by Lisa K. Forbes
Someone recently asked me: “What makes you a different kind of learner?” Upon reflection, I told them that I am a different kind of learner because I am a neurodiverse and disabled learner. As a student, I struggled throughout my schooling. I experienced a rigid education system that valued only certain forms of intelligence and this led me to believe I wasn’t smart, nor that I could achieve. But, what makes me a disabled learner also makes me an effective professor. My educational journey instilled a desire to provide a different kind of learning experience for all students, not just those who, like me, feel devalued by education. It turns out, my experience as a disabled learner is one of my greatest assets, and is something that now informs my approach as an educator.
Because my history as a learner was something that gave me stomach aches, I always begin with the intention of making my class enjoyable. I believe the learning environment is most effective when students are provided opportunities to become engaged, encouraged to be passionate, and believe they are a valuable member of the learning community. I have always been interested in getting people connected, engaged, and co-creating knowledge. I want all the humans in the classroom to be invested in the learning process – not just the “knowledgeable instructor” instilling wisdom into passive and empty vessels. To be sure, I have content expertise in my discipline that needs to be taught, but I believe every student in the classroom, through their own lived experience, is also a content expert. And, when given an opportunity to share, each student can become a teacher to the rest of us.
Knowing how a rigid schooling system impacted me, I approach my own teaching with a desire to find a better way to teach and to make learning an empowering endeavor. This mindset led me to explore how the idea of play can be incorporated into the learning process. A playful pedagogy is often dismissed because the term “play” is typically associated with small children. Common misperceptions of play are that it’s trivial, childish, and having no place in academia. But research dispels these beliefs and it turns out that play is an effective strategy for many facets of adult life, including learning. Knowing this, I incorporate play into my teaching in several ways:
Play as a mindset and a way of being. Embodying playfulness is about finding congruence within myself, being genuine, and simply not taking myself so seriously. For me to be playful, I must also be authentic and vulnerable. Coming out from behind my pedagogical theories and teaching tools and showing up as a human, is perhaps one of the most vital aspects of my teaching – one that creates connection, trust, and belonging. I cannot ask my students to be vulnerable (i.e., try something new, be creative, risk making a mistake, be open, etc.) unless I am also willing to model those things.
My discipline is mental health counseling and in my field, it is understood that the therapeutic relationship is the most important and powerful factor to effective therapy. That is, the strength of the therapeutic alliance largely determines the quality of the counseling experience for the client. It is through the relationship that the therapeutic theories and interventions come alive. In the classroom I see the same importance in the student-faculty relationship because from the safety of those relationships, students are freer to openly communicate, take risks, make mistakes, and engage in the learning process. The stronger the teacher-student relationship, the more robust the investment into the learning process. The exact ingredients necessary to instill intrinsically motivated learners. When I embody a spirit of playfulness, I increase my ability to establish a strong relationship with my students.
Play as an activity. Play by its nature is hands-on and interactive leading to authentic engagement and opportunities to think critically. Play in adult education is generally unexpected, so it generates excitement, surprise, and novelty. Play activities create a dynamic classroom where students are pushed beyond their comfort zones and encouraged to think about concepts differently. Generally in higher education, students experience a series of Powerpoint lectures, typical small group discussions, and occasionally other interventions such as video demonstrations. However, small, playful adjustments to commonly used activities can invigorate a classroom. Instead of distributing a simple handout and a lecture of what it is and why it’s useful, I can create a blank outline of the handout and design a game with teams, a timer, and a prize to make the content come alive leading to critical thinking, more engaged students, and more memorable learning. Instead of a typical case study, commonly used in counseling training programs, play helps me create a more dynamic type of case study involving a client that is a giraffe. I begin by reading the children’s book Giraffes Can’t Dance (a story of Gerald the giraffe that is different and gets made fun of and experiences sadness and low self-esteem). After the story, I give the students Gerald the giraffe’s client profile that I have constructed from real facts about giraffes, turning the facts into presenting problems requiring counseling services. Not only is this more fun and novel but also by making the client an animal, it removes a certain level of pressure from the student to “get it right.” Because no one has ever counseled a giraffe, students are freer to think outside of the box and become creative as they apply their theoretical orientations and interventions to treating this “client.”
Play as a philosophy. Play is not just for fun. It can also be about playing with the status quo of traditional learning to be more flexible and inclusive. It can be playing with ideas and current realities or approaches to break and remake learning into something new and innovative. I play with traditional viewpoints on grading and align more with elements of the “ungrading” philosophy. Letter grades hold no intrinsic meaning to students regarding their future careers and lessen students’ desire to learn through mistakes and feedback. Letter grades simply create unnecessary anxiety and a sense of robotically jumping through hoops which both are counterproductive to learning. Instead, I serving as a reader to their work to provide my insights, concerns, and wonderings as a part of an ongoing process of iteration with the goal of deepening their learning – not simply to earn a grade. My goal is for all students to earn an “A” in my courses. This represents my belief that through clear expectations, consistent and frequent feedback, as well as opportunities for students to revise and resubmit their work to apply my feedback, they learn more in the process. My approach to grading is constantly evolving but it’s one way to play with the rigid confines of evaluation which I view as being counter to deep learning.
I question why we do what we do in academia to examine how our norms might hold us back. Because even for people who are adept at coloring outside of the lines, there still exists a strong pull back to the mean. I know I fall victim to this. With this said, however strong the trap of the status quo may be, I believe for education to be most effective, teachers must try to escape it. Much like a fish doesn’t realize the water it swims in until it jumps into the air chasing a fly, teachers often don’t realize the pedagogical water they swim in until something provokes them to jump. The incorporation of play in learning has been a fly for me to chase. It has kept me vigilant to the ways I could become complacent and it fuels me to pursue finding a better way.
The playvolution. This playful pedagogy has become a personal manifesto for a different kind of education which I call “the Playvolution.” The Playvolution is a powerful lens that helps me reimagine what higher education can be by shifting the boundaries of teaching and learning. The Playvolution encourages me to examine the status quos and ask, for example, if a lecture-based modality of learning is always the best pedagogical strategy, and to explore other ways of teaching. The Playvolution inspires me to play with my instruction and dare to be different and playful. The Playvolution re-positions me within the classroom away from the “sage on the stage” and polished professionalism in order to co-construct learning and meaning alongside my students. All this can help me reduce the intimidating and distancing hierarchy between my students and myself because anxiety is counterproductive to learning.
While my expectations remain high, a playful pedagogy provides more spaciousness for students to explore, wonder, critique, and risk failure. I feel a heavy responsibility to teach my counselors-in-training to think flexibly and creatively in an ever-changing diverse society with complex problems and people. The quality of care my students provide their future clients depends on that. Therefore, I must design my classes in a way that allows students to grapple with ambiguity and uncertainty, to exist outside of their comfort zones, and that sharpens their flexible and creative thinking skills placing importance on personal growth through community and self-reflection. As a disabled learner, I want to provide my students the learning experience I was denied. I want each of my students to feel empowered to leap out of the water, to chase that fly that piques their curiosity. For it is only when we are free from the imaginary constraints placed on us, that we are able to realize our fullest potential.
Oh hello. Been a while. What have we been up to at the Profs at Play Headquarters? Like you, dealing with post-Covid, getting back to normal, adjusting to the new normal, trying to pretend the past few years did happen. In short, recovering. Rebuilding. And also, finishing the Professors at Play PlayBook. We are beyond excited to share this resrouce with the community. And with that done, now we get back to work–the Playvolution never rests!
We spend a lot of time talking to faculty about their playful techniques as well as coming up with our own. But sometimes you just look outside the classroom and find all kinds of play you can borrow! I was talking to a colleuge the other day about something fun to do in a workshop for a few people. And I remember this funny game and app created by the fellows in the band OK Go. It’s nothing more than two people tryiung to come up with the same word at the same time. Funny. Fun. Playful. Check it out: