Play: Getting Ready for #GSPD2017

Last year, Hamish Brewer (@brewerhm - a Principal friend in Virginia) introduced me to the FiSH Philosophy and I fell in love with its principles:

• Choose Your Attitude
• Make Someone's Day
• Be There
• Play

Play. Nick Proud (@Nick_Proud - my neighboring Principal in Iowa) Tweeted something the other day about how we (educators) shouldn't take ourselves so seriously. Agreed. In fact, I would advocate that we should be finding ways to make Play a routine part of our day. Most of us know that #KidsDeserveIt. But  Adults Deserve It, too.

Global School Play Day is taking place on Wednesday, February 1st. At Van Allen, we are asking each classroom to commit to at least one hour of Play. Linked is the note that we are sharing in preparation for Global School Play Day.

In preparation for this event, we asked teachers to Play. At our weekly Monday Meeting (this afternoon), I set games, and puppets, and puzzles out on the tables and wrote the following message that is pictured to the right.

Those were the directions that I gave. The intended outcome was that this would allow teachers to get a small sampling of what Global School Play Day could/would look like in their classrooms. My hope was that this would be 1) fun, 2) relaxing, 3) an opportunity to enJOY the company of colleagues in a setting that isn't the norm for us as educators, and 4) a preview for what to expect in classrooms on Wednesday.

And as one staff said to me on her way out of the room, "That was fun." Mission accomplished.