Making Meaningful Sense of Play

Over the past several years there has been a renewed interest in the meaning and importance of play. Play has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Taking Play Seriously, and in two fairly recent books, Stuart Brown’s Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul (2009), and Bateson’s and Martin’s Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation (2013).

As part of my doctoral program in the early 1990s at The Ohio State University (Building a Bridge Between Athletics and Academics), I was fortunate to study the importance of play and many of the early play theorists. These included the 18th Century educator Jean Jacques Rousseau who in Emile wrote about the importance of play for children.

Rousseau began with the idea that children should be outdoors and active. In so doing, the child would develop his senses through his experiences. The senses would then provide the background against which ideas took shape. By moving and touching everything, seeing, and hearing, tasting and smelling, the child would begin to associate the objects of the external world with the five senses (Mechikoff, 2010, p. 160).

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To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

I’m embarrassed to confess that now in my 16th year of publishing pelinks4u, I’ve managed to avoid, actually intentionally avoided, almost any participation in social media. In 1999 and a much younger person, I was on the cutting edge of online technology. Facebook’s billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg was only 15 and probably a high school freshman. The Internet was in its infancy, still difficult to use, and its value unclear. A few years earlier, George Graham and his doctoral students at Virginia Tech conceived of a way to use the Web to promote physical education and in 1996 PE Central was launched.

Not long afterwards, I found myself on sabbatical planning one project but then being distracted and intrigued by the potential of the Internet. I saw it first as a way to link my college students with information they could use to improve their teaching skills. This idea then morphed into a newsletter sharing links, news, and opinions. Remarkably – at least in reflection – pelinks4u began as a weekly publication and continued that way until sanity set in and I switched to biweekly. Even more remarkably, it took a couple of years until the present monthly publication schedule began.

When pelinks4u started I did all of the information gathering and HTML coding myself. Fortunately, through the support of several generous site sponsors – many of which continue to support pelinks4u today (thank you) – I was able to get some assistance. Teaching colleagues volunteered to write teaching tips (also many thanks). But most notably Terri Covey began as the pelinks4u Webmaster while still a student. She’s continued to do it for many years now as a Central Washington University employee. Terri probably knows more about pelinks4u than me. Any credit I’ve received for pelinks4u actually belongs mostly to Terri’s truly outstanding dedication to the publication.

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Summer Activities are a great time to relax, refuel and re-furbish

For most of us the school year is coming to a close. But for teachers, it’s a good time to reflect and think about what worked, what didn’t work, and the reasons for both. To get a head start for the next school term, I find it helpful to create a calendar with large space blocks to enter pertinent daily comments. Entries can include behavior issues, positive lessons, and accidents, parental concerns, or anything you think important for future use.

These entries can help remind you of past problems you can avoid and the details of events you might need in a future meeting. With the advent of smart phones and tablets, you can also easily add daily reminders and notes into an App. But, sometimes it’s also good to have a back up just in case of a technology glitch.

Before packing your bags for a much anticipated and probably needed vacation, I encourage you to plan what needs to be done to take you through the first week of teaching. Even the relaxing part of your summer activities can combine refueling and refurbishing too. For teachers, learning never stops. Observing what young people are doing helps us to better appreciate what makes our students tick, and how they’ll likely react to our teaching and the lessons we are planning to present to them.

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The Wooden Way: Continuing to Learn as a Coach

Arguably, there has been no greater role model for coaches in any sport than legendary coach John Wooden (Gilbert, 2010). Often considered the greatest coach of all time (Nater & Gallimore, 2010), Wooden has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach (Davis, 2014). He won ten NCAA basketball championships from 1964 to 1975 as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at UCLA (Jenkins, 2014).

 

In 1999, a panel of ESPN experts named him the greatest collegiate coach of the 20th Century (Ermeling, 2012), and in 2003 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the United States Government (Gilbert, 2010). In his retirement, Wooden became a best-selling author and was a sought after keynote speaker well into his late 90’s.

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A Tale of Two Contrasts: Being a Coach and Being Coached

I have been coached and I have coached. And the differences between these two experiences is a tale to be told.

 

I am an athlete, maybe a little on the grey side, but still an athlete. I skate weekly and I was at one time a high level skater. But I was also an athlete in team sports. I played softball both slow and fast pitch. I was pretty good and pretty bad at the same time. As Frank Deford (2014) would say – I played real sport, the ultimate where one individual goes directly against another, mano-a-mano – where you must not only compete, but also compete against your rival’s attempts to stop you.

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Service and Commitment Can Create Change

For the past three years, I’ve had the honor and privilege of serving as a member of the Executive Committee for The Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE America), formerly the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD). I traveled extensively on behalf of our national organization and attended many state AHPERD and district conventions. These visits were both exhilarating and enlightening, and I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with thousands of outstanding professionals and future professionals in our field. It has been an experience that has changed my world view of our profession.

I discovered that people who attend state and district AHPERD conventions are dedicated professionals who are willing to serve the profession in a variety of ways. I learned that our state associations are strong and host top quality annual conventions. Successful lessons and innovative teaching ideas are shared openly and willingly. I was astounded at the willingness of members to serve as convention planners, officers, presenters, and on committees and task forces.

Our state associations are truly member driven and mission focused. Member driven in that the success of everything done at the state level is due to member efforts usually supported by a part-time Executive Director. These volunteers plan and develop all professional activities occurring at the state level. Without them, the professional development and networking taking place throughout the year would not exist.

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SHAPE America Starts New Era

It’s official! The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD) is now SHAPE America. New name, new logo, new website. All of the national associations (NASPE, NDA, AAHE, NAGWS, and AAPAR) have been combined into one entity. It wasn’t easy but let’s hope the new society can refocus on what’s important to public school health and physical educators, and try to capture the support of the many thousands of should-be-but-aren’t-members.

Why aren’t they? That’s the Society’s challenge going forward: Giving people a reason to join and then continue as member-supporters. All of us are sometimes guilty of letting others do the heavy lifting for us when we should get involved. It can’t continue. Has anyone not noticed the threats to cut health and physical education programs and positions? In honesty, we probably deserve what we get if we don’t support our national and state professional associations.

But being a member-supporter has a cost. It’s not much, but SHAPE America needs to come up with a membership reason-we-can’t-refuse. It’s a challenge that’s just become more personal. At the recent national convention in St. Louis, voters selected me as SHAPE America’s President Elect. My son’s response? “Remember Dad, with great power comes great responsibility!” Impressive huh? Well it was until he confessed it came from an old Spiderman movie.

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