody else see your idea like makes it become true.

spk_3:   21:46
Say it. Only you Baber move sailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn't we'll be late. Believe if you be leaving me. Yes, it's only

ERIN :   22:04
thank you to our guest, Alex Cho Tae. You can read more from Alex on her blogged play bound. Play bound dot wordpress dot

MORGAN:   22:11
com Special. Thanks to Riverdale Country School for taking the risk of incorporating play work in their playground, you can see pictures of the space on our website at play work podcast dot

ERIN :   22:21
com. We'll also post links to the play work primer free download and also that licks it water dripper thing that Alex installed on her school playground, plus photos of the parish school adventure playground in Houston that we talked about in Part one. It's a beautiful spot. You've got to see the photos or you can't believe it.

MORGAN:   22:38
Subscribe to this podcast on apple podcasts. While you're there, you can raid us and write a review. If you like this and want more episodes, email us and tell us that you're listening. We love to hear your questions. You can tweet us at play work, podcast or email. Hello at player podcast dot com. That's all.

ERIN :   22:55
Thank you. Thanks

spk_3:   22:56
for listening. Everyone by is all over the country way, way with its a malady played in a penny. Okay, it's a funnel and daily word. Just as phony as it can be. It wouldn't be like, really, if you believed in me. It's a phone. It's plain to see. Oh, happy. I would wait