My impulse, when I think of play, is to keep my definition wide and vague. In their book, Sparks of Genius, Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein take an entire chapter to lay out their thoughts about play, including anecdotes from across the breadth of human experience (2001). I’m inclined to define play as “a thing people do” and leave it there. However, there are some clear benefits to play: it helps us learn. It gives us safe ways to experiment with new ideas. It allows us to test rules. It’s fun (hopefully). So, potentially, I might define play as “an important thing people do.” I might go so far as to define play as “an important thing people do as a part of living life.”
Along with this wide definition of play, I try to use a wide definition of game as well. I like to think that a game is a form of play, involving rules, ending in a result. With this definition, a lot of things can become games! I can make mundane daily tasks into games just by adding a rule and celebrating a result. I think this strategy of “game-ifying” tasks can be used with older students to create environments better for collaboration and engagement. I know gamification is already a “thing” in education, and I’m all for it—I just think the definition of “game” there is too limiting. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a video game or a card game, or a game intended to teach core subject matter. When I was a young adult and had trouble making eye contact, I treated my body language as a game: the rules were to make eye contact and use active listening body language for as long as possible in every conversation I could throughout the day. The result was a little mini party in my head, no matter what, because as long as I tried, I was meeting the requirements! If I failed and couldn’t make eye contact, that was okay. I could try again the next round. I think giving older students this kind of playful framework could help students build their willingness to take risks and to learn from failure! I think playing daily helps build a positive foundation to life. Older students may be reluctant to do “little kid things” like playing icebreaker games, or playing group games. Reframing games as activities with rules that have results could help teens begin to feel more comfortable with playing out loud.
I like practice play because often it starts with a daydream. I hope to bring practice play in my classroom through creative brainstorming games, like free association, one-word-at-a-time group brainstorming, speed idea iteration. Maybe also I could bring practice play into my teaching through material exploration: how many ways can you draw with a marker? How far can you pull a piece of silly putty before it breaks? How fast can you make paint dry?
Symbolic play is a neat one for me because I come from the theatre world, and theatre is all about symbolic play. Acting is one big complex game. I also like naming things, or sticking googly eyes on stuff, or just drawing eyeballs on my tools. Just making some new friends (who happen to be inanimate) can be really fun! And it can help you learn to empathize with things outside of yourself.
I think from the above paragraphs it’s pretty easy to tell game playing is my jam. I love a good game. I hope to bring gameplay (especially collaborative gameplay) into my classroom early and often, and in many different forms! I think artmaking games are particularly exciting, and I really want to see what a group of kids armed with some rules and materials could make together when they play.
I loved seeing the kids at Double Helix play as they made their dream room collages! Many kids began constructing stories as they collaged their rooms together. I was particularly struck by one student who layered small squares of foam together to make legs for a bed that elevated right off the page. A few other students applied images of animals to their collages and told stories about the “pets” they added to their rooms. I think the fact that my group chose to give no requirements for what must be included in their collages allowed the students to freely explore their own concepts of a dream room, and begin to build narratives around their collages. I hope to continue building experiences like this, that allow for choice and play during artmaking.
Just one last thing—writing this post reminded me of a favorite Twitter account I follow called @each_wordsquare, which posts grids of letters which make the same words left to right and top to bottom. I love following playful little Twitter accounts like this one!
Root-Bernstein, R. S., & Root-Bernstein, M. M. (2001). Play. In Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (Early ed., pp. 246–268). Mariner Books.