FOSTERING DELIBERATE ENGAGEMENT IN AN EARLY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT: COUNTERACTING PASSIVE PLAY

Williette Zigbuo

Background

I am a lifelong early childhood educator who began my teaching career in my home country of Liberia in West Africa. In 1993, I moved to the United States to study education and earned a Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education. After I started teaching, I decided to expand my knowledge by earning a Master’s degree in Special Education. Through the years, I have had the opportunity to work in diverse contexts. I love to support children in their growth and development and have had the opportunity to work with a range of students, including high-risk students at a College Laboratory and school with mostly privileged students at competitive independent schools. Thirteen years ago I joined the amazing staff at Carolina Friends School as an Early School teacher at the Campus Early School. At Campus Early School, we work with a multi-age group of children using a modified High Scope curriculum that is deeply inspired by our Quaker Values. Through these experiences, I have learned that every child, regardless of context, has unique gifts that they can develop through play, exploration, and creativity.

I have also observed that few experiences satisfy and fulfill children more than being able to express themselves openly and without judgment. This nurtures a child’s self-efficacy and expands their abilities to problem solve and engage with their environments in new ways. Through creativity, children try out new ideas and practice skills through imaginary games and scenarios. Because of this link between creative, open-ended play and learning, we often call play the work of childhood.

I was recently surprised to observe novel changes in the character of my students’ play. Since my students have returned to in-person learning after at-home learning during the pandemic, I have observed them being more cautious and hesitant about initiating play. Students have been more likely to seek adult direction for prescriptive play and less likely to engage in open-ended creative play. Given the central importance of this to learning, I decided to intentionally investigate the trends I was seeing in order to support my students.

With the support of my colleagues and head teacher, I initiated an action plan to help our students regain their confidence in engaging in and initiating open-ended creative play.

Exploration/Learning

My colleagues and I started taking notes of our observations. We saw that during unoccupied play, children’s behavior often seemed random, without specific goals and with no particular narrative to their play. Even when provided with a wide range of creative materials and plenty of opportunities, often their attention spans could not be sustained. Children seemed to gravitate to games based on screen-based narratives that demonstrated violent interaction.

We listened intently to what children were saying and provided activities that were based on the children’s interests and ideas, yet children often engaged with material for only a minimal amount of time. On occasion, children needed both a step-by-step process on how to use materials and adult scaffolding throughout simple activities. We had to build in much more time to talk through ideas and nurture children’s curiosity than we had in the past. We wondered if the behavior we were seeing in our students was exhibited in children attending other Quaker early childhood programs.

I led an effort to reach out to other early school teachers to see if they were experiencing similar trends with their students. We identified three Quaker Early Schools in and out of our region for observation and data collection. After several hours of observation and discussions with classroom teachers, art and gym teachers at three schools, we found that our colleagues were seeing similar scenarios and patterns with their students.

After analyzing my notes from these many observations and discussions, I saw that students, 1) struggled more to initiate, engage, and sustain play activities, 2) demonstrated short attention spans, 3) needed step by step instruction for novel tasks, 4) frequently sought out teacher directed play, 5) were cautious and took minimum risk in exploring materials, and 6) gravitated toward screen-based games.

After a year of these observations, we made intentional changes to our classroom and playground set up. We introduced more natural materials, river rocks, wooden sorting sets, wooden play dough sets, natural fine motor sets, and sorting stones, amongst others. Our playground was set up with various open-ended materials for tinkering, sensory, and other exploration activities. Our goal was to support students in overcoming the deficits they had exhibited in the 2021-22 school year.

In 2023-2024, I observed that the children were more excited and eager to engage creatively with materials. They often played cooperatively with peers and required less teacher-initiated activities. They were curious about materials, and their pretend play was filled with narratives. We observed less teacher attention-seeking and more cooperative and symbolic play with peers. For example, a group of children collectively transferred a hay bale into a wagon and took turns going on a hayride. After days of hayrides children tore the hay bale apart and scattered it on the

ground, placed balls on the hay, sat on the ball and pretended to lay eggs on their nest. Some of the same children who had run in circles around the playground the year before continued to do so, but this time they ran with their jackets hung on their heads as pretend capes. Children also built obstacle courses where they created levels to challenge themselves. They were able to scaffold and work on activities for an extended period.

After this intentional observation and analysis of revised approaches at my school, I decided to follow up with my colleagues at the three Quaker early childhood programs I had visited and inquired if they were finding that their interventions were improving things for their students. Happily, my colleagues shared that they also were seeing children engaging more creatively and taking more initiative in play. I sent out a questionnaire to collect data on what each school had done; specifically, I wanted to know what seemed to have had a positive impact, and what wasn’t effective.

Next Steps

After collecting and analyzing the data from observations, conversations, and the accommodation strategies questionnaire, I plan to share valuable insights across all participants about the most effective strategies for teaching children how to engage in exploratory play. Moving forward, I would like to lead an iterative process where participants can continue to build upon our shared insights, strategies, share ideas and resources across locations. My goal is for us all to have effective strategies in helping children rebuild their creative abilities and self-initiative skills after the pandemic or any other potential learning interruptions they may experience.

WILLIETTE ZIGBUO

Childhood Educator and Lead TeacherCarolina Friends SchoolDurham, NC

Since my early years, I’ve harbored a deep-seated desire to become an early childhood teacher. My unwavering aspiration has be to provide each child with the same enriching early childhood experience that I cherished. I learned invaluable qualities, including patience, creatively, story-telling, fexibility, and compassion, from my own teachers. For the pass 27 years, Iv’e striven to instill these virtues and create similar experiences within my own classroom, bringing Immeasurable joy through the laughter and delight of my young pupil. As an early childhood educator brimming with curiosity, excitement, and an unquenchable thirst for continued learning.

I felt both humble and proud to be a part of the Friends Council for Engaging Leadership Institute. I eagerly anticipate using the knowledge and insights gained from this experience to foster both personal and professional growth at Carolina Friends School.