The awesome power of Play.

I am a teacher. I passionately believe that teachers can make an enormous difference in the lives of young people. Sometimes this influence is good and sometimes it is negative.

Pentominoes - Fun to Play - Makes you think!

As one commentator said "Teaching & Learning are not even related."

I hope that my teaching is effective, but the measure of this is whether the children are
having their lives changed by what they do in my class.

When I went to my daughters parents meeting at preschool the teacher said something
 that struck me. She said
"At this age learning is play and play is learning."

What a powerful statement!

Then it struck me.  When does this change?
I think it changes when we stop children from playing.
How often do I say in class "Stop Playing around!" ?

Am I guilty of killing learning? Does learning have to be boring?

Surely it would be worthwile to research if we can't rediscover the way to make learning
fun. Can't we all play our way to learning.
I am begining to believe that there is a large amount of research data that concludes that
this is exactly what we should be doing.

I want to rediscover the path to making even high school learning childs play.
I want our teaching to reach the heart and not the head.
I want to change lives, and I want to do it by playing.

Please feel free to comment or to offer advice.

I would also love to do my masters on optimizing
the benefits of play in the high school classroom.
I may include the concept of "flow"

Please let me know what you think.