PlayGrounding

With all of this talk about kids and play, it's about time we hear from an educator here on the PlayGrounding Podcast. Doug Smith has been a physical education teacher for nineteen years. In this episode, we discuss the state of physical education in schools today such as the focus on testing and how many states are losing PE classes altogether.

But don't worry, we talk about the fun stuff too, such as the importance of playgrounds that fire kids' imaginations. He helped to build a beautiful one inspired by a book by Richard Louv called Last Child in the Woods. Doug's story is also inspiring for us adults. His love for play led him to participate in a self-imposed challenge to play 30 sports in 90 days in 2011 and wrote a blog about his play adventures to share with his students.

Doug is a National Board Certified Physical Education Teacher in Charlotte, NC. He has been teaching elementary PE for 19 years. He has a passion for guiding his students towards a healthier lifestyle and helping them to be physically fit. His knowledge of whole school wellness has led him to the creation of many innovative ideas, programs, and play areas for his school, including the one of a kind North Carolina Creative Playground. He believes in and encourages his school as a whole to embrace PLAY and FITNESS as a positive lifestyle.

Show Links:

• Visit Doug's Blog
• Read Last Child In The Woods by Richard Louv
• Watch Tim Brown's TED Talk on Creativity and Play
• Check out his Teacher Talk:

This is a deeply personal episode for me, Kara, the host of PlayGrounding. This is the second part of my conversation with Sabrina Must. Last week, we explored the role of playfulness in facing and handling grief. Sabrina and I kept talking on the day of our interview and we went in a completely different direction, but with the same sense of vulnerability and depth.

In this episode, you'll hear the second part of my conversation with Sabrina Must - this time about health and fitness. After that, I'll be sharing with you some of the personal challenges I've been inspired to face based on my conversations with PlayGrounding guests like Sabrina over the past year. I'll talk about how I'm planning to incorporate play into my effort to get healthy - specifically my effort to take on a bad habit I developed to combat anxiety over the past few years: wine. I've recently started attending Moderation Management meetings to try to change that habit and find new ways to handle times of great stress - and that's where play comes in.

I hope you enjoy today's episode, and as always, please feel free to reach out to me at kara(at)playgrounding.com if this episode resonates with you. Not to be on the podcast, just because I'd love to hear from you and maybe be an ear if you don't feel comfortable talking about these kinds of things with anyone else.

Episode Links:

• Moderation Management
• #100daysofplay - Visit Ben's Blog

It might seem counterintuitive to have a conversation about play and grief. We often associate play with frivolity, silliness and escape. But what we learn from this conversation with Sabrina Must is that a playful approach to life can take us deeper and more in touch with who we really are, even in periods of deep grief and loss.

Sabrina's book, Must Girls Love, is her memoir on the suicide death of her sister. This episode goes deep and for some, it might touch on aspects of life and grief you'd rather not think about. But if you've experienced devastating loss, as Sabrina has, you might find this a refreshingly honest conversation. If you haven't, there's something in it for you as well. It's a window into the hearts and minds of our friends who we might be called upon to hold space for and comfort in times of sorrow.

Sabrina Must is an author, blogger and speaker who unapologetically shares about her life to inspire you to share your story, live more honestly, and have more fun! Joys and struggles, it's all here. And she holds true to this throughout our conversation.

We hope you enjoy it!

Show Links:

• Subscribe to Sabrina Must's Blog
• Check out Sabrina's books, including Must Girls Love

Puzzles are powerful. Have you ever had a hard time putting worries aside - blocking out your to-do list and experiencing a moment of real focus in a no-stakes, playful situation? Try a puzzle. I'm not just talking about sitting with a puzzle on paper or your smart phone. I'm talking about escape rooms and city-wide puzzle hunts. Solving puzzles alone or together is practice for when the stakes are high and we need to come up with new creative solutions to difficult problems. You'll learn all about that in today's episode of PlayGrounding with game designer and puzzle creator, Eric Berlin.

Eric is a writer, former playwright and game designer. He's the author of the young-adult mystery series, The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. He's a graduate of the Juilliard School's playwriting program and also creates crossword puzzles for the New York Times, among others. In fact, he has one coming out next week on August 15, 2017. In addition, he has a website called Puzzle Your Kids, where you can download a new puzzle each week that will challenge your kids' brains – or yours.

Enjoy!

Show Links:

• Visit Eric's website
• Discover puzzle hunts on Shinteki
• Learn about Eric's books about The Puzzling World of Winston Breen
• Sign up for Puzzle Your Kids, a puzzle every week – free!
• Solve Eric's New York Times Crossword Puzzle on August 15, 2017 on your electronic device or even try a pencil! (or pen…)

Dada, the Beats and the Hippies - what do they all have in common? The way they played was a problem for the authorities, for the people in power trying to instill black and white order on the world. This week on Playgrounding we'll be talking to Shepherd Siegel, an educator and author whose work explores disruptive play and protest. We'll explore the role of the trickster as passed down to us through mythology from many diverse cultures, then learn about cultural movements led by pranksters who laid the groundwork for some of the methods used to protest the Vietnam war.

Shepherd is completing a book that will be launched this fall called Disruptive Play: The Trickster in Politics and Culture, about how play and the creative impulse could transform our society. In this episode, we'll meet Shepherd and learn about the background behind his message. This fall, Shepherd will be back for a second interview where we'll dive deeper into the book itself. I've had a sneak peek at the intro and first chapter. If they are any indication of what's to come, you're going to want to keep this book launch on your radar!

Shepherd Siegel grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the midst of the Sixties counterculture. He was a professional rock and jazz musician who switched it out for his career as an educator (in music, career & technical and special education), earning his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He has over thirty publications in the education field. Career Ladders, his internship program for high school students, is represented by over twenty school districts, a corresponding book, and an award from the US Department of Labor. From 1996-2012 he led the School to Career and Career + Technical Education (CTE) initiative for Seattle Public Schools.

He joined Project Lead the Way in 2012 after having strong success with their STEM program in ten Seattle middle and high schools, until 2015. He is a Past President of the Washington Association for Career and Technical Education, serving from 2012-2015. He was the 2004 Outstanding Career and Technical Educator for the state of Washington, and a national finalist for the Association for Career and Technical Education 2005 Outstanding Career + Technical Educator. The KAPPAN published his article about a meaningful high school diploma in 2010.

He has returned to his countercultural roots, currently writing a book, Disruptive Play: The Trickster in Politics and Culture, about how play and the creative impulse could transform our society.

Show Links:

• Visit Shepherd Siegel's website

Some people train for a sport from the time they're very young and become elite. Some people don't even begin to get active until much later in life but become high level competitors. This week's guest is here to remind us to never underestimate what we can accomplish regardless of age, even those of us who've spent most of our lives as couch potatoes.

Our guest this week is Fitness Trainer and Coach Robin Legat, host of the Seasoned Athlete podcast. It's your home for stories, inspiration, motivation, training tips and more directly from elite athletes from a wide variety of sports who all share one common bond: they are all over 40 years old. We're here to prove one story at a time that age does NOT have to prevent you from achieving bold athletic and fitness goals, and living your best life.

Robin herself is a "late in life athlete". After spending most of her life as a self-proclaimed music and theater nerd, Robin discovered the full-contact sport of roller derby at age 28. She played for eleven years before retiring in 2014. She has now found a new sport to channel her athletic energy - obstacle course racing. She has run nine Spartan Races since her first race in December 2015, earned her first Trifecta in 2016 and has recently begun competing at the elite level. Robin's goal is to podium in the Masters Division in the coming years - sooner if she has any say in the situation.

As a trainer, Robin unlocks the full athletic potential for busy professionals in Los Angeles and beyond who want to push their physical and mental limits and live their healthiest and most awesome life. And she has a lot to say on the subject of play.

The links I promised you:

• Listen to Robin's podcast, Seasoned Athlete
• Visit Robin's website to find out more about her coaching and training

Free play, also known as child-directed play, is becoming more and more restricted for American kids. We've talked on PlayGrounding many times about the importance of free play, how it's where many children first encounter risk and freedom. It's where they first begin to encounter "otherness," where they find ways to work together with kids of various ages and backgrounds in an undefined arena. Play helps us cope in the realm of personal relationships, helps us develop innovative minds and healthy bodies.

But today we're taking a step back from the benefits of play to us as individuals and diving into what it could mean for our society, for the health of our democracy, when we restrict free play in the lives of our children.

Pratik Chougule, an executive editor at The American Conservative, wrote an article entitled Is American Childhood Creating an Authoritarian Society? I was immediately fascinated by the idea that there could be political implications to a lack of free play.

In this episode, we'll discuss studies showing possible connections between child rearing practices and the likelihood that those children will tolerate authoritarian forms of government. We'll also talk about how free play helps us learn to handle opposing ideas and work toward consensus.

I hope you enjoy the episode and as always, please feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments or by contacting me to keep the conversation going.

Pratik Chougule is an executive editor at The American Conservative. He was previously the managing editor at The National Interest and served as the policy coordinator on the 2016 presidential campaign of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Chougule has contributed to projects for the Trilateral Commission, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and Baron Public Affairs. He has assisted a number of senior officials with their memoirs, including former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. From 2008-2009, Chougule was a Bush appointee at the State Department in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. Chougule graduated from Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Do you remember what it was like to be a child at the playground? When you first arrive and see the equipment, the sand, the grass? I remember that feeling well – the desire to jump, crawl, run, do summer saults and cartwheels. But somewhere along the line, that feeling began to fade. For many of us, our enthusiasm for physical play went out with our teddy bears and blankies.

I think many adults have these memories and, dare I say, even the desire to be able to play that way again, but our bodies are very different than they were when we were children. If we tried to crawl, jump, do somersaults and cartwheels, we're afraid we'd end up in the ER. But JJ and Brian would like to challenge us all to give our bodies another chance to embrace physical play again.

In this second episode of the "Can Fitness Really Be Fun?" series, I've invited personal trainer JJ Kovacevich to join me and Brian Bristol to explore how adults can re-learn the basic movements children take for granted. We also discuss the role of shame and how it can keep us from even trying in the first place.

JJ Kovacevich is a movement junkie with a fierce commitment to body positivity, and she wants to help you find ways to celebrate what your moving body is capable of! She has a diverse movement background as a professional dancer, vinyasa yoga instructor, and circus artist and is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and a Certified Functional Strength Coach (with additional certifications in modalities such as TRX and kettlebells). Sessions with JJ are tailored to fit each unique person's needs and abilities, and her passions include working with folks new to movement practices and those working with challenging relationships to body image, food, and exercise.

Show Links:

• Send Brian your ideas and feedback
• Learn more about JJ Kovacevich
• MovNat

Fitness fun? For most of my life, I would have answered NO WAY to that question. It's the one challenge I've had to my belief that whatever is true about play for children is also true for adults. Children play very differently from adults. They play with their whole selves, their imaginations, their creativity and especially their bodies.

Physical play comes naturally to children. They run and jump, swing, slide, do cartwheels. We talk a big game here on PlayGrounding about adults and play, but what about play through movement? Is "exercise" an unpleasant necessity after you reach a certain age? Or can grownups experience the same kind of joy a child does when they run out onto a playground?

This episode is the first in a series seeking to answer the question, can fitness really be fun? I mean really? Fitness for adults seems to be a series of measured movements meant to affect the body in specific ways – to help with strength, stamina and to help us lose weight. To me, that's always seemed more like work than play. We do specific activities to achieve specific results. But not everyone gets results, even when we try to follow the rules.

And this is only one piece of a larger problem: our culture's epidemic of mental illnesses like body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

Brian Bristol, a small business owner whose worked in outdoor sports for over a decade, wants to tackle this problem head-on, but he needs your help. It's not as easy as it might seem to bring fitness and play together in one place – especially for adults. He wants to open an alternative indoor playground filled with movement-based activities and programs so youth and adults can experience play together in a way that is healthy, productive AND fun. He's on the PlayGrounding Podcast seeking YOUR insights and ideas to re-think play and fitness so that his dream can come to life.

You'll be hearing more from Brian in future episodes. He'll be joining me to interview some other fitness and play experts as we go through the series to find out what's already being done to make movement fun instead of painful for those of us who don't already gravitate toward the fitness world.

Links:

• Submit your ideas to join the conversation!
• Visit Brian's Website, Firefly, to Rethink Play
• MovNat

Did you ever stop to think that you have what it takes to be an inventor? If you're a human being, you are by your very nature an innate problem solver and creative thinker. The question is, are you tapping into that potential?

Tricia Edwards wants to change the stereotype of WHO invents and invite us all to BE inventive. Her work not only demystifies invention, she reminds us that the next great invention can come from any one of us, from a single mom in the midwest, to a third-grader living in the developing world.

On this episode of PlayGrounding, you'll learn how developing a playful mindset can help you become a more creative problem solver, whether you're inventing the next version of the lightbulb or creating more efficient ways to do your job.

Tricia Edwards is the Head of Education for the Lemelson Center. She develops the conceptual framework for the Center's educational programs and activities, including Spark!Lab, a hands-on invention lab, and develops related instructional materials and evaluation instruments. She is currently working to broaden Spark!Lab's impact beyond the National Mall, working with partner institutions across the country to integrate Spark!Lab activities into their programs, and has overseen installations of Spark!Labs in Anchorage, Detroit, Kansas City, Reno, and Greenville, SC, with additional sites scheduled to open. She has led Spark!Lab projects in India and Ukraine, and will oversee the installation of a "pop up" Spark!Lab in London in July 2017. In collaboration with Smithsonian Enterprises and Faber-Castell, she launched the Spark!Lab Inventive Creativity™ consumer product line to extend Spark!Lab's unique approach to hands on learning to homes everywhere.

Links:

• Learn more about Spark!Lab, where museum visitors become inventors!
• Check out Spark!Labs Try This At Home
• Learn more about the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation