Timira

There has always been much talk about ‘play’ in education and over the years play has found its way into pedagogy. However, what we cannot deny is that a lot of this knowledge is limited to the policy level and taking it into the classroom, especially beyond pre-school, has been a challenge. Play often gets lost in translation resulting in activities that may ‘look’ fun and playful but are often excessively teacher-directed and not very meaningful for the learner. Gaps between policy and practice have always irked me and in this month’s column, I’d like to share a component of this gap, which if addressed, could bring play into the classroom in a more authentic and holistic way.

So, what is play?
Before we get to addressing the gap, let’s get a better understanding of what we think of as play. May I request you to think of five words YOU associate with ‘playful learning’? I’ve done this exercise so many times that I can guarantee you had at least 2-3 words from the following vocabulary – fun, joy, laughter, stress-free, happiness, creativity, pre-primary.

However, if I were to take you through an engagement that required you to play with a group of 7-8 others and then ask you the same question, your answer would be slightly more nuanced. I’d like to share a few responses from teachers who experienced this firsthand. This was the vocabulary they came up with to answer the same question:
• a sense of connectedness,
• feeling motivated to be involved,
• exploring without worrying about right and wrong,
• being challenged,
• feeling proud of my abilities,
• being empathetic,
• problem-solving,
• a sense of ownership and responsibility,
• discovering new things about myself and others,
• feeling supported and unafraid to try something new.

While the first set of responses are absolutely true, I hope you can see what I am trying to draw your attention towards with the second set of responses. When you experience something yourself, you understand it better because you feel its impact on yourself first. If a teacher has never experienced the wonder of exploration, discovery, and learning that play allows, how are they to authentically create a learning experience for anyone else? How are they to truly believe in this approach, feel a sense of ownership towards the framework that is handed to them by policymakers and make it their own?

So, why don’t teachers play?
Circle back to the title and you’ll make a fair guess on the component of the gap between policy and practice that I’m here to talk about – the teacher – the only individual who is finally responsible to take any idea of play into the classroom. Yet, the least amount of focus is given to them.

Recently, I watched a presentation by a globally recognized professor on the pedagogy of play in education. The talk addressed an auditorium full of educators. It talked in detail about why play was important, various methods in which play could be incorporated, and the impact of play on children. However, when the professor ran out of time, he chose to drop the part that was titled ‘How can educators promote playful learning?’ It was jarring to see the presentation swiftly move to the Q&A section with those very educators who had just been told that there was no time to address their role in this wonderful pedagogical approach and they could refer to resources on a given website for further reference.

Teachers are often seen as ‘implementors’ of pedagogy and handed out frameworks, toolkits, resources and step-by-step approaches that they are ‘encouraged’ to bring into their practice. I have gone through scores of such frameworks and designs that ‘tell’ teachers how to take play into their classrooms but make no room for them to play – neither within the framework nor in its implementation. Do we recognize the irony in this approach?

By shifting the focus from the child learner to the teacher, we can make a significant difference in how play enters the classroom. I’d like to share a few such shifts I have been playing with (can’t help the pun!) over the years with different groups of teachers and seen changes in their pedagogical approaches to playful learning.

Playfulness as a disposition
Leave a group of children in a room and their natural propensity is to come together and play. You’ll see how they huddle together when they play, they lean in, physically, for support. Leave a group of teachers in a room and they will all choose to sit individually doing something quite important and even interesting, but by themselves. This is true for most adults.

As we enter adulthood, our natural disposition to play, explore, discover, take risks, and try something new reduces dramatically. What used to be ideas of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ as children, transform into burdensome words like ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in adulthood. To re-introduce playfulness as a habit and a natural response of an adult is no easy task but if we expect teachers to make play part of their pedagogy, it must become part of their being first.

For an entire year, teachers at Akshara High School were encouraged to play every working Saturday in the sports room for two entire hours. Cackles and laughter filled the empty corridors of the school on such days. Teachers knew who would kill to win, who was the kachhalimbu and who would rather let someone else win. They laughed leaning on each other as their bodies moved towards each other – it was magic. What was significant was that teachers were shedding their inhibitions, displaying their vulnerabilities and getting to know each other in capacities that were never seen as important in a school space. This built the foundation of an inherent disposition of fraternity and support amidst the teachers.

Developing a culture of play in the school system
When playfulness becomes innate to one’s being, it becomes an outlook. You begin to see it as an approach and not just as an activity. This is when schools need to review their systems and make room for a culture of play to exist. Staff meetings and parent meetings can be approached playfully. This does not mean teachers and parents are engaging in free play or a game of dog and the bone during meetings but incorporating the nuanced vocabulary of play as an approach, mentioned right at the start. Conflicts between students or between teachers can be approached in newer ways that allow more ownership to the ones in conflict instead of the default way of an outsider suggesting a resolution. School systems and rules can be reviewed collaboratively across board. Play encourages equality and fairness, and this could be a great opportunity to check whose voices are left unheard in the school system and how inclusive and democratic a school is.

I once had a member of the support staff request to be moved to the secondary section as it was closer to the library, where she could read in her free time. The HR team was taken aback at first but soon realized that it was a simple ask and it seemed out of place only because systems are not used to hearing certain voices speak up. This was definitely a result of all the play sessions we were doing between students, teachers and support staff who had never before engaged together, with each other, in this way.

Play in curriculum
For teachers to take play into the classroom as a pedagogical approach and not as an activity is a rather difficult graph to climb. I’d like to share an approach I often use with teachers to illustrate what it means to play with curriculum. Through Loose Parts* as the medium, teachers are encouraged to engage in pure play with no end goal. By repetitively moving, combining, stacking, choosing, constructing, pulling apart, teachers experience a tangible idea of playing with different loose parts. I use this experience as a metaphor to see how various entities can be played with while teaching. For instance, let’s look at all the possible entities we can consider when we teach a unit:
• The academic objective
• The specific content in the syllabus that needs to be delivered
• The textbook
• Expected project work
• Various learning abilities and capacities in a single classroom
• The time limit
• Various external resources like photographs, books, documentaries, etc.
• The spaces in which learning can happen
• Cross-disciplinary opportunities
• The vast context of the world and things happening outside the classroom
• The teacher’s personal objective while teaching that particular unit

We usually only consider the first 5-6 components, which are a part of a default lesson plan. How do things change for a teacher if they looked at all these various components and were given the opportunity to play with them? In certain units they use external resources as the primary focus to lead with, while in other units they play with what is in the textbook. One could lead with the space in which learning can happen or allow varied learning abilities to drive your teaching methodology.

The impact of this kind of play is larger than what you can see. It gives a huge amount of autonomy to the teacher, which is completely missing in the education system. Once a teacher reclaims their autonomy in their classroom, it is bound to make its way into the larger system. Teachers slowly see value in being more vocal and demand that their voice be heard in decision-making processes.

Okay…but where to begin?
At the risk of sounding esoteric, privileged, and unrealistic, I’m going to conclude by saying that to be able to play we need to incorporate leisure time within our school system, across board, but especially for teachers. This is different from the ‘free periods’ sprinkled in a miserly way across a teacher’s timetable, which they use either to empty their well-trained bladders or to swallow unchewed food, before getting to the ever-growing pile of assignments waiting to be corrected.

Leisure time allows us to see, to sense, to feel, to notice, to explore – all things that enable thought and there is enough research that tells us how important leisure is. However, sitting idle or seen ‘not working’ is unacceptable in our work culture. At Akshara, teachers taught only 4 out of 8 periods each day; they used the rest of their time to correct assignments and plan for future classes. In addition, each teacher had two library periods a week where they were by themselves, encouraged to read anything that was of interest to them. If they didn’t feel like reading, they could just hang out with students, also enjoying their leisure time, or spend that time by themselves looking outside the huge windows that overlooked the school playground and the mangroves beyond. At first, it wasn’t very well received. Teachers said they were ‘wasting’ their time and would rather finish corrections or other work. But breaking the default and forming new habits takes consistent and repetitive action and a strong belief in the process. Soon, teachers expressed how joyful this leisure time was, especially on busy chaotic school days.

As this culture of slowing down caught on, morning assembly routines changed. Some mornings were spent in quiet reading by every single individual in the school, while some were spent walking around quietly in the playground soaking in the sun and watching the birds do their morning rituals. These transitions happened so organically, that I don’t even remember who suggested these little changes.

Neitzsche called this the ‘revaluation of values’ – a time to re-evaluate values and change the paradigm through which we have been gauging what is right or wrong, good or bad, important and unimportant. I think the time has come. So, if you’re ready to play…3…2…1…let’s go!

*Loose Parts is a method of play where children are presented with a collection of small objects (loose parts) that they can explore, move, combine, line up, stack, take apart, put back in multiple ways. It aids creativity, engineering, problem-solving, cognitive skills, self-regulation and several other skills.

The author is an arts-based therapist, educator and children’s author. She is the former Executive Director of Akshara High School, Mumbai and has been working in the field of education for the past 15 years designing arts-based curriculum and training teachers. She can be reached at TeachersAsArtistsCollective@gmail.com.