In 1990, when my older brother Benjy was 14 years old, he interviewed our Grandpa Ray and wrote a short essay about his life. Last year my mom unearthed it, squirreled away in some nook of Benjy’s bedroom for more than two decades, and Benjy read parts aloud at the unveiling of Grandpa’s headstone in May 2011. Earlier this morning, Dad scanned these seven pages. I’m grateful for this essay’s multiple windows into history. Not only does it depict the Depression and post-WWII eras that marked Grandpa’s life, but it also reminds us of Benjy’s world then — a world where he, as a high school freshman, had to laboriously and neatly handwrite multi-paged essays; a world where spellcheck wasn’t built into the platform upon which he was writing. (How could it be? It was a piece of ruled paper!)
This morning I told my young cousins, a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old who had awoken at 6:30 am in order to jump on my head, that I knew we were watching the NEW Scooby Doo (as opposed to the classic Scooby Doo) because Velma didn’t consult laptops back in my day — they hadn’t been invented yet. Last night, I told them a bedtime story that my Grandma Elly had imagined and related when my sister Sarah and I were little girls. All I could recall was the premise — there once were three Hawaiian sisters named Oola, Moola, and Leela — and I proceeded from there, making up as I went along and regularly asking the girls to fill in blanks. What do you think happened next? I would ask. Molly, a precocious first-grader, contributed a storyline in which baby Leela continued fishing while her older sisters built up the fire for cooking. In addition to netting fish after giant fish, she also attracted a shark! Leela had to bonk him on the head with her little fishing pole to keep him back. When the sisters returned home with fish and tales, no one believed Leela’s story. Personally, that’s where I thought Molly would leave it. But she threw in a detail: “Here’s a video!” Leela said. “See!” And she showed the footage to her parents.
I smiled. When we were Molly’s and Sadie’s ages, Sarah and I never would have thought to suggest such corroborating evidence — videography wasn’t ubiquitous back then. Moreover, Oola, Moola, and Leela were indigenous peasant girls who lived in Hawaii. I’m not sure if Sarah and I would have granted them the technology of even the fork… I also thought that Oola, Moola, and Leela were from the past. I don’t know if Grandma stipulated that, or if I’d assumed that since their life seemed so tranquil and tied to the earth, or if Grandma’s age and the classic quality of her warm voice (I loved my grandma’s voice) led me to associate all of her stories with days of yore.
It doesn’t matter. It’s interesting but it doesn’t matter. What matters is love and family and creativity and storytelling. I’ve always mourned the fact that my grandma, who had been an elementary school teacher and children’s librarian, never got to realize her aspiration of publishing children’s books. I dreamed of getting them published posthumously — I wanted to do her that service. But I realize now that both the stories our grandparents lived and the stories they told live on. I thank my brother and sister, our parents, and the rest of our family for facilitating that beautiful truth.
NOTE: As I scrutinize the date of this essay, I realize the context in which Benjy wrote it. Grandpa Justin had passed away unexpectedly, the result of a stroke tragically mistreated, in January of 1990. Grandma Elly, who’d been struggling against breast cancer for years, moved in with us immediately after. Her older sister Pearl, whose voice to this day sounds just like my grandma’s and moves me nearly to tears every time I talk to her on the phone, also took up residency in our house. But despite these efforts and my grandmother’s powerful will, we lost her a few months later, in June of 1990. This essay’s date: October 1990.
After Dad’s parents could no longer testify, Benjy made sure that we heard from Mom’s.
NOTE: Benjy got his wish — partially. His older daughter, Lyla, was a baby when Grandpa Ray died. Benjy’s younger daughter, Violet, never got to meet her great-grandpa. But maybe someday, if we keep telling these stories, she will.
-“Play is a very serious matter… It is an expression of our creativity; and creativity is at the very root of our ability to learn, to cope, and to become whatever we may be” (Rogers & Sharapan, 1994, p. 13).
-Besides being tied to creativity, play is also science – it is the vehicle through which one asks questions, constructs hypotheses, runs trials, analyzes results, and comes to conclusions. Particularly today, as forward-thinkers exhort innovation and policy-makers (solely, and thus myopically) extol the virtues of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the seriousness and practicality of this should be obvious.
-“In almost every example of what he describes as “the sacred,” play is the defining feature of our most valued cultural rites and rituals. As such, for Huizinga, play is not something we do; it is who we are” (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011, p. 97).
What is play good for?
A1. Tinkering (agenda-less play) → innovation
-A 10-year-old’s unbounded experimentation led to her discovery of a new molecule
00:00-01:30
A2. Tinkering → discovery
-Junior Toy Inventors in Mumbai’s Expanding Minds Program learned about balance by working with sundry materials.
A3. Tinkering → personal and social enrichment
-This culturally-inspired innovation in Senegal contributed to Sunukaddu staff member/inventor Idrissa’s sense of pride and self-efficacy, as well as the benefit of learners near and far.
NOTE: This final photo is from the RFKLab, a space for innovation and community-building at the RFK Community Schools in downtown Los Angeles. Laughter for a Change uses the NMLs in its Tuesday after-school program with high school students. Improvisation is an excellent context and tool for getting at play and other key NMLs.
B1. Gaming (purposeful play) → innovation
“This is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem,” writes Khatib. “These results indicate the potential for integrating video games into the real-world scientific process: the ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems” (Young, 2011).
B2. Gaming → discovery
“… certain games afford their players the opportunity to step virtually into the shoes of a specific profession and, through game play, become familiar with its domains of knowledge, skill base, values, identities, and ways of thinking about the world” (Joseph, 2008, p. 263).
For more about Barry’s incredible global learning and youth development program, check out Global Kids!
-Becoming a better critical thinker, friend, teammate, person as a result of play
Can you think of an example to illustrate this?
Why? How does that work? Why does play produce such incredible results?
1. Flow: “the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. xiii).
2. Self-efficacy: belief in one’s capacity to produce effects (Bandura, 1977)
Acting in a game demonstrates to players that they can exert power over something, that their efforts make a difference. “Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 33).
3. Capacity-building
Playing enriches perseverance, emotional stamina, mental toughness, and divergent thinking.
4. Community
Game-related talk (processing experience, comparing performance, exchanging feedback, pursuing mastery) builds relationships and community. “Good games… support social cooperation and civic participation at very big scales. And they help us lead more sustainable lives and become a more resilient species” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 350).
Play and the NMLs
New media literacies (NMLs) are “a set of cultural competencies and social skills young people need” in a culture that “shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement” (Jenkins et al., 2006, p. 4).
Despite their name, NMLs are neither “new” nor exclusively about “media”; rather, they are time-honored practices that support critical thinking and problem-solving.
-Why? Because NMLs are tools for problem-solving. New and old media alike pose “problems,” such as understanding new gadgets, working with dissimilar collaborators, and interpreting data. NMLs – in these examples, play, negotiation, and visualization, respectively — offer tools to solve those problems.
Other key NMLs include collective intelligence, “the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal”; and negotiation, “the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms” (p. 4)
-Problems have an emotional piece to them — they elicit emotional/physical responses in our bodies. Certain strategies can help you to defuse or limit the emotional intensity of a problem. (You can practice these strategies via innovative video game Dojo from GameDesk!)
-Problems also have a practical piece to them — they present real barriers to maximally productive workflow. Which strategies can you invoke for managing conflict and solving problems?
ABCDE Exercise
NOTE: My dear friend and mentor, brilliant Garden Nursery School director Jenn Guptill, co-presented this exercise with me back in 2004, when we taught workshops in supporting young children’s conflict resolution for fellow early childhood educators. A-D might be a product of the Safe and Caring Classrooms study group in which we participated, and then we added the E…
-Ask for volunteers to roleplay two characters in a contextually relevant problematic scenario
-These volunteers will play out an encounter in which they address the scenario
-Then they will see what happens when they try out steps A-E
A. Ask neutrally if there is a problem
-Do not assign blame, characterize someone as bad, or assume malicious intent; speak about how things look to you: ”I notice that when I do X, it seems like you do Y.”
-Use “I statements,” explaining how behaviors (NOT the person, just certain acts) they make you feel: “When you do X, it makes me feel like Y.”
-Invite other person to share his/her perspective: ”What do you think is happening?” “What do you think about that?” “What have you noticed?”
B. Brainstorm possible solutions to the conflict
-Both parties ideally should contribute to the brainstorming session
-Ideas should be heard and, ideally, not criticized
-The point is to establish trust and step away from putting people on the defensive
C. Choose which solution you will employ and how you will follow up to assess
-Both parties should agree to the action plan
-The assessment part is key — how will you know if things are working? When will you check in again to ensure that there’s satisfaction and open dialogue?
D. Do it!
-Get ‘er done
E. Evaluate
-This part is often left out but it allows for minor adjustments, guards against strained relations and icy silence/alienation post-confrontation, and renews awareness of/commitment to the solution (because it can be easy to fall back into old habits)
Play for Problem-solving Activity
-Break into small groups of 5-6, work through a problematic scenario by using a mode of play
Modes of play:
1. examples from nature — think about plants, animals, etc and see if that helps you to model and problem-solve
2. roleplaying — think about the characters involved in a problem and step into their shoes, act like them and try to think like them in order to problem-solve
3. manipulatives — use assorted objects to model systems and relationships
4. art — express problem, using as few words as possible, via paper, markers, Post-Its, and other art supplies
5. narrative — turn the problem into a simple story, as if you were explaining to a young child or an alien from another planet in order to boil it down to its most essential elements and make new discoveries
6. free play — find another playful mode of exploring your group’s problem!
Possible thematic outcomes:
1. innovation: new solutions
2. discovery: new skills or knowledge
3. personal and/or social enrichment: new relationships and/or intrapersonal understandings
4. other
Possible deliverables:
1. a way to communicate the problem so that the organization (and/or multiple stakeholders) better understand it
2. multiple possible solutions, a long brainstorm session
3. one processual solution and a set of action steps and recommendations for implementation and evaluation
4. an organizational restructuring involving new working groups or work flows or communication processes, etc.
5. other
Shareout
What did you come up with?
How did your group members work together (e.g., strategies, roles, conflicts, solutions, etc)?
-Reflections can be enriched by use of ORID (Stanfield, 2000), a protocol for facilitating group discussions that is based on four lines of inquiry: Objective (e.g., “What happened?”); Reflective (e.g., “How did it make you feel?”); Interpretive (e.g., “What is this all about?”); and Decisional (e.g., “What is our response?”).
O: What happened? Which words/phrases/moments do you most vividly remember?
R: How did it feel? Where were you surprised/delighted/frustrated?
I: What is all this about? What does all this mean for us? How will this affect our work? What are we learning from this? What is the insight?
D: What is our response? What action is called for? What are our next steps?
Epilogue: City Year L.A. Plays to Problem-solve!
This incredible group of open-hearted, fun-loving, forward-thinking folks enthusiastically embraced the challenge to approach organizational issues from a playful perspective. They harnessed modeling clay, blocks, animal figurines, toothpicks, gumdrops, a Barrel of Monkeys, and narrative form in order to think innovatively and develop viable solutions. Thanks to Shira Weiner for dreaming up and bringing in all of these creative materials, and for inviting me to City Year in the first place! C.Y.L.A., let’s play, hook!
Listen to this recording of the group members’ fantastic solutions!
As I tore apart my computer in search of texts to enrich my article for Learning, Media, and Technology, I found this piece which I delivered (or didn’t — I have a habit of jumping off-book and riffing in front of a live audience) before the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees on April 15, 2011.
I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place, and thought that the way we raise children is central to any/all such undertakings. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I studied Education & Social Policy, with minors in political science and French. I did original, on-site research for my honors thesis, visiting child care centers in Paris, Oslo, and urban Chicago. I reviewed the way each culture balanced the social-emotional and the cognitive — Were they tensions in opposition? Were they intertwined partners?
Spongebob Squarepants got me to graduate school. My friend Jenn and I were babysitting a bunch of five-year-olds and, while we happened to be on the street of a housing project in Boston, I suspected that this scene could have unfolded anywhere in America, maybe anywhere around the world…
Here we go round the mulberry bush… the ice cream truck chimed. My friend Jenn asked the kids what they wanted.
“Spongebob!” they cried, eyes glued to the image of a frozen treat shaped like he who lives in a pineapple under the sea.
“They’re out of Spongebob,” Jenn explained patiently. “What’s your next choice?”
“Dora!”
POP! Goes the weasel!
That’d be Dora the Explorer, another children’s TV character who the youngsters could ice cream-ily cannibalize. Now, I’d been a kid who worshipped at the electric fireplace, effortlessly memorizing movie & TV dialogue, gobbling books, acting in plays. But I always, ALWAYS, had firm ideas about chocolate and vanilla. Was something different going on here?*
I started out by looking at the extent to which young people interacted with electronic media, analyzing children’s media content according to unsavory themes, like aggression, materialism, xenophobia, and stereotypical gender roles, which I continued at USC. Then I became interested in influencing the content itself, first through disseminating research to studios with Dr. Stacy Smith, then by supporting entertainment-education efforts with Dr. Sheila Murphy and Hollywood, Health & Society. From there I became interested in what people do with the content, and that’s what led me to Dr. Henry Jenkins and, in a sense, brought me back to square one. How do we make the world a better place, shift the way we raise children, address the social-emotional and the cognitive?
This skills-rich approach seems the way to go, in my opinion. Not only is each person, each community, and each moment in time distinct, but people hate being told from on high what to do. It doesn’t make sense to come up with one fixed set of solutions, one “universal” plan, and tell every person out there to do it. It just doesn’t work. But let’s say you help them to develop skills, fundamental capacities for diverse application. Then individuals’ and communities’ possibilities are limitless. They can realize their own potential, and build their own solutions that reflect their unique circumstances.
At RFK Community Schools, via the Explore Locally, Excel Digitally after-school program, I’m helping those skills to take hold. The skills pertain to social-emotional competence (SELs; self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making), and new media literacies (NMLs; defined as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Weigel & Robison, 2006, p. 4)). Despite the words “new” and “media” in their label, NMLs are neither new nor exclusively for or about media. They’re especially useful in the context of new media, but they’re fundamental, time-honored, digitally agnostic skills. They’re about enriching learners with useful, versatile capacities that help them think sharper, work better, and appreciate fuller the ethical ramifications of their actions.
As thirteen-year-old me once sang in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, playing the role of Mrs. MacAfee in Harand Theater Camp’s summer 1993 production of Bye Bye Birdie, “I don’t know what’s wrong these kids today!”
This story misses the story. I don’t have access to the original research so I’m unsure as to whether the reporter is spinning an oft-told, irresponsible tale — “Kids these days are lazy and stupid!” — or the investigators employed an inadequate data collection tool.
Here’s what happened: The UK’s National Literacy Trust asked 18,000 seven- to 16-year-olds about their out-of-school reading habits. The article basically argued that children are not reading very much, and concluded with the British secretary of education’s opinion that children need to read more books — specifically, 50 per year.
I like books. I think they’re neat. But they’re not the only “game” in town.
Offering literacy experiences alongside books are: newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, corporate websites, ads, social media profiles, games, TV, mainstream films, indy films, amateur films, radio, podcasts, comics, manga, fan fiction, ebooks, SMS texts, etc, etc, etc. Arguably, the sheer amount of text — and texts — in young people’s environment has exploded. So too has the amount of time they spend doing literacy: decoding, meaning making, and creating. We need to value the reading of multiple texts, for each has its own nature, and engaging in the experience of reading these texts has merit, both practical and theoretical.
According to the article:
“The research also found that the older the children are, the less likely they are to read. The 14- to 16-year-olds were 11 times more likely than the seven- to 11-year-olds to say they had not read a book in the last month.
Half said they read emails and websites at least once a month. Only just over a quarter – 27% – flick through comics.”
I take issue with the ambiguities and hidden assumptions here. Are older kids really less likely to READ, or just to read the products enumerated by the researchers? Are they less likely to read YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, or text messages? Are they less likely to read school-related non-fiction, such as textbooks or online sources (whose credibility may or may not be sterling (another issue entirely))? I think not. In these domains, older children’s participation dwarfs that of younger children’s. And while the older kids reported reading fewer books, it is entirely possible that, in terms of word count or cognitive challenge, they read the equivalent (or more!) via other platforms. It is also possible that these older kids, hoping to seem cool, under-reported their book-reading; the opposite is also possible, that the younger kids, eager to please/impress the researchers, over-reported their book-reading. Even without conscious manipulation, the accuracy of monthly estimations is poor for any demographic — people are just bad at remembering. For seven to 16-year-olds, you’ve got to figure that they’re even worse.
As for emails vs. websites vs. comics — who cares? Only a few decades ago, children’s comic book reading inspired moral panics. And now its (purported) diminution is also alarming? Which one is it? And is it even occurring at all? When the researchers say “comics,” do the kids understand this to mean online and offline, professional and amateur, anime, manga, and graphic novel? As for websites — what does it even mean to read a website? What kind of website? The language is too imprecise to even take on. Finally, emails. Many youths report that emails are seldom sent among their cohort, just as senior citizens claim low rates of text messaging amongst their peers. So, does this “low” (compared to what?) figure of email reading merely reflect the modest number of emails circulated? What is the value of this context-less data?
I know this much is true: To overlook multiple texts and the role they play in young people’s lives, and then conclude that children aren’t reading, is intellectually irresponsible. To fail to support children’s literacy skills around these texts is professionally irresponsible.
Our task is twofold, “local” and “global.” First, readers of all stripes should grapple together with the unique affordances of each text/literacy experience, helping one another to become savvier vis-a-vis specific sites. Some sample considerations: “Here’s what you should consider when you read a Wikipedia post.” “What does this podcast’s very existence tell us about its author?” “What do you know about the anime hero’s world by looking at the art in the background?”
Second, readers (and those who seek to teach and assess them) should focus on the underlying, universal skills required and developed by engaging with texts, such as: comprehending, synthesizing, and responding. They should also seize upon the perspective-taking that naturally occurs when readers connect with stories/storytellers, and help readers to improve their proficiency therein. Better ability to perspective-take will not only enrich individuals’ enjoyment of literature, but it will boost their efficacy as communicators and their capacity for sensitive social negotiation.
As the tide of texts surges, I don’t want to lose the book baby in all of this bathwater. But neither do I want to zero in on the baby and ignore the fact that she’s swimming in a sea of possibility…
You know how they say, What once was old is new again?
Today I (re)visited Tufts University’s Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, site of my 2004-2006 MA studies. How lucky I am to have worked with such wise and caring teachers, who generously shared their time: over a cup of tea in Ball Square (thank you, Martha!); in the director’s office of my white knight, the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School (thank you, Maryann and Debbie!); to and from Powderhouse Square’s Dunkin Donuts (thank you, Chip!); and in the car of a friendly GTA passerby (thank you, David and girl whose name I can’t remember!).
I’ve assembled their valuable words of advice for us all to process and enact in real life. Their implicit meta-message: Don’t lose heart. The object lesson in this homecoming: Don’t lose people.
-Life has phases and cultures have orientations. Our youthful, Western passions may fade with time and/or never attain such manifestation/idealization elsewhere. Recognize and celebrate changes across the lifespan.
-Certain academic departments do value applied work and can allow young parents to survive.
-Activities should be evaluated in terms of their cost-benefit to professional and personal matters.
-Academia offers June, July, and August (plus Winter Break!). While you have to work hard eight months of the year, those three-ish months off are a beautiful thing. So is being paid to think…
-At certain academic departments, you can clearly understand expectations, affably negotiate politics, and ruthlessly set limits regarding work time and personal time.
-Writing time and personal time should be deliberately scheduled and conscientiously respected.
-It is important that the university not only appreciates but values your work. Without the attachment of meaningful value, people-pleasers must say “no.”
-Following your passion will lead you where you’re meant to go.
-Invoking your passion by asking “How does this relate to my key priority/area of interest?” should be regularly done so as to ensure both its pursuit and your sole participation in significant projects that advance your agenda.
-Appreciate contextual features that influence your work’s impact. Be realistic.
Also shared time with dear friends from back in the day, who have vitally remained my friends to this day, and don’t show signs of stopping. Thanks to old friends of friends (Tim), old friends (Jenn, Yali, Geetha, Erika, Kelli), old friends out of context (Meg, Meryl), newer friends out of context (Jinah), new friends (Christina, Emily, Julie, “Mussels”), and the old friends who will variously host and entertain me in the Big Apple (Laura, Jordan, Marci, Ed, Lucy, Meg, Happy, Waylon, Willie, the Griffiths, the Andersons, Arian, Krissy, Olive Joon, and Ivy Shireen).
Lately feeling like things are coming full circle… or like I’m on one of those spiral staircases, looping back to the origin, but happen to be up a level. Let it be so.
In 1990, when my older brother Benjy was 14 years old, he interviewed our Grandpa Ray and wrote a short essay about his life. Last year my mom unearthed it, squirreled away in some nook of Benjy’s bedroom for more than two decades, and Benjy read parts aloud at the unveiling of Grandpa’s headstone in May 2011. Earlier this morning, Dad scanned these seven pages. I’m grateful for this essay’s multiple windows into history. Not only does it depict the Depression and post-WWII eras that marked Grandpa’s life, but it also reminds us of Benjy’s world then — a world where he, as a high school freshman, had to laboriously and neatly handwrite multi-paged essays; a world where spellcheck wasn’t built into the platform upon which he was writing. (How could it be? It was a piece of ruled paper!) 
