[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Erin. I directed a documentary film called The Land about the Land Adventure Playground in the UK. I'm Morgan. I'm a playworker and one of the founders of Pop Up Adventure Play, a resource for folks interested in adventure play and playwork. >> And I'm Mayan. I'm a former playground designer, ish, turned into a playwork enthusiast, and all around generally curious person. >> And this is Playwork, the podcast, for people who love play. [MUSIC] >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Music. [MUSIC] >> Welcome to Playwork, the podcast. This is Morgan, and if you're listening to this, you've probably heard of Adventure Playgrounds. Maybe you've been to one, or maybe seen images online, of these wild, junk filled places, where kids can light fires, and jump from high places, and generally do things that are pretty bananas. The public conversation around this kind of recently started, or restarted anyhow with an article in the Atlantic in 2015 called The Overprotected Kid. And ever since then, every six months or so, there's another major news article about risky play, or adventure play, and the coverage varies, to say the least. Mostly, their framed is place is that can save, you know, the kids these days from the trappings of modern childhood, those horrors like iPads or helicopter parents. The best of this coverage explains the benefits of play, and how much children need to play for their, you know, physical and social development, their emotional wellness. It links children's chances to play with their mood, and self-regulation, and self-confidence, even their academics, whatever adults seem to care about at the moment, play can help. And that's all true. But that conversation is usually missing one really important detail about adventure playgrounds, the thing that really makes these places work. And that's play work. The adults involved, and the play work approach that they take to make these places thrive. Yeah, if you look closely in the edges of any photo about an adventure playground, there's usually an adult, there's somewhere kind of standing or sitting quietly off to the side, and that person is the play worker. I mean, play work is a complete, rich, full field of study. You can get a PhD in play work. There are conferences and publications. You know, people make a living as play workers. And now there's a pot, well, sort of they do. (laughing) I didn't want to jump in on that. (laughing) We're out there is what I'm saying. They're out there, they're reading, they're writing, they're doing stuff, and now there's a podcast about all the things that they're doing. (soft music) Let's talk about the podcast. Yeah, let's talk about the podcast. It's been a long time coming. We've all been thinking about it for a really long time. And we hope that it's a really useful resource for anyone and everybody who cares about play. We're gonna be sharing theory about play and talking with practitioners from all around the world. We're gonna ask them the questions that we get asked all the time. Like, what about when somebody gets hurt? Yeah, I hear that a lot. How do these playgrounds run? Where is the funding coming from? What about when kids fight and where does all this stuff come from? I mean, whenever I show my film, people come up to me afterwards and just say, this is awesome. How can I start an adventure playground? And the answer is not to give every child in your backyard, your school, a box of nails, and a hammer. (laughing) (laughing) So those questions are gonna be a jumping off point for us to feature a lot of stories from practitioners. And that's gonna be the basis for much larger conversations about risk and freedom and meaning and lots of other mushy kinds of things. Today on this very episode, you'll hear from two people who are doing play work in schools. One of them's working during recess and the other one established and leads the best after school program you've never heard of. Great, let's get to our guest. (upbeat music) Alex Cote has been a play worker since 2012. She's currently the lead play worker at the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. Before that, she was at the hands-on nature Anarchy Zone at the Ithaca Children's Garden. And then Yorika Villa, an adventure playground project of Santa Clarita Valley adventure play in California. So lots of words to describe different adventure play grounds. But basically the Anarchy Zone and Yorika Villa and she's now at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. We talked to Alex about some of the risks that she's taken as a play worker and how she's making it happen inside a school. And we talked to her before we'd settled on a name for the show. Here's our interview with Alex Cote. Let's just say welcome Alex. Alex is an amazing play worker. She's worked in a lot of really important places. And you've done the dirty work. You've done it in a public space. You've worked in a camp setting. You work in a private school. You work at events. You work in recess. And I can't even begin to imagine how complicated it is to juggle all of the different settings and sort of navigate the different settings. But welcome to yet to be named podcasts. Thank you, Erin Davis. (laughing) I'm happy to be here. Episode one. Alex, how do you define playwork? This is great because I was writing some notes while you all were talking. I think the way that I think about it is in terms of creating space for play and just making sure that it is able to happen in all of the ways that you can think of that phrase, whether it is in creating a physical space or extending down to like if a child is struggling to access play in any sort of way. Maybe if they have a particular diagnosis or they live in a place where they can't get to play the playworkers role as to deconstruct the barriers whatever they happen to be, I can make sure a child is more easily able to access play by things less, less like the way I hold my body, the things I put out, the way I speak or decide not to speak. Oh my gosh, there's so much there. Yeah. I mean, 'cause you have to, you're talking about deconstructing barriers in like a micro in the moment, but then also even like getting a permit to having an event in a city. Yeah, it's all of it. My journey to playwork was like circuitous and that I was interested in playground design and like urban planning first and then I was introduced to the concept of venture playgrounds and I think I saw a picture of like children jumping off a high place on no mattress and I was just astounded but the thing that really drew me to playwork as a concept was that it was so much less about the design of a place and so much more about children's rights and children as people and their selfhood and agency. (upbeat music) Can you maybe tell us like just a concrete example from your playwork experience where the kids were involved in something that was a challenge for you, I don't know, just for you because of who you are, whatever that would be. I don't know, something that was, yeah. Or you had to sort of rely on your like playwork approach. Sure. The first thing that comes to mind is a story from back at the Anarchy Zone. It was early on in my learning about playwork and it was a time of great discovery and also like great discomfort. But there was a child at the garden and this was in like a summer camp context where the week of summer camp, day camp at the Children's Garden was spent, the morning was spent doing more program activities and then the afternoon was spent in the Anarchy Zone just playing. And there was a child who often would throw dirt at usually like girls trying to play house. And yeah, I was a boy trying, like just disrupting play that was going on other children's play. And what I had been learning about is like playful ways to intervene. And because I hadn't had a lot of experience yet, I sort of just had to trust that then try and experiment and see like if this thing was really real. So the tech, what, yeah, what I had been like taught to do by Morgan who taught me a lot of what I know about playwork was that one possibility was to like see through like what this child was trying to get out of the play and respond to that. So I, you know, picked up some dirt clods myself and just said like, you know, I don't think I should use this kid's name, but Bob? Sure, no, Sam, I'm safe. (laughing) I don't know any children named Bob. (laughing) All right, so okay, like, you know,
I don't remember whether I said this out loud or not, but this scenario was like, Sam, I can't lay through dirt at those girls, but I'm here and I'm willing to have a dirt fight. And I may have just said that through my body language of holding up dirt and looking at him and throwing some stuff. And immediately we just had this amazing dirt war and the girls went on with their play and other kids joined our game. And it allowed the play to go on in a way that was acceptable for everybody and it was really beautiful. But it was also exhausting. And that's not an easy thing to do every day because he wanted to do this every day. And I used that story a couple times in my first trainings when I was teaching people about this work. And one of their questions was, is in that teaching them that child? Is in that teaching, Sam, that the way to get his way is to throw dirt at girls? And it caught me off guard the first time because I like, wait, is that what that's doing? But what got me out of that spiral of thinking was the one time later on after we had built up that relationship and we'd been doing that for a while was one day when he came over to be an app. Just asked me, like, can we have a dirt fight today? Because he knew that that was something I could offer him. And he didn't need to do what he was doing before to make that play happen anymore. He knew he could get it from me in a different way. And that was really, really powerful for me in my practice. Can I ask a follow-up question about that story and just broadly about playwork? I feel like often when-- like that question of, like, but isn't that teaching him such and such and such and such. The question I have is, like, to what extent is it in the playworkers mind, like, what am I teaching? Like, what is the behavior that I'm reinforcing and what is the behavior that I want and what is the behavior that, et cetera? Because I feel like a lot of how people adults think about children is that they need to be trained. Adults often will impose arbitrary rules on kids, like, just in order to teach them to follow rules. Or they'll say certain things, like, in order to teach the kids a lesson about such and such. And I feel like my understanding of playwork is that there's almost this way in which playwork and creates a bubble where that doesn't come in. Where it's actually not about teaching the kids anything. It's about making one space for these kids where they can just do their thing. And they don't have to be, like, infused with some other motive of how we're going to teach them how to be adults. Yeah. I would probably actually say that I do think about what I am teaching children in a way. I don't actively teach, but every time you interact with another person, you are showing them what you think of them and what you value. And I hope that I am teaching children that I think that they are valuable human beings, individuals with important needs, that whether I understand them or not, are worth meeting. And I can be that for them. And I think that there is a lesson in that somewhere, but it's not teaching. I think that a lot of adults are really worried about us teaching children. And there's a couple of different things with that. I think that the first is that a lot of adults have an image of children as either blank or somehow nefarious, this idea that if we're not making sure to teach them how to be them, who knows what they'll become. And at its heart, playwork really operates from a faith in children. I would also add that it's helpful to remember that this isn't the child's entire 24 hours a day in life. This is their playtime. So they've been in school all day, presumably, or in some kind of structured environment where they are being introduced to lessons and values and behavior standards and all these sorts of things. And this is the time when they're off duty, off the clock. Yeah, totally. I think that there's a really good argument to make for the playground, whatever that ground is, as children's third place. So they have home, they have work, and then they have hopefully this other place where they can just be. So one of the great things about playwork is that I say about playwork and you can push back if you just agree. But that's like, there are things-- after spending time at the land, I felt like I went home totally different. And there were things that I never did again. You know what I mean? There are, for example, talking. I just stopped talking so damn much when I was with kids. That was maybe one of the biggest, most obvious changes. So for example, what I'm saying is, when you-- in learning about playwork, thinking about people listening to this, there are some things that you can start doing today. And then there are things that are just at the art of it. Like there are these nuances that you pick up on and skills that you develop. I wonder what are some of the very practical things that someone could look for when they go to school tomorrow or when they were their kids tomorrow to start making different kinds of decisions about supporting play? I mean, we talk a lot about-- I'm Morgan and I have talked a lot about body language lately. And I think the biggest one to start with is that adults often have a way of holding themselves that whether they think they do or not, like scream, I have not someone you want to involve yourself with to a child. And it's the like standing rigid arms folded up at the top of a hill, the only interaction I have with you is to scream, like, don't do that. And it was so much more clear to me how different my approaches coming into a school and being very uncomfortable because I was the only one sitting on the ground or climbing onto the monkey bars or just being there. And especially getting to know new children, that's really a great thing. It's just to make eye contact and smile. And I feel like I cocked my head a lot in a questioning way. Like, I see what you're doing. And I'm curious about it. But I don't need to be involved. Just like, hi. Yeah. Without saying any of that out loud. Doing things with my body that adults don't always do is a great signal to a child, but this is a different kind of adult. And that I'm open for other things. Body language. It almost sounds like you're so mindful of when you say any words. Do you have like criteria around when you say words out loud? That's a really interesting question. And then I feel self-conscious. You have to use words to answer that question. I have to. Real existential podcasts. I mean, getting ahead. You can start with one of my level stuff. Word dress that, which is-- No, I think all of the place to start things, I think are in ourselves. So it's like body language. You and I have talked about breathing first a lot before you freak out. Just breathe for a sec. Oh, my goodness. Or just observe and see how much you can understand of what is actually happening versus what you assume is happening. Yeah, thinking about where you put your body in this space. I mean, I've joined so many playframes without any words at all. There was a kindergartener at school who was very shy. And I hadn't really had much interaction with her. But I think I was sitting on the balance beam and watching something else happen. And I noticed that she was next to me. And she was getting on the balance beam. So I sort of got off. And we were looking at each other and obviously trying to understand each other. That's what it felt like anyway. So she stepped on. And then I sort of stepped on. And it was-- I was doing the things that she was doing. Bearing. Yeah. I was doing the things that she was doing with her body with a lot of eye contact and letting her move at the next step and then following along with what she was doing. And it just morphed into this whole game where we were doing the balance beam. And then she started talking to me later in it. And she knew that I was following along. So she gave me more instructions about what the rules were of the balance beam game. And that established a really close relationship from then on. She knew I was one of the people that she could go to. And even within the next week, she was at kindergarten. She was new to school, new to her teacher. And she and I would do things together a lot. And at one point, she sort of asked me if I could ask her teacher if her teacher wanted to see something. So I was her person. And it was just from that body language mirroring. That's very tough. So that's-- yeah, simple thing. I think that builds an enormous amount of trust between you and the kids just on an animal level. Yeah. Yeah. Another simple thing that I wouldn't have thought of, except now that I work at the school, I see that the way I do it is different than other people, is when kids do have a conflict or a problem
that they're hoping they could get some adult help with. Often teachers will call them over so they can all talk together. Whereas I often go over to where the problem is, I bring myself over to where it is in the kids world, rather than inviting the kids to come over into my adult world. - Something that I notice is that a lot of adults have a different voice that they use when they talk to kids. And it's often very patronizing and very belittling to those kids. And if you just like use your normal voice, like talk to them as if they're a human, right? So like there are certain topics that are maybe hard to get into or there are certain language that you may not want to use, but like overall your tone and your cadence can be the same as when you talk to people. - I was thinking about tone of voice recently because I noticed in taking a lot of videos in my new work to help show people some of the things that are going on and listening to myself in these videos that depending on where I am in the relationship with a particular child, I will use a different voice. At the beginning when I'm getting to know them and I'm trying to make it clear to them that I am like a playful person within play with them. I will sort of use like a play voice and it's sort of like extra joky and sort of exaggeratedly charactery. And then as the relationship gets established and it becomes clear to that child that I am a kind of adult that will join them, my voice gets more and more like we're just buds you and I. This is a normal thing we do this every day. Because it can be hard at first because if I say something in my normal voice within play, they might think that I mean it as an adult. And my example that I was talking about was I was new on the playground sort of, you know, the only adult who would ever walk to round on the playground before with all these kids sort of giving me side eye and trying to figure out who I was. And I misstepped a little bit in the kids were playing an office type game, which it was sort of like mad men-esque in that they had, they were also like smoking cigars and there were cubicles and like discussing business. And I made a joke that I was like, "Ooh, you know, like smoking isn't allowed on the playground." And I think the kid thought that I was being an adult who, and the adults often try to forbid certain themes in play and honestly smoking is one of them sometimes. So I think he thought I was serious in saying you're not allowed to pretend to smoke on the playground. And that was not what I meant. So I try to be very clear at first that like I'm really joking and then later on now that I know this kid, he and I have an understanding. And if I were to say that now, he would know I was joking. Just for being really thorough for beginner folks, shouldn't we say you shouldn't smoke, it's so bad for you, it's so unhealthy, like shouldn't we say that? Because we're the adults there, or is there like one line to say about it? Yeah, I mean, and my line would be like, the children already know, they're just pretending. And it's funny, okay. (laughing) Cool. (soft music) I've definitely had, I've definitely encountered that where I'll like really intensely accept whatever frame the kids are doing, whatever game the kids are like immediately sort of slide in and assume that it's just real and like act as if whatever they're saying is real is real. And the kids get weirded out by that sometimes. They're like, they're like, what you know, this is just pretend, right? We're just like, I'm like, "Hey, I know." (laughing) Yeah, I'm not really afraid. I guess whatever it is, that like, yeah, I've had a lot of this conversation to do. I'm like, are we just pretending it's your birthday or is it your actual birthday? There's no actual earthquake, you can calm down. (laughing) (soft music) I think one of the things I love about Alex is that when you think about playwork, like when you sort of approach it for the first time, you expect someone to be really wild and zany and like crazy and outgoing to be a playworker. But Alex is so thoughtful and patient and reflective and that really comes through for me in her interview. I really like hearing that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know Alex that well, but I feel like she's just like a playworking ninja. She's like, silent. And she knows exactly how to position herself and has this amazing intention about it all and this like awareness of everything that's going on. Yeah. Morgan, you trained Alex. What's it like to see your grasshopper thrive? I was lucky enough to meet her right at the beginning and she's always just been this like, like absolutely scrupulous, thoughtful, like deliberate playworker. Like a lot of people, when I've met people in playwork, like a lot of folks have like an intuitive touch for it sometimes, you know? And that's an amazing place to start, but like that can't be the whole thing. And she's just really, over the years, been this incredible example for me of how you start with that intuitive sense of like the emotional content, maybe of what's happening in children's play. But then you really build in that like professional rigor. And she's just kept doing that all the way along and like kept being really dedicated to improving her practice. Which is just amazing to see. And especially now that she's like, that she's having the chance to really communicate that stuff to other people and to share what she loves about it. And like the nuance of what she really sees children doing, a lot of it gets missed. What do you mean a lot of what gets missed? The nuance? I think a lot of the depth of what's happening when children are playing gets missed by adults, you know, either 'cause they're like physically very far away as she was talking about, or they're just not really tuned in. Like she is absolutely tuned in and present for other kids. Yeah. But she's also like very delicate in how she gets involved or doesn't get involved. Like I remember at the Anarchy Zone, when I was there once, like a subsequent year doing staff training and she was already like a very well established member of the team. I don't know she was head yet there, but anyway. And one of the new students was watching her and she, and was very confused and came up to me and was like, are we supposed to do what she's doing because it looks like she's not doing very much. And I was like, oh, that's 'cause she's really good. (laughing) Yeah. It reminds me too of a conversation I had with Dave at the land, who's a play worker at the Land Adventure playground in Wales. And he said just very simply, you know, this is their world and it's a privilege to be inside of it. So really he thought of himself as being inside of their world. And that is something to take seriously and Alex takes it seriously. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, she really does. And she also, like, she doesn't need to be a part of it. And I think that there's something very powerful for children in that, you know, in having adults who will say, like, we'll protect your right to this time in the space, even if you don't want us involved. It's amazing what Alex is doing in a school, which makes me think of another practitioner who we admire, school librarian Jill Wood. So Jill is another play worker that we adore. And Jill founded an Adventure Playground at the Parish School in Houston, Texas in 2008, which is 10 years ago now. So that's pretty well established. I know 10 years. That's a whole generation of children. Absolutely. And the place has really evolved beautifully over time into this wonky and beloved hammer and nail dream land that you imagine when you hear the words junk play. So I got a chance to talk to Jill and I asked her the question that everyone wants to know, which is how do you start an Adventure Playground? And this is what she said. There's a lot of interest in Adventure Playgrounds. And I think that sometimes when people are wanting to start a program, they have an idea of what an Adventure Playground looks like. And a lot of times it's not gonna be suitable for their environment. It's not gonna be something that people respond to. Really the key pieces are playwork, time, and space. And if you have those parts, then I think the rest follows. It's a lot easier than people might think if you have those three things. So three things are really hard to come by sometimes. And so secure those first and then and the rest will follow. Jill. She's so good. Can we just repeat the three things? playwork, time, and space.
I love that. I love that. And partly for what it is, because I think it's true and beautiful and respectful and practical and all of those things that Jill is to her soul. But also because of what it's not, like it's not about the stuff necessarily. It's not, most of the people who come to us with that question want a shopping list of like, oh, for an adventure playground, you need 102 by fours, and a box of nails. And then you give them this like, you know, paradigm shifting philosophy in return. And they look at you like what, no, I've seen pictures. And we have $8,000 spent. Exactly. And six months. So. And I, yeah, and I think what Jill's saying is so like, so rooted in having done like some of the most beautiful playwork I've ever seen for 11 years. We were talking about metaphors earlier and something just came to me that like, if somebody asked you how, how can I make a flower? You wouldn't say like, oh yeah, so you go get a stem and some petals and like put them together in this orientation and then you have a flower. You say here, this is like a seed that like has in it all the information. And if you just like water it and it follows the DNA of the seed and then it will become a flower. And it may look different from other flowers, but it's a flower. I've never heard anyone say that before. And that's pretty good. That's exactly, that's true and beautiful. Yeah. Because really, because really it's like, it's an evolutionary process, right? It's not, right? It's the people see the end of the stage. And I got caught in this at the beginning also. The people get, like you said, people get see the end product. And they think I want that right now. I want it to look like that. I want to do fire. I want to do bandsaws and whatever else with the kids. But like, I want that because I want that. And making an adventure playground for the kids is about taking that step down and saying, I need to do that for myself in different space. Yeah. Like you can start something that may, you know, grow into the kind of adventure playground that you've seen pictures of or that you imagine. But it could just be a mud pit for two years, because the kids haven't had a mud pit before. Man, I also like about that metaphor that, like, someone could see an adventure playground and decide to just like, plonk that down in a place. But if you take, you know, some flowers and plant them and then never take care of them again, they're not going to do very well. Like, that needs to be like ongoing, I mean, ongoing, training, ongoing, reflective practice and like, so much thought and everything put into the place to make it work. There's a lovely quote by an early playwright called Emanathy, where he talks about the adventure being in the mind of the child. Well, I think that really applies. That's what needs to keep guiding us. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Thank you all for listening to our very first episode. Yay, yay, first episode. Yay. (laughing) This very conversation with Alex continues in part two. When we talk to Alex about how she has been making play at school more adventurous, what she's introduced, what she's taken away, and why she spends so much time on the monkey bars. Hear that and more in part two of our first episode of playwork the podcast. We have links to all the important stuff on our website, playworkpodcast.com. You'll find the playwork primer and pictures from the Paris School AP and the Riverdale Country School playground as well. And don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts. While you're there, you can rate us and leave a review which we would love. That would be good. Yeah. I mean, if you want. If you know, if you want and if it's complimentary. (laughing) But whatever your opinion, you are welcome to email us at
[email protected] or to tweet us, questions and thoughts about playwork or adventure play or I don't know, sandwiches, whatever it might be at playworkpodcast. And we'll probably answer them on the show. Yeah, we would love to hear what you want to know where your questions are so that we can, you know, be your resource. Let's get the conversation going. Yeah, let's get it going. I'm Erin. I'm Morgan. I'm Mayan. And this has been playwork the podcast. Thanks for listening. (gentle music)
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