‘PLAY IS THE WAY’ . . . TO INDEPENDENCE, SELF-MANAGEMENT and SELF-MOTIVATION Liz Hawes
EDITOR
The virtues of play have been elevated lately, as new-entrant teachers report the growing number of children arriving at school without the necessary skills for formal learning. It is well known that through play, young children make sense of their world. Researchers like Bodrova and Leong (2005) tell us that children who engage in quality play experiences are more likely to have well-developed memory skills, language development and be able to regulate their own behaviour, leading to enhanced school adjustment and academic learning. Principals recognise that for those children who arrive at school ‘play-deprived’, teachers need to respond differently. ‘Play-based learning’ has therefore become a feature of ‘new entrant culture’ in some New Zealand schools. It could easily be assumed that an initiative called ‘Play is the Way’ is such a pre-school programme. But it isn’t! Misnomer or not, ‘Play is the Way’ has quite a different purpose. Creators of the programme, Wilson & Julie McCaskill, describe ‘Play is the Way’ as a practical methodology for teaching social and emotional skills using guided play or games, classroom activities and empowering language. All three elements are essential to success. This is behaviour education, not behaviour management. It is about leading children to understand the effects of their own behaviour on others, both positive and negative. The McCaskills claim that, delivered consistently and well, ‘Play is the Way’ will develop students who are independent, self-managing and self-motivated. Wilson McCaskill has a theatrical background and had his own acting school and theatre company in Perth, Western Australia. When he became interested in exploring play as a form of social
and emotional learning his theatre became an experimental playground as he shaped his ideas. He continued to refine and structure his ideas into a workable programme and gradually schools became more and more interested. Schools were now facing challenges with students self-harming, feeling suicidal and depressed and presenting with high anxiety in ways not seen before. One standard response has been to focus on building these students’ self-esteem through positive reinforcement practices. Yet, these negative behaviours persisted. McCaskill’s ‘behaviour education’ was different and schools were searching for alternatives. McCaskill is of the view that to focus on self-esteem is to focus in the wrong place. In his book ‘Children aren’t made of china’, McCaskill says ‘The notion that teachers need to encourage children to feel good about themselves before they can be successful, is not only erroneous, its dangerous.’ He explains this practice of giving unwarranted praise as making students feel unsure of
Getting the actions in order is a challenge for the Dunedin cluster teachers
The Teachers experience the frustration of calling for the yellow ball without results!
Wilson & Julie McCaskill authors of Play of the Way find risk taking fun!
themselves and craving more and more praise in the same way as an addict craves more drugs. Instead McCaskill’s approach is to guide children to learn to master challenges and learn the social and emotional skills of cooperation, perseverance, interaction, empathy and debate. These are the things that will raise self-esteem, he says. These goals sit comfortably with school aspirations and the New Zealand Curriculum’s principles, values and key competencies. Celebrating differences, fairness, respect, kindness, belonging, participating and contributing, honesty, integrity, caring, working together, managing ourselves, owning our behaviour, being motivated and independent learners are all values commonly emblazoned on the walls of schools and classrooms from one end of the country to the other. New Zealand teachers facing a growing number of young
of five. Standing in a circle, each child had an object, such as a ball or a small wheat sack. One student was selected as the ‘marker’. On the direction of McCaskill, the children were to throw their object to the child next to them in a clockwise direction. Once the ‘marker’ had received his/her own object back, that marked the completion of a round and the marker was to call out ‘One’! McCaskill might change the direction of flow from clockwise to anti-clockwise for a round and the children were instructed that if anyone dropped an object the team would start again. The skill was to give and receive at the same time. The first team to complete five rounds was instructed to sit down and they are the winners for that game and earn five points. The second team to finish is awarded three points and the third one point. They had three games in total. The learning occurred as McCaskill interacted with the players.
Children start learning about their feelings at a young age through mapping
The Teachers didn’t get it right every time, but they could still have a laugh about it
people with challenging behaviours in their schools have been drawn to the philosophy behind ‘Play is the Way’. In an environment where funding of special needs is sparse and availability of specialist services thin on the ground, schools are seeking new approaches and McCaskill’s behaviour education is an attractive option. The end game is a complete school culture shift. McCaskill describes five ‘life rafts’ which form the basis of behaviour education. These are:
His energetic style was a hit with his subjects who responded enthusiastically. It is in this role that McCaskill’s theatre training surfaces. Not only is he enormously entertaining, he knows exactly how to win the attention of his audience and laces everything he says and does with humour. Simultaneously he misses no opportunity to hammer home his important messages. His commentary stream goes something like this: ‘Does the bag or ball ever throw itself to the floor? No! The only reason that the game goes wrong is that you make a mistake . . . you can go ‘huff ’ about it or you can make the mistake, pick up the ball and keep going. To control the mistake, don’t give into it! Mistakes are not defeat. You are defeated when you give up trying! Get over it and get on with it! Don’t give power to a mistake!’ The children tuned in and were quickly responding to McCaskill’s relentless messaging. When one team challenged that they finished before another team who were awarded the point, conflict arose. There was uncertainty about the real winner, so a compromise had to be reached. The compromise was to play that game again. However, one team leader disagreed. ‘Are you a fair person?’ McCaskill asked. ‘Yes,’ the child replied. Than say after me ‘Sam (not his real name) is a fair person!’ Sam repeated the statement. Now say, ‘My name is Sam and I will always try to do what is right.’ Sam repeated this statement too. He now had taken ownership of his own fairness and desire to do what is right. Now he found the compromise easier to accept. McCaskill had got to the motivation behind the behaviour.
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Treat others as you would like them to treat you Have reasons for the things you say and do Pursue your personal best no matter who you work with It takes great strength to be sensible Be brave – participate to progress
Debbie Smith, Principal of Musselburgh School in Dunedin, is a strong supporter of behaviour education and there is now a contingent of Dunedin schools subscribed to ‘Play is the Way’. I was delighted to accept an invitation from Debbie to observe McCaskill at work on his recent visit to Dunedin schools. First, McCaskill worked directly with classes of children, as their teachers watched. The teachers observed him interacting and modelling responses as the children engaged in a variety of games. Immediately after the session, he ran a mentoring session with the teachers, interpreting the interactions they had observed. In this way they were empowered to continue the behaviour education in their own every day interactions with the children. The first game was a team game. Children were split into teams
In this example McCaskill was again drawing on his knowledge of theatre, explaining that it is not until children hear their own voice that they know themselves. As McCaskill explains, it is all about the children taking ownership of the values, then turning them into actions or virtues consistent with the values. To achieve this, it is important to lock the values into active language. Children are encouraged to say, for example, ‘I am a kind person’ rather than ‘I like to be kind.’ ‘That way,’ says McCaskill, ‘you can say to a child, ‘why would a kind person do this [unkind] act?’ These are the messages he shares with the teachers who have been observing the children’s games. There is also a comprehensive set of resources for teachers to use in their classrooms so that the children can practice turning the values into action or into virtues. Each of the five ‘life rafts’ come in large poster form and teachers can work on one poster at a time. A set of manuals constructed for teachers outlines stages of how to develop each of the five values. McCaskill has a further cache of activity resources teachers can use from story telling to written activities and a selection of games to reinforce the messages. He demonstrates to the teachers how they can use story telling to draw out the values being taught and build moral fibre in the children through encouraging peer review of choices made through the stories. It is important that children are accountable to each other, he says. Over the day, McCaskill met with representative classes from all year groups of Musselburgh School and selected games to demonstrate all five ‘life raft’ values. It was an exhausting day for all, but a hugely rewarding one, especially for the children and teachers. Separately, he addressed an audience of parents about behavioural education emphasising how they can apply the elements of this powerful approach at home. As he explained to them, when the education is continuous and consistent it is likely to be more effective. On his final day, he ran a training session with teachers from the cluster of Dunedin schools. Not only did this session familiarise the teachers with the games themselves, but by participating, they were also able to feel the same frustrations and successes that the children feel. They could observe their own reactions and better empathise with reactions that the children have in the same situations. ‘Play is the Way’ is not a one off. McCaskill says, ‘Typically the students will participate in four twenty-minute games sessions per week for every week of the school year, for every year of primary school.’ Behaviour education is a way of life. It engenders a particular language and turns values into virtues. It is not a programme and it is not play. ‘Play is the Way’ is deep learning. It is fun and the children are pushed hard. They need to be because they are learning life skills to face a world of blended cultures, mixed expectations and a mountain of information representing varying levels of truth. As Debbie Smith says, ‘Play is the Way’ offers the children a set of morals and values to live by so that they can successfully manage their lives and become contributing citizens. To achieve success takes a whole school commitment and culture change. That’s a bit more than having a play.
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Bodrova, E. & Leong, D.J. (2005). Uniquely preschool: What research tells us about the ways young children learn. Educational Leadership, 63 (1), 44–47
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References
Kids have fun and learn water safety Water Skills for Life is the national aquatic education for students in year 1 – 8. It was developed to teach life long water safety skills and knowledge to our young people.
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Schools can decide how they teach Water Skills For Life. It is easier to teach than swimming and fun for the students to learn. To discuss teacher professional development, contact Chris Morgan at Swimming New Zealand. PD for school teachers is free. Email chris@swimming.org.nz or call on 027 240 9627. Learn more at watersafety.org.nz/forlife