Playing to Learn in Middle School

By Ryan Feeley, Assistant Head of School/Director of Middle School

Afew years ago, I was at my desk as morning recess had ended. The students had headed off to class, the building was quiet, and I settled into catching up on emails and diving into schedule work. About 10 minutes passed when suddenly a student emerged from behind my office couch, exclaiming, “I won!”

I was startled. Truth be told, my colleagues probably heard a scream coming from my office. After the initial shock, I realized what had happened. We have a very playful group of fifth graders that year who regularly engaged in hide-and-seek during morning recess. The intensity was impressive, and the location of the games often spanned inside and outside the building, with students becoming ever more creative with their hiding spots. Because my office has two doors on either side, it made for a strategic location since a student could easily run in either direction if they sensed they were about to be found by the “seekers.” Very quickly, the closet and the space behind the couch in my office became choice hiding spots.

After my heart rate returned to normal, I sent the student to class. I then found myself reflecting on how he’d become so absorbed in the imaginative world of hide-and-seek that the real world of responsibility and commitment of class seemed to disappear completely.

Over the years, I’ve seen many similar instances of students becoming deeply immersed in play. This phenomenon isn’t reserved for our younger Middle Schoolers; on the contrary, our seventh and eighth graders can occupy themselves with play for very long stretches as well. Just this past fall, a group of students were in the Great Room because a sub had accidentally dismissed them from class a few minutes early. They asked if they could play ping-pong, and I told them that other classes were still in session and the noise would be disruptive. Undaunted, they quickly leaped into a match of “mime ping-pong” — no paddles, no ball, no noise, yet still some incredible action and intensity. Watching the students wave their hands back and forth, shuffling left to right at opposite ends of the table, anyone would have thought they were in the midst of a championship-level showdown. I saw beads of sweat forming on one student’s brow.

Traditionally, schools have drawn distinct lines between learning and play. Many folks my age and older grew up in an environment where the classroom was where kids while swing sets, fields, and climbing structures were where kids played . Classrooms were solemn spaces, laughter was considered disruptive, and students who moved too much were tagged as troublemakers.

Educators today understand that learning and play are intertwined to the point that they’re nearly indistinguishable. Middle School students learn best when they have opportunities to be active, engage their senses, and make connections between new concepts and the world around them.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve observed our students learning at play by building sleds from cardboard boxes, testing them, and making modifications based on the results. They were absolutely playing outside, but they were also simultaneously engaged in the work of design, prototyping, experimentation, and revision. They were also collaborating in groups and practicing critical skills of communication and compromise. I’ve also seen Middle Schoolers create imaginative “communities” in the bushes outside our building, where they established complex systems of government and sophisticated pinecone and acorn currencies. In these playful moments, our students learn to negotiate, address challenges creatively, and question the status quo, while developing new solutions to age-old problems.

For me, what might be even more noteworthy about play in a school environment is the fact that our kids take the reins. In a world where so much of our students’ time is structured and mapped out for them, opportunities to engage in unstructured play at school have become one of the few times in a Middle Schoolers’ life when they’re not told exactly what to do. The choices are in their hands, and we see time after time that they’re capable of impressive invention and creativity. They have opportunities to navigate complicated social dynamics, and they feel a sense of autonomy and ownership that they don’t experience much in their daily lives. The benefits are clear; from the social-emotional impact to the potential for cognitive growth. We need to see play for what it truly is — not a break from learning, but rather a valuable extension of it.