Jessica Ticktin: Today on Peace Talks Radio, we discuss the world of play, why it's important for children and society.
It's reminding adults, the people who make decisions, that play is fundamental to the economic and social and environmental challenges that we need to solve.
Jessica Ticktin: Play as a tool for peace.
You're listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin, in for series producer, Paul Ingels. In March 2024, the United Nations declared June 11th the International Day of Play in response to global research showing that time, space, and opportunities to play have been declining all over the world.
Play is one of the most effective ways children learn, cope with stress, and build skills to meet life's challenges. Only one in four children play outside regularly, compared to almost three quarters of their grandparents generation, according to the organization Save the Children. On today's program, correspondent Nadine Shaker speaks with several experts in the field of play and play therapy and explores the connection between peace and play and its impact on treating trauma.
On part one of the program, Nadeen speaks with Maggie Parker, an associate professor of counseling and human development at George Washington University. She's also a registered play therapist. Then we'll hear from Tala El-Fahmawi from Playgrounds for Palestine, a nonprofit working to build playgrounds for Palestinian children.
First, Nadeen speaks to Maggie Parker about her work in play therapy.
Nadeen: Can you tell us what a play therapist does?
Maggie Parker: So, a play therapist is someone who has extensive training in child development and play therapy theory and practice and skills. And so, what we do is, just like any therapy, we are a safe space for children.
And the reason why we engage in play is because children developmentally don't have the cognitive capacity or the brain development yet to, to speak through their experiences. And so what they do is they play. And so as a play therapist, we honor the fact that toys are their words and play is their language.
And so we are meeting the children where they are developmentally as opposed to asking them to meet us where we are developmentally.
Nadeen: Do you think there is a greater need for play therapy now than in decades past?
Maggie Parker: I think that children have always experienced adversity. I don't think that is something new.
There are so many things happening in the world today that are impacting children. So it's not even simply the displacement, the war, the famine, the environmental issues that are impacting Children. It's also that they can't escape it, right? It is everywhere. It's on social media. It's on the news. It's very, it's all encompassing.
And I think that impacts. Children on multiple levels. I think that it impacts children and that parents become more protective and aren't allowing children to go out into the world and play with each other, which is how they learn how to engage in relationships, how to negotiate conflict, how to determine safety and their ability.
And so when we protect that, I think it stunts that growth. And so I think that. Not only are we experiencing high levels of conflict that unfortunately have been around for decades, if not millennia, that the ways in which children were able to cope are also being restricted in some ways. And so really the importance of having people, whether it be caregivers or teachers or mental health professionals that are trained in understanding childhood trauma, childhood emotions, and the importance of play, and how to combine those three through play therapy, the better off our children are going to be.
Nadeen: Can you tell us why play therapy is more effective than talk therapy, especially when treating children who might have experienced trauma?
When you're thinking about a child who's experienced trauma, that impacts the ways in which their brain is developing, and it creates a very large, like, stress response.
And so, what happens is, like, when you're able to talk, you are talking from the, the top part of your brain. When you are in a trauma response, like a child, you're in the brainstem. And so, you are just trying to regulate. You are trying to keep yourself. safe. It's the reptilian brain. And so when we talk to them, if they're in a crisis response, we're talking to two different parts of their brain and they can't hear us.
That's just not going to work for them. Like if you try and tell a two year old who's having a meltdown that like they can get ice cream tomorrow, it's not going to make any sense to them. You have to help regulate and calm them down and speak to those lower aspects of their brain stem. to help them co regulate.
And so allowing children, one, to utilize their natural language of play, but two, not requiring them to speak out or verbalize their trauma, but allow them to play it in a way that is safe for them. It provides an additional kind of like buffer. So they may not say my dad hit me or I had to leave my home and watch it burn.
They can play out that like a scary gorilla scared the little giraffe. And so we're able to talk and reflect the fear that the giraffe feels towards the gorilla as opposed to saying, you were really scared that this person came to your house and set it on fire. Like, that's too scary. And one of the tenets of what I do specifically in child centered play therapy, which is a theoretical approach, is Meet the child with the attitudes of, I'm here, I hear you, I understand, and I care.
And so the focus is on really trying to understand this child. And when you have a child who's experiencing a trauma response, they view other people as unsafe. And so when you don't reject them, when you don't tell them what to do, when you accept them and honor that they are protecting themselves, they're also not.
These are valid and okay behaviors and feelings. You've surprised that neurological response and so they're able to kind of rewire within that trusting relationship.
Nadeen: As a parent or as an adult, how can we recognize that a child is having a trauma response, even if it's not in relation to something major like a crisis?
What if they have a fear of, how do we recognize that and how do we respond?
Maggie Parker: I think one of the things that's really important to recognize is that An experience doesn't have to be quote unquote traumatic in our understanding of an adult's understanding it what a traumatic experience for a child is anything that overwhelms their ability to cope and so there are a couple different ways in which kids are likely to respond and it really aligns with that like fight flight freeze response that we see so sometimes they're just going to like you dissociate, right?
It's like, where'd you go, right? When they are acting out or pushing people away, that could also be a way in which they're responding. It could be in disorganized learning. All of those symptoms can be a symptom of trauma. And so it's really trying, I think as the adult, is Recognizing that children communicate through their behavior, and so it's trying to understand what emotion is underlying that behavior, like you're feeling really scared right now, you're uncomfortable, you're really frustrated, this isn't going the way you thought it would, and reflecting it back in a really calm way, because us yelling does not make them yell less.
But us calming our bodies, which can be really hard as a parent and a teacher when you have so many overwhelming needs coming at you at all times. But like when you're able to really say, okay, you're really having a hard time right now. And research has shown that even bringing your voice down to that level and like going into that deeper allows them.
Their brain to respond differently.
Nadeen: I feel like when you watch TikTok videos and they tell you how to respond and it's something very much along the lines of what you're saying. And I always keep wondering, is there a basis for this, um, in therapy or in science? And it seems that there is. How do we know it works?
Maggie Parker: I think I can tell you anecdotally and then also from the research perspective, research wise, and I'm doing a meta analysis right now on this, we've seen decreases in externalizing behaviors and internalizing behaviors, as well as, I think really importantly, increases in parental and teacher empathy towards children and reductions in stress.
So if we know that these behaviors are stressful inherently for adults, and a lot of adults view these traumatic behaviors or responses as disrespectful or out of control, to increase their empathy towards that behavior and their understanding allows for that trust to begin to develop and then those behaviors then too initially decline.
Anecdotally, I've worked with a lot of kids who've experienced trauma, lots of trauma, and I, um, I get emotional because you, it's like hard to describe, like, the way, the excitement, and to be able to have a child show you who they are inherently and wholly, and watching the light come back in their eyes.
And I don't know how to quantify that, but I get goosebumps thinking about it. It's so nice because it gives you hope, right, that kids who are once traumatized could truly heal.
Nadeen: Mm hmm. I'm wondering if you can paint a picture of how that process happens, what a play therapy session or sessions, obviously it's a long journey, typically look like, and how do you reach an end result that is positive?
Maggie Parker: Yeah, absolutely. So with and specifically again, I do child centered So it's non directive. So the child has full autonomy within the playroom Which I think is also really important for children who have been traumatized because a lot of times their autonomy is taken away from them And so they have the opportunity to choose and so every time I enter into the playroom with a child I say in here you can play with all of these toys and a lot of the ways that you would like to I'm not assuming that they're going to do something that they shouldn't do.
There are no rules, per se, that we're going over that says that I don't trust you. But it does let them know, transparency, that there are some things that are off limits. Then we allow the child to choose what it is that they want to do. And a lot of times they pick and choose and it's chaotic. And when you're working with children with trauma, a lot of times there's like a lot of throwing of the toys, right?
And if you think of toys as their words and their emotions, it makes sense that they're all just. kind of dumping everywhere. And you respond to what they're doing. Oh, you decided to play with that. Oh, you're throwing that really hard. You respond to the emotions that they are displaying either through the toys themselves in the metaphor or the child.
So you're really frustrated. You want, you're throwing that really hard or you're punching that to show how angry you are, or. That giraffe is really scared. It's gonna bury itself in the sand so it doesn't have to see. Then you're also going to, when you can, I think it's important a lot of times their self confidence and esteem of what they're capable of is reduced. And so when you can return responsibility and encourage their effort, so, you know, in here that's something you can do. And when I say that, they are able to recognize that I trust them and that they can trust themselves. And, caveat, if there's been neglect and they've been really parentified and adultified, I may take in because they, they've never had someone do something for them.
My mentor and a huge person in the field is Dr. D. Ray, and she jokes about how a child is very dysregulated in the clinic and was really having a hard time. She put her hands on them and they kicked her and she was like, you didn't want me to touch you. That's a very different response from any other adult who'd be like, ah, don't kick me, right?
Because it's understanding. Hey, I invaded your space. You didn't choose for that, um, and that is a natural response for a child who has experienced trauma. And so recognizing like, oh, I made that mistake. You didn't like it when I did that. That made you feel uncomfortable, which then models that it's okay that you can make mistakes, that you can acknowledge those mistakes, and that As an adult, I am a safe person because I will recognize when I have made a mistake when so often others don't.
Nadeen: I'm learning so much just by talking to you.
Maggie Parker: Really?
Nadeen: I'm pretty sure a lot of moms and pops are gonna love this. But on a, on a project level, can you give us examples of stories from the field where play was integrated in psychosocial support interventions in conflict or crisis settings? And what were the outcomes of that on students?
Maggie Parker: Sure. Kate Anderson is a doctoral student at GW. She partnered up with also a colleague of mine from graduate school, Dr. Deborah Jambo, who lives in Uganda and is a play therapist. So there's a branch of Child Centered Play Therapy that teaches parents how to be the therapeutic agent. So, it is a 10 week, 2 hour group kind of therapy.
Therapy supervision education session where a play therapist teaches caregivers how to respond therapeutically to their children, and then they have seven 30 minute sessions where they act as the play therapist. What Kate and Deborah, Dr. Ojambo helped with is they adapted this to meet the needs of Tanzanian and Ugandan refugee and host families.
And what they saw, I think, one of the most impactful results that I've seen that this has not been studied before, was a reduce in domestic violence. And I don't know the statistics. I don't know if it was like statistically significant. It was just reported back like that this was something that happened.
And I think that's huge.
Nadeen: No, it's amazing that one of the impacts was reducing domestic violence, even if it's anecdotally and really relates to the mission of the show, which is. It's promoting peace and how certain acts of love and labor and all that eventually diffuse conflict and lead to peace. How can play therapy help promote more peace in children, families, and societies?
Maggie Parker: Absolutely. I really think that when we are able, through play therapy, to value and understand a child for who they are, we as the adult become more in tune with it. More attached, more aware. The child feels more in tuned, more valued. It enhances that relationship, and it allows humans to hear each other and value each other as opposed to react or respond to each other.
And I think that in our society at large, and it's very hard to try and understand someone else, and their complexity and their beauty and their value. And so when you are teaching adults how to do that, then you're also able to create a generation that understands their emotional responses, that can speak to their emotional responses, that can enter into relationships and share their perspectives while understanding someone else.
And then the adults are able to understand others, right. So like when I learned about play therapy, it transformed my life, not just because of how I understood children, but how I understood other people in relationship. And I think one of the tenets of being a play therapist and a child centered play therapist is that I show up authentically, that I'm genuine, that I'm empathic.
And when I take those spaces, not everybody, like not all my students love that, and that's okay. But when I show up as my true self and don't try and hide it, that means someone else can show up as their true self too. And I think that those are the type of relationships that we need to have in a world of polarization and conflict.
Jessica Ticktin: That was correspondent Nadine Shaker speaking with Maggie Parker, a play therapist and associate professor of counseling and human development at George Washington University. You're listening to Peace Talks Radio, and today we're talking about the importance of play as a tool for peace. At any one time in recent years, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights has been monitoring over a hundred ongoing armed conflicts around the world.
At the time of this recording, such conflicts were ongoing in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe and the Middle East. Like thousands of children and families around the world caught in conflict zones, kids in Gaza lacked many basic needs, including safe places to play. For our program here, Nadine spoke with Tala El -Fahmawi, a board member of the organization Playgrounds for Palestine, a U.S. based nonprofit established in 2001 that was trying to make a difference for children there who were facing the kind of severe trauma that many children in war torn regions around the globe also face. How to bring play back into those places.
Nadeen: Can you tell us more about the playgrounds that you've built in Palestine?
Tala El-Fahmawi: The playgrounds, um, some of them exist on schools. The land that they're built on is always donated, and we do our best to put them in an area where many children have access to them. We prioritize having equal playtime for boys and girls, and we just want to get the most joy for children in Palestine through our projects.
Um, We not only have built playgrounds, but responded to different situations that Palestinian children experience, for example, during the pandemic and during the lockdown, uh, we provided direct aid to families who have lost their incomes and, uh, take away games and, and toys for kids that they could play with at home during the lockdown.
And with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we've given direct aid to new mothers. Opened a soup kitchen, distributed essential aid, in addition to the activities that are core to our foundation, such as kite flying activities for kids, and we've brought entertainers and clowns and Hakawatties to kids to make them laugh and give them a small semblance of normalcy and joy.
Nadeen: So I've read on your website that Playgrounds for Palestine was established to uphold children's right to play. How are children in Palestine denied this right and how do building these playgrounds along with the other programs you mentioned affirm the right to play for them?
Tala: Yeah, so as you mentioned, um, under the U.N. Conventions for the Rights of the Child, Article 31 is the right to play. And Palestinian children are not only denied the right to play, they are denied the right to a safe and joyful childhood. I know the plight of children in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, has become more visible, but the violence against children and the destruction of a normal childhood that Palestinian children have experienced has gone on for decades, since the occupation.
For example, children in the West Bank, it is not a question of when they will be brutalized by the occupation forces, but how many times and when. Children will go to school and have empty seats next to them or for their friends whose lives were taken through settler violence and occupation violence.
So not only are children in Palestine not allowed to play, they are not allowed to experience it. a normal childhood at every level and every capacity.
I remember personally when I visited Palestine, there were clearly designated beautiful playgrounds that Palestinian children could see but were not allowed to access under the system of apartheid.
And the playgrounds that did exist for them were often rusted, unsafe, and rather small. So what we do is try to create these community spaces that are maintained, that are cleaned, that are really available and open for these children to exist and be kids.
Nadeen: One thing you said captured my attention. You said, like, playgrounds are segregated in Palestine, so they might see the playground but not be able to access it.Am I right?
Tala: It is not unlike almost every aspect of their lives. They will see flowing pools of water, yet their tank would be empty. So it is a long, similar to, like I said, every aspect of their life. They see things that they do not have access to. So are there specific stories you can share about the impact of play on children from, you know, your experiences, your projects?
So one intervention that I thought was specifically powerful was we had Hekawetis. So if you're not familiar with what Hekawetis are, they're traditional Palestinian storytellers and entertainers. Um, and we sponsored a few to visit children who were recovering from war injuries in hospitals. And that chance to laugh and smile through the pain, you can't imagine how powerful it is.
One project in specific that I feel has been so incredibly impactful during this time is the Phoenix School. So we've set up a school that serves approximately 120 children, grades 1 through 5, where kids come together to learn together in English and Arabic, to sing together, to play together, to read together, and returning just a second.
Small semblance of normalcy to their life has just been so powerful. My kids were interviewed and they talked about what they wanted to be when they grow up, their hopes, their fears. And we're really proud of that work. And you can see from the smiles on their faces, how powerful and impactful it has been.
Nadeen: Do you remember some of the things the children said when they talked about their hopes and dreams of the future?
Tala: It ranged from some of the most basic and simple things like I want to go to school and play with my friends and stop being like stop feeling this fear to I want to grow up and be a doctor and treat all the people that were affected in my community.
A lot of little boys to dream of playing soccer safely with their friends. So they are children and the responses are what you would expect of children. So you've ramped up your efforts in Gaza by opening the school there, like you said, holding kite flying events and. Hakaweti events and establishing a childhood intervention program in Khan Younis.
Nadeen: Can you tell us a little about these projects and why you chose to pursue them now?
Tala: Yeah, so these are all community based endeavors, like the people who are on the ground serving the children sponsored through us are members of their community. There are people who have experienced the trauma alongside them who are able to genuinely connect and empathize with these children at a level that no one else on earth can.
And like I said, all of our interventions are grounded in the belief and the desire to protect Palestinian children and their right to the joy and their right to play into like a safe and happy childhood. So these interventions are what we view the most minimal recognition of their humanity. And on the greater scale of things, they seem rather small when you think about the broader context of their experiences, but even though they are small, the simple act of.
Singing and dancing and holding hands in a circle and playing and learning together, which is what our interventions are, right? They're all play based interventions and they give children an avenue to talk about their fear, process their big emotions, and to be with each other as children. And we found that to be, like I said, although small in the context of everything, to be really impactful.
Nadeen: What are your personal hopes for what children in Gaza are experiencing right now, and also the children of the world, how can we make this a better place for them?
Tala: Like I said, I'm a mother, I have three kids, and I cannot help but look at their faces and see the faces of all Palestinian children. and all children of the world.
My children are Palestinian children, but the circumstances of their birth has determined whether they will be safe, happy, and healthy. And that's not fair. All children who come into the world should have an equal access to opportunities to learn, to live, to eat, to love, to play. And I think if we build a world where we recognize the humanity of everybody in it and the rights of everybody in it, regardless of their religion and their ethnicity and their social status.
And then we can create a space where the circumstances of somebody's birth does not determine their outcomes and their happiness and their access to safety and joy.
Nadeen: That was Tala El-Fahmawi, board member of Playgrounds for Palestine. Working on this episode, It opened my eyes to how I can be a better adult and parent to my three year old son. I've learned that play has superpowers, like the power to help our children learn, to connect with others, to grow emotionally, and even heal from traumas they may have.
Imagine what kind of future that can unlock if all children's right to play was truly guaranteed, and if we simply understood and dealt with them better. What we need to remember the most is to honor and respect the primary language of children, and that is play.
Jessica Ticktin: That was Nadine Shaker speaking with Tala El- Fahmawi, a U.S. based educator and board member of Playgrounds for Palestine. Earlier, we heard Nadine's conversation with Maggie Parker, a play therapist and associate professor of counseling and human development at George Washington University. You can find links to this program on our website, peacetalksradio. com.
In part two of our program coming up, we'll learn more about how play based learning builds critical skills like confidence, collaboration, and problem solving. You can find both parts of this program at our website, peacetalksradio. com. Look for season 23, episode two. You'll also find all the programs in our series dating back to 2002, and you can sign up for our podcast, drop us a line, tell us what you liked or learned from one of our programs and make a donation to keep this program going into the future, all at peacetalksradio.
com. Help. If you can for correspondent Nadeen Shaker, I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks for listening to, and for supporting peace talks radio. More after this break.
(Music break)
Jessica Ticktin: Today on peace talks radio, we discuss the world of play,
But by, you know, empowering a generation of learners with empathy and collaboration and problem solving skills. Now it's going to build a better future that we all want to live in
Jessica Ticktin: Creating more peace through play.
You're listening to peace talks radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin in for series producer, Paul Ingles. This is part two of our program on Play for Peace. In part one, we learned that beyond its obvious benefits in learning, play can be used in therapy to further address childhood trauma and developmental issues.
In 2024, the United Nations declared June 11th the International Day of Play to raise awareness of the declining opportunities and space for children to play. Today, we hear Jennifer Slawich, Director of Stakeholder Engagement at Right to Play. And later, Nadine will speak with Ellen Fesseha, a play specialist and instructor with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto, who talks about the role of play based learning in classrooms.
Nadeen: It started with a call to action, sounded by a dedicated network of global organizations, play experts, and children themselves. And what they asked for was for the world to recognize the importance of play.
(Clip of little girl’s voice from Right to Play)
Play isn't just about having fun. It's a really important part of our lives. Play helps us be our best.
It helps us to stay healthy and feel good inside and out. It helps us to learn stuff and get creative. It helps us to fix problems. Because play is really important and a central component of children's learning and well being. But we as adults seem to have forgotten about it. We want adults to remember that play connects us all.
It brings us together and helps us understand each other better. It makes us stronger, teaches us how to be a team, and helps us discover our hidden talents.
Nadeen: So organizations came together and campaigned for an international day of play, and they were successful. On March 25th, 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that June 11th of every year would be an international day of play.
I talked to Jennifer Slawich. The organization she works for, Right to Play, was a founding member of the global coalition leading the campaign calling for a Children's Day of Play. I asked her how exactly that day came about.
Jennifer Slawich: So we came together with this coalition of like minded partners. We engaged with a group of UN member states who were play champions in their own right that were willing to table a resolution at the UN General Assembly that stated very clearly that children have a right to play and dedicating a day that we could draw attention, focus, uh, have a conversation about the importance of play every day.
Nadeen: You were, we were able to successfully secure that day at the United Nations General Assembly this spring and did celebrate the first ever International Day of Play on June 11th. So in what way is this global day helping to raise awareness and attention for children's play?
Jennifer: So of course this was a big priority focus for Right to Play.
We had events and activations across all of our national offices and country offices. And that looks different in every context, even just having play days in education districts where we work in Tanzania, for example, where we would work with school officials and just have a day where kids could just play all day, just play.
Put aside the responsibility of sitting in a classroom and, and going to school and just have fun and connect with each other and, and play. But that also looked like really high level engagements where we were hosting learning events with donors and ministers of education to really demonstrate to them the importance of integrating play into their policies and programs, particularly in the education space.
And facilitating that dialogue and working with decision makers to say, you know, as you're building out your education strategies, as you're thinking about how you want to invest money into education system, let's make sure that play is part of that structure as well.
Nadeen: Children's ability to play has been severely impacted.Over the past decades, the figures speak for themselves. According to the Children and Youth Advisory Group's call to action, only 27 percent of children play outside their homes today, compared to 71 percent in our parents and grandparents generation. UNICEF reported in 2021 that 160 million kids were victims of child labor worldwide.
Aside from that, children have simply lost the time and the spaces to play.
Jennifer: It is an incredibly difficult time to be a child in terms of children's Ability to play. I would say that the time, the space, the opportunity in terms of being able to access safe play spaces is declining. We see that particularly in, in contexts where children are being impacted by wars or conflict or climate induced events, poverty, gender based violence, all of these things make it, it, more difficult for children to just be kids and be outside and explore.
Parents are more fearful of letting their children out to play. Those are some of the more extreme examples. So on a sort of day to day basis, there's also been a bit of a swing toward Children focusing more on their academics and being in their homes, studying and doing homework and really prioritizing academic success over everything else.
And of course, those goals are critically important, but I think what We're trying to, what we try to emphasize is that play and academic success and play and social emotional success and building those positive relationships with others are intrinsically connected. And so we're trying to push back against this narrative that play is frivolous, that play doesn't have a value in other aspects of children's lives.
And we Do that through the power of play.
Nadeen: You use the phrase power of play. And I think that's very important because you've made this direct connection between play and learning, but also emotional well being. Are there other ways that play, you know, affects children or is important for them? I mean, play, play can unlock possibilities in every aspect of children's lives.
It's their natural language. It's how they make sense of the world. And children's right to play, it's enshrined in the U. N. Convention of the Rights of the Child. And the reason why it is so important is because it helps with their physical development and physical health. Those sort of gross and fine motor skills and milestones that we want children to reach, you know, have a healthy, active lifestyle, running around, burning off energy, releasing endorphins and sort of mitigating stress really helps with physical development.
Play is a way for children to collaborate with. their peers. Having games or coming up with creative ideas, it forces children to build teams and accept influence from others and sort of work out problems in a collaborative way. And again, play is really important to learning. Um, children who are engaged by their teachers in a positive and playful way will have much better academic success than children who are exposed to more rote styles of learning.
It just unlocks possibilities in all sorts of different directions.
Nadeen: So for children who grew up in more disruptive environments, like conflict, war zones, you mentioned poverty, displacement, how does play help them overcome trauma?
Jennifer: Yes, so this is very much grounded in neuroscience, and I am, I'm not going to pretend that I am a neuroscientist, but what I can tell you is that the brain is a very, it's a very complex organism, and it has different layers that we access, depending on what's going on in our external environment.
And when children are experience adversity, whether that be poverty or in extreme cases where they're experiencing or witnessing violence, they get locked in that really basic level of their brain, their amygdala, which is just. The pure fight or flight response. Am I safe? Are my basic needs being met?
Yes or no? If they get stuck in that layer of their brain, they can't access those higher level functions like connection with others, emotional regulation, and then the highest level of the brain, learning. And so, what we're seeing in our work as an organization that supports children's learning and psychosocial well being, if we want to get children back on that path to learning, we have to address that first basic need, which is safety and mental health and well being.
Nadeen: You mentioned that play based psychosocial support is built into your programs. Can you give us some examples of Those programs, how successful they are and how effective that method is.
Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. So for example, back in 2022, uh, Pakistan, where we work experience, you know, the worst flooding in the country's history and more than 8 million people were displaced as a result of that flooding.
27, 000 schools were damaged and destroyed by that flood. Devastating impacts on our own communities and on our own children in particular. And so what we did is we mobilized our network of right to play train teachers, volunteers, coaches, to offer play based psychosocial supports to those children in the regions where we work in Pakistan and just.
Giving them a safe space where they could cope with that stress and that anxiety that they were feeling, the uncertainty that they were facing about the future, and, and again, using play as a way to engage with children because art therapy, music, drama, or again, just Playing a game where children are running around burning off energy and releasing stress is a way for them to get, again, centered in their bodies to really process feelings that they might not be able to express in words the same way an adult would be able to process an experience.
Nadeen: Jennifer Slavich is Right to Play's Director of Policy and Stakeholder Engagement. Her organization has been working to protect, educate, and empower children using the power of play for over 25 years. And yet, the world is just waking up to this message now. So I asked her, why has play been ignored for so long?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think because the play is generally seen as something that's frivolous. That's something that children do after their chores are done, after their homework is done. We see it in the inverse way, that play is the avenue for academic success. If you can make things more playful for children, it helps to build that sort of intrinsic motivation and gives them the skills they need to problem solve and have resiliency and grit and all of these things that we want children to have.
And it's just reminding adults, the people who make decisions, whether it's parents or teachers or politicians, that play is fundamental to the economic and social and environmental challenges that we need to solve. We may not see that right away, but by, you know, empowering a generation of learners with empathy and collaboration and problem solving skills now, it's going to build a better future that we all want to live in.
And play is a really important avenue for that.
Nadeen: So a lot of parents are really busy and they're overwhelmed trying to struggle, you know, childcare, work, taking care of their own wellness. How can they promote more play in their children's lives without feeling like it's an added burden to their schedules?
Jennifer: That's such a great question. And I'm a parent myself. I really appreciate the demands of it that, you know, being a parent is and having a full time job and other responsibilities that we take on in our lives. Children don't need a lot of dedicated playtime with a trusted adult. Even 10 to 15 minutes of putting down your phone, sitting down on the floor with your child, playing a game, letting them lead that play, is going to help strengthen that bond.
Between a parent and a child, and that's going to have really positive impacts on other aspects of your life. If you've got that really secure and positive bond with your child, that's going to make things easier for you in your day when you're trying to rush them out the door or get them to do their homework.
If they feel safe and comfortable in that bond with you, then it's going to make those other tasks a lot easier. So I would really encourage parents to prioritize. Again, it doesn't have to be lengthy, even 10 to 15 minutes of that dedicated playtime is really going to help secure that relationship and that bond in other areas, and maybe feel like it eliminates a little bit of stress in some of those other areas of your life.
Nadeen: So ultimately, why should governments and institutions invest in play?
Jennifer: We have this shared set of goals, which is around we want children to have academic success. We want to be resilient. We want them to problem solve. So if we're looking at how can we build education systems, for example, in a way that supports children's needs.
We need to be building play into that as well, to be able to effectively deliver play in the classroom. A lot of teachers, maybe they don't feel comfortable bringing play into the classroom. They've been trained in a certain way, they feel comfortable delivering their lessons in a certain way, and introducing play based learning is something different for them.
So we need to be able to invest in that training, and not just a one time training, but opportunities for continuous professional development for teachers, so that they can develop those skills and competencies to bring play into the classroom.
Nadeen: My last question. One of the statements that the UN made was that play is considered important because it promotes tolerance, resilience, conflict prevention, and peace building. How do you think that play can create more peace in the world?
Jennifer: If we're looking at an education system and how we support children in a three year education system, we want them to develop those really important literacy and numeracy skills. We also want them to develop social emotional competencies.
And how do we define that? It's showing empathy for others. It's collaborating and working as a team. It's respect for diversity, whether that's the community group that you are a member of or, you know, diversity of opinions and approaches and how do we come together to solve problems. It's about solving conflicts without violence.
And having those really important communication skills and emotional regulation skills where you can react to a situation more thoughtfully as opposed to aggressively. These are skills that need to be cultivated and we need to start doing that at a very early age. From zero to five, zero to eight.
These are really critical windows of child development and where a lot of these skills can be really solidified. And if we can raise a generation of children who know how to work with others that can center themselves and not react violently over time, this is going to help us to create a more peaceful society and the type of society that we want to live in.
Jessica Ticktin: You're listening to peace talks radio. I'm Jessica Ticktin in for series producer, Paul Ingalls. You just heard correspondent Nadeen Shaker interview Jennifer Slawich, Director of Policy and Stakeholder Engagement at Right2Play. We heard Jennifer highlight the value of investing in a play based education, and she also talked about the importance of training teachers how to incorporate play into their teaching.
What toolkit would teachers need to use to bring play into their classrooms? Well, Nadeen posed those questions to Ellen Fesseha. Ellen is a play specialist and instructor with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her work has enabled her to sit in on classrooms in Canada and all over the world.
She's interested in understanding how teachers conceptualize play based learning and how that does or does not translate to instruction. But first, Nadine asks Ellen, what exactly is a play specialist?
Ellen Fesseha: It's a very funny title to have. It often gets a chuckle. But essentially, as a play specialist, my job is to help people understand how they can use play as a tool for learning.
So, how we can intentionally integrate learning into the context of play to support kids learning and development through this developmentally appropriate and maybe even more importantly, fun way of engaging. In my work, I use the continuum framework to explore and communicate how to use play based learning.
Miscontinuum comes from Dr. Angela Pyle's lab at the University of Toronto, but other organizations, other universities, even governments all over the world, but also here in Canada and different provinces use this type of framework that essentially is a tool to help teachers understand different types of play based learning that focus on this locus of control.
So who is leading the play? Is it the adult? A teacher, a parent, a junior leader, somebody, something like that, or is it the child? And on one end you have things like games and different structured activities, that would be the teacher directed end. On the opposite side you have child directed play, which is like free play, can be unstructured.
that kind of thing. And in the middle, you have this sort of sweet spot, which is called guided play. And this is where it's mutually directed play where adults and children share the locus of control and adults are stepping into the context of play to support kids learning in different ways. And they're finding authentic ways to support kids learning and intentionally integrate to like curricular expectations or learning goals, things like that.
So we use that kind of approach.
Nadeen: And so is it the case that the adult would wait for the right moment to intervene with guided play? Or how does it work in that framework? Because you mentioned control and finding the right opportunity to do that.
Ellen: There is this one classroom that I was in, this kindergarten classroom.
There was this It's an activity where kids were exploring skin color through paint. And so there was a bunch of different paint on the table. And this one child was having some challenges with kind of the social interaction in the context of play. He didn't really want to share things, he was getting a bit frustrated, and he was, Trying to take all the paint and so the teacher pulled him aside and said you have more paint do you want to come with me to refill this and When they went over to the counter what ended up happening is this really beautiful guided play opportunity where the teacher Just let the child pour the paint in and he wanted to grab Gold colored paint, which wasn't necessarily the color palette for that activity, but she let it happen.
She let him mix all these different colors and she asked him about what was happening to the color changing. She offered provocations. Oh, what would happen if we added this one? And it really, it turned one quick, let's go get some more materials and you can go back to the activity into something that was so much deeper and so much richer and offered learning opportunities that were well beyond and what was even happening at that center.
Nadeen: Joining me is play specialist, Ellen Fesseha. In your research, you've gone into many kindergarten classrooms to observe how children learn through play and also how teachers teach through play. What have been some of your main observations?
Ellen: I think in terms of a lot of what I do in my research focuses on teacher perspectives of play based learning.
So how they are conceptualizing play and then how that kind of relates to what they end up doing in the classroom. And what we see typically is this disconnect between what they think and what they do. There's a lot of support for play based learning. Teachers really So, um, I do often say, on the whole, it's of course not everybody, but on the whole, a lot of teachers, kindergarten teachers in particular, say they understand the value of play based learning, and they want to use it, and they try to use it, but then when you observe their practice, you know, there's a tendency to fall into sort of teacher directed strategies for teaching.
For example, withdrawal is something we see a lot, where there will be play happening in the classroom, but it will typically be free play, and the teacher will be pulling kids out of the play. In a small group structure activity directly teach skills and then send them back to play. So it's not in every classroom, but we do often see this happening where there's this dichotomy between play and learning.
Nadeen: What are some of the best practices educators can take into the classroom to make sure they're giving children a play based education?
Ellen: One of the things that's really core to play based learning is offering space for kids to practice agency. Releasing control in different ways, if you're not used to play based learning, then starting really small by, for example, offering a variety of materials like a preselected variety of materials and saying, you can pick from this, which one you want to choose. All the way up to maybe using an inquiry based approach that is, is wholly co created with kids and kind of starts with their own curiosity. And then you as the educator finding a curriculum connection to offer that learning in an intentional way. But just starting small with the releasing control and finding ways to collaborate with your students to co create learning opportunities.
And then just trying to find ways to practice all the different types. use games, offer small periods of time for just free play. It's just freely exploring different materials without any expectation. That's also a really good self regulation strategy, letting kids explore material first. So they understand what it is, how to use it because then when you move into a lesson with that particular material, they know what it is they're left, they're able to kind of engage and focus more in on what you're asking them to do rather than being distracted or overstimulated by new materials.
Nadeen: It's really cool. My son's preschool has what they call play exploration time and they have different stations and the kids can freely choose what to do. And in the beginning when they told me that I was like, he's just not going to do anything because he needs to be like directed to play. But then I see photos of him actually trying it out. And he ends up trying everything in the room, slowly approaching, but yeah, yeah, but he doesn't.
Ellen: And then I would say, why not do that all the way up to sixth grade? Right? Why doesn't that actually work in a junior high school classroom or even a high school classroom? Just letting kids to, from three to 17, move around a room and just explore materials. Why not offer those opportunities across the board? Because every kid Up to teenager is up to adult even adults want to play if given the opportunity.
Nadeen: I like that. So, we've talked about how play is one of the foundations of education and Ontario curriculum has adopted play based learning in the kindergarten stage if governments adopt this way? And if the world adopts this way, what would the world look like?
Ellen: For one thing, there are governments around the world that are adopting it.
So many in the global north and in Scandinavian or Nordic countries, definitely. But if we're talking about, for example, the African continent, it is, It's adopted. It has been adopted by ministries of education in places like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana. There are many countries that have adopted it that understand the value of play based learning.
So it is certainly not something that we in the global north or just in Ontario can say, Oh, we're the only ones that are doing this or that understand and see the value. There was one. One lesson that I observed in Rwanda, and it was a lesson that was exploring multiplication by two times tables, and they were playing this bottle cap activity.
What they were doing was throwing dice. And they had to count the numbers on the two dice and then multiply that number by two and represent it on a piece of paper. And so they were all taking turns filling different roles. One was a dice thrower, one person was a bottle cap placer. The way that these kids And I think the kids were so deeply engaged and just the joy that I could see on their faces as they were playing through this game was just so inspiring in terms of wanting to get play out there to all these different classrooms and to help teachers use it in different ways, but I guess big picture, what would come out of global approach to play and for kids learning?
I think happy. Healthy kids that are learning in spaces that have been made not only for them, but with them and who turn into adults who are extremely skillful and who are open to flexible ways of doing things.
Jessica: That was correspondent Nadine Shaker in conversation with Ellen Fesseha. Earlier, you heard her interview with Jennifer Slawich.
For more information about how to incorporate play into your daily life with your kids, or how to help support the right to play movement, go to peacetalksradio. com and find the links to all the resources mentioned in this program. You can also find photos and bios for all our guests and listen to all the programs in our series dating back to 2002.
You can sign up for our podcast and make a donation to keep this program going into the future. All at peacetalksradio. com. Support comes from listeners like you. Also the McCune Charitable Foundation and the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund. Support too from KUNM at the University of New Mexico.
Nola Daves Moses is our executive director. Addy Adelman composed and performs our theme music. For co founders Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder, I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks so much for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
