Raising Wildlings
Raising Wildlings
Bringing Play into Schools with Sarah Aiono
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Today we’re chatting to Sarah Aiono, international speaker, coach, teacher, researcher, CEO of Longworth Education and one of Aotearoa New Zealand's leading play pedagogy experts all about the biological need for all humans to play, the need for us as parents and educators to slow down childhood, how the early academic pushdown is harming children and how Sarah and her passionate team help teachers implement evidence-based play pedagogy in their everyday classroom practices.
👉 Sarah shares
- Her journey to starting Longworth Education
- About play advocacy
- If teenagers do still biologically need play
- About the Play Pedagogy Philosophy
- That childhood needs to slow down
- That childhood is not preparation for adulthood
- Why we must challenge the rhetoric about meeting certain milestones
- About the biological imperative that play is for children
- Why play outside is so critical for children's development
- How we can advocate for our children's strengths and passions, ensuring educators and schools recognise the diversity of children's knowledge and skills.
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👉 Guest Details
Sarah is an international speaker, coach, teacher, researcher, CEO and one of Aotearoa New Zealand's leading play pedagogy experts. She has extensive experience as a classroom teacher, having taught students from all year levels, with a particular focus on those with challenging behaviour and learning needs. She is passionate about helping teachers implement evidence-based play pedagogy with fidelity in their everyday classroom practices. She is a postgraduate course advisor, Neuro fellow and HundrED Academy member and hosts the popular podcast series Play Conversations. She is also 8 years into her journey as a part of a worldschooling family, alongside her husband and two teenage children.
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Welcome back to Raising Wildlings — where we explore raising brave, resilient, curious kids who feel at home outdoors.
If you're an educator ready to bring more nature play and child-led learning into your Early Years program, our Bush Kindy Professional Development Workshops are for you. You'll walk away with practical tools, risk-benefit strategies, and the confidence to take learning outside in a way that's safe, meaningful, and genuinely exciting for
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Today we're chatting to Sarah Ionore, international speaker, coach, teacher, researcher, CEO of Longworth Education, and one of Otarawa's New Zealand's leading play pedagogy experts, all about the biological need for all humans to play, the need for us as parents and educators to slow down childhood, how the early academic pushdown is harming children, and how Sarah and her passionate team help teachers implement evidence-based play pedagogy in their everyday classroom practices. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we record today, the Kabi-Kabi and Gubby Gubby people. We recognise their continued connection to the land and waters of this beautiful place. We recognise Aboriginal people as the original custodians of this land and acknowledge that they have never ceded sovereignty. We respect all Gubby Gubby elders, ancestors and emerging elders, and all First Nations people listening today.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education, stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.
NickiEach week we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.
SPEAKER_00We're your hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in, and join us on this next adventure.
NickiHello and welcome to the Raising Wildlings Podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Farrell. Welcome to the show, Sarah. Thank you so much for joining us. How has your day been?
SPEAKER_01Wow, it's been busy. We're hitting afternoon now here in New Zealand, and um there's a bit of wild weather going around which we're coping through at the moment, but no, it's it's good. It's nice to be warm and dry and and uh well looked after.
NickiA bit different to my, I think I'm still in my 20s, 20 degrees Celsius. I'm still in my jumper, I'm pretty cold.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Sun's out. Sounds possible tropical from where we are at the moment. So yeah. Exactly.
NickiSo to start us off, Sarah, can you tell us all about Longworth Education, what it is, what you do there, and a little bit about why you decided to start it.
SPEAKER_01So Longworth Education, we are a professional development consultancy based in New Zealand. We work around the country. We've got uh 10 facilitators who work um under the umbrella of Longworth. And our our mission really is to advocate for and ensure that play is occurring in our primary school contexts as a pedagogical tool. So this is more than just play at morning tea and lunchtime. This is using play as a teaching and learning tool. Um, and particularly that teachers understand it from an evidence base. Um, and really um how that came about was twofold, and how Longworth came to be was twofold. So, my co-director is actually my mum, uh Linda Cheer, and she's had a background in education, she's a teacher for a very long time, and is a little bit of a quiet rebel in her practice. Um, and towards the end of her teaching career, um, really started to struggle with some of the requirements that were going on teachers and on learners around assessment and around, you know, pigeonholing kids and prioritizing types of learning over other types of learning, that sort of thing. And so she was really interested in investigating the forest school movement. She's got a real passion for uh learning outside in nature and and learning in a developmentally appropriate way. And so her sort of retirement pathway was to set up a forest school, as you do when deciding to lead education. Um, and so very lucky where we are. Um, I live next to my mum and we share a property that has access to a forest. And so she started a forest school and ran that forest school for children age five who were not their parents didn't really want them in formal school setting at that time, um, but they uh still wanted that kind of curricular learning going on. Um, and so she was involved in that at the time as I was involved in working within special needs education here in New Zealand, and I'd moved out of the classroom as a classroom teacher to work primarily supporting teachers of that had children who had severe or violent behaviour in their classrooms, um children who were upsetting the apple cart every every chance they could, not doing what they were supposed to. And my role was an itinerant support worker to go in and and advise teachers on how to best manage these kids. Every time I got called into a classroom, I would be asking, would I behave like this in this classroom if I wasn't interested in being here? You know, what's what's going on here? Is that is it is it realistic to expect the child will sit and do what they're told in this situation? And more often than not, the answer for me was no, actually, I'd I'd be finding entertainment elsewhere, or I'd be finding, you know, doing things in a different way. Um, and so I really started to question how we can help children grow these social and emotional competencies in classrooms, how can we help them uh manage themselves better in classrooms, and so on. And that led me to undertaking my doctoral research, which led me down the path of play pedagogy and looking at evidence-based practices around play, developmental theory, and so on. So, my mum and I, you can imagine the conversations around the dinner table. I would love to be at that dinner table, actually. That's that's my idea of the fun time. The family would leave us to it. Um, but yeah, we we sort of kind of got these ideas around, well, look, we can't we know what works. There's so much evidence out there around how children learn and what learning should look like. Why don't our classrooms look like this? And why aren't we challenging this? And so we decided that we might run a workshop and we ran a workshop and that filled up, and we ran another one and that filled up, and and then slowly we started expanding out to do in-school work. Um, and the in-school work is based on the outcomes of my doctoral research, um, in which we use a method called practice-based coaching, where we have a set of evidence-based play practices that we use to guide teachers around building their confidence in using play pedagogically and aligning that with their curricular expectations, assessment expectations, and so on. So, most of our work now is being in a classroom alongside a teacher, helping them gently shift their practice so that it's aligned more with how we know children learn.
NickiUgh, I mean, our listeners can't see this, but I am feeling really almost emotional about this because as a teacher, and I'm sure so many other educators listening to this, it's like, I want to do this, but I don't know how I don't have feel like I have the permission. So you coming in and giving them the evidence-based permission is so exciting to me because it feels like the early years do play pretty well in New Zealand. It's a bit of a mix here in Australia. Some do it incredibly well, and some uh there's a real academic push down. So, how do we maintain this advocacy for play once children enter school, particularly the upper primary and high school years? And I guess in this question is the bigger questions. Do these children still biologically need play? I just want to hear this yelled out, really.
SPEAKER_01Um can I reframe it to say that humans need by biologically, humans need play? I'm doing it. You know, we all need play. We do.
NickiAnd we forget that and this academic pushdown smothers it, uh, not just for well, especially for the the students and the learners, but teachers who want to do it as well. So how do we maintain this advocacy in schools?
SPEAKER_01Um I think there's a couple of points. Firstly, one of the things that um there's well, there seems to have been a shift in New Zealand since we've been doing this work where there's now an acceptance that the early years can extend into sort of age six, seven, right? So we know that there's that sort of three to seven age band, and here in New Zealand, there's the general expectation you start school at five. Um, and those classrooms now are predominantly starting to look more like play-based classrooms, and there's less of the contrast between early childhood and that new entrant year one level classroom. Um I think all the things that that's the case. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we do we do have curricular expectations that differ from our early years sector. So there is the requirement to teach reading and writing and maths, but that can be done alongside play, and there's very much a way that that can happen quite naturally, where we don't um influence children's love of learning and that love of literacy and numeracy in the pursuit of getting kids to read or write, but we also can ensure that our children are building a disposition as a learner and are growing some of those key competencies and executive functioning skills that make them a confident and capable learner later on in life, right? What we're finding is because that acceptance has started to happen, we're getting teachers at a year three, four level, so age seven, eight, kind of going, huh, you know, what's this plaything all about? I'm getting some different thinkers coming through to me now. I'm getting children who are more autonomous, more independent, they're more creative or curious in their thinking. Um, they don't sort of just sit down and and wait for me to tell them what to do, you know, they use their initiative. So, how do we keep this going? So that's sort of how it's grown in a lot of schools. What we do find is a barrier for our teachers of older students is the conceptual idea of play and this question around well, how does play look for older kids? And that's something that we address in the sense that we say to uh teachers of older children, stop thinking of play as a behavior. So stop thinking of play as they're playing with play-doh or they're playing with blocks or they're in the sandpit. Play is a motivation, play is a way that we explore the world and a way that we make sense of the world and we try things out in a way that there's not huge ramifications, right? Um, and so for our older kids, um, particularly um those that are sort of maybe typically developing, so we also talk about developmental stages rather than chronological ages. Thank you. Um so we might have 10, we might still have 10-year-olds who quite happily play in the sandpit like a three-year-old would, you know, and that's okay, that's where they're at. But for our typically developing children, a lot of that play starts to become more internalized and it's more um, you know, abstract in thinking and it's more social and and collaborative with other people, and we start getting sort of fantastical stories that relate to play, and and we try out different roles in society and our pretense and things like that. So it actually becomes more complex. If I could go back in the classroom, that would be the age I'd want to be with kids in play, because to me, it's got so many possibilities that we can um help children explore the world in a way that's really playful and and build on their interests and their experiences in that in that framework. So, yes, they must play, they've got to keep playing. Um, and it is possible to keep doing it alongside curriculum.
NickiOh, that's so exciting to me. And and you know, sadly it is it is a remembering, isn't it? We were just talking about being election years and worrying about things might change and these cycles of governments and cycles of curriculum that change. But can you talk to us about some of the schools you have been working with on using this play pedagogy philosophy in their schools?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um I'm thinking of a school in particular that um they're a new build school. So this is a school that's brand new, has been set up due to um population growth in the area. And um what's been lovely is that they've had the time to set up their vision, um, understand how they're going to set up their strategic um pathway and what they are wanting the outcome for their learners to be once these learners have moved through the school setting. Um, and I think that that first of all is the really critical point if you're looking at a school-wide approach to this, is that there's a really strong connection to why are we doing this? Why do we think this is important? And what what is it that we want our children to get from this approach? And when that's really strong in a school, that's then used to filter everything that comes at you as at a school. You know, all these things that you're supposed to do, or you've got to try, or the next great greatest thing, being able to go, actually, does that fit? Is that does that align with what we want for our kids? Um, is a really important first step. Um, and then generally when we work with a school, when we first go into the school, we always do what's called a strengths and needs analysis. Uh, and that involves us going in and observing the school. We look at the learning environment, we watch teacher behaviour, uh, we watch that very specifically. Uh, we look at overall systems to do with planning and assessment and communication with parents. Um, and we also look for counterproductive practices. So, practices where a teacher might say, Oh, I, you know, I really believe in play, I really believe in children learning to be self-managers, and yet they're doing all these things that prevent the the skills on self-management being, you know, nurtured and enhanced. What might some of those things look like, just out of curiosity? Well, micromanaging for a start is one. You know, if if children are going to learn to manage themselves, they have to manage themselves, which means that sometimes they have to get things wrong and they have to make mistakes and they have to do things differently, and um, they have to experience when they might have thought that they were managing themselves and they didn't quite get it right, and and so they have to reassess that. Um, we we do a lot of um big talk in education, you know, aspirational talk around these competencies that children must have. You know, if you want children to be creative, then don't put templates in front of them. Don't tell them what colours or what things need to look like. Um, you know, if we want them to think about problem solving, give them problems to solve and step out of the way, you know. Um, otherwise they will never trust their own ability to do it themselves and they'll always look for someone else to do it.
NickiWe see it in the different schools that come down even to forest school, the children that are obviously allowed to step out of line and test and experiment and fail and make mistakes, and exactly that, the ones that look to the teachers all the time to see if what they're doing is okay. Such a stark contrast.
SPEAKER_01It's and it's hard, it's really hard. I know as a teacher, as a mum, I've got two kids at home who I've raised like this. And right now, you know, sometimes I wish I hadn't taught you to be so accumulated and to, you know, voice what they think they should be doing because I just feel like I just want them to do what they're told to do. But, you know, as a teacher, when you've got 30 in the class, that you're trying to create an environment or a culture where that's acceptable, um, it's about having children understand my voice matters, what I think matters. The way I deliver that information is important, and I need to be respectful and I need to understand that if I want to be heard, there's a way that I deliver it. But actually, what I've got to say is important. And I think that's something that we miss in education because we're so focused on we've got to get them to know this and we've got to get them there, and they've got to cover this, and you know, and we lose the voice in there as well of children.
NickiHow does assessment affect this culture to be able to be creative, test, trial, fail, experiment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So one of the things that is a big well is coming in here. So we're under a curriculum refresh at the moment, which is very exciting because um the refresh is is looking really promising.
SPEAKER_02Oh, good.
SPEAKER_01Um and and a methodology that we've been working with schools for a long time now, which is something that's coming into the curriculum, which we're equally excited about, is this idea of what we call notice, recognize, and respond. And this is a form of assessment which is it informs responsive teaching. So when we are um taking it from a point of noticing what children are inquiring about or are curious about or trying to do or create, recognizing that, and the recognition is the piece to the curriculum. So rather than saying at the start, I'm going to teach creativity, we're all going to do this. It's hilarious, even hearing it worded like that. I'm going to notice when children are being creative, and I'm going to recognize that that's creativity, and that will inform my response. And my response might be to enable more opportunities for them to express this creativity. It might be to resource them more for creativity, it might be to throw a spanner in the works and see how they fix this with some creativity. You know, it it's that notice, recognize, response cycle helps us um assess and plan. And I think we sometimes get assessment and reporting mixed up.
NickiYes.
SPEAKER_01And yes, assessment should be our primary tool as the educators to inform how we teach.
NickiBut you'd have to trust teachers for that, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_01Oh, you would, wouldn't you? You'd think they might be a body of professionals that might know what they're doing, right? You would think, wouldn't you? Yeah. Whereas I think where we've got stuck is this requirement to report on and report on kids and be accountable to what we're doing. And yes, there is an element of that that is required because we're dealing with children and and everyone needs to know we're on track. But that's got too loud in this piece. And it's informing how we teach when actually assessment should inform how we teach. And that assessment should be related to student need here and now. What do they where are they at now? And what's the next little piece that I can do to support their learning progress?
NickiThat gives teachers so much of the flexibility back and to be able, you know, we talk about it all the time. We have to differentiate, you have to differentiate, but we have not been given the trust and the flexibility to be able to do that because of the reporting, exactly what you've said, rather than trusting our teachers to be able to assess. If our teachers can't assess a student from observations at this point, we need to tear apart our university degrees and start again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and look, it's raised a really interesting challenge here in New Zealand. So when uh we, when our current curriculum, the one that's being refreshed at the moment, when that was introduced here in New Zealand back in 2006, it was recognized as quite a world-leading document in the sense that it was competencies-based. So we still have our learning areas, our subject areas, but it was competencies-based in the sense that it, you know, it talked about things like ecological sustainability. This is back, you know, nearly 20 years ago. Um, you know, talking about self-managing, talking about um creative, confident learners and so on. So there was some amazing language in that document. What happened though was we had a change of government, and that government brought in national standards and the standardized assessment movement, which meant that a whole bunch of teachers had their professional development needs redirected from learning this new curriculum into how to respond to standardized assessments. And as a result, we've got a bunch of teachers who don't understand that curriculum and certainly don't know how to look for that curriculum in children's learning and in their play. And so we're now finding ourselves as consultants standing alongside teachers watching children's play and talking to them about the curriculum we're seeing in the play and how it relates to science, how it relates to the arts or social sciences or technology. And that's a piece that teachers need help with because they haven't had that support to really connect with it in that way. So we use notice, recognise, and respond, but we also have to help our teachers know what to recognize and see it from a child lens rather than this top-down, I'm going to teach this, you know, um, and know that I've covered it in the curriculum.
NickiIt sounds like you're also breaking apart direct subject teaching. Is this kind of a more because of the play? Is it almost not a play, a project-based type learning, but I'm loving the sound of that that we're recognizing that you don't just have to learn English and perhaps through play we can check all the boxes.
SPEAKER_01Well, funnily enough, learning doesn't fit itself nice and neatly into subjects outside of a school setting. You know, we're quite funny. We don't go around going, oh gosh, I'm learning some English right now. Umly English. You know, when I'm reading the, you know, um instruction manual on the TV or something like that. It's it's you know, this is the this and and and age segregation are the two things that schools give us that actually run counter to how humans learn. And we certainly work with teachers. I mean, basically what we say to teachers is you have to find a balance in your day between the things that you know you have to teach that children won't naturally explore in their play, um, that require direct instruction. So we know, for example, that reading requires direct instruction. And while there will be some children that might naturally pick up a book and learn to read without a whole lot of help, there are a lot of children that need help to learn to read and understand the mechanics of reading, right? We've got children that have to learn numbers and they might not learn numbers without that help. So we have a balance of that direct instruction. But then when we offer children the autonomy to self-direct, and we've got a very well-resourced environment to do that, because that's key, it is, then we will see the rest of the curriculum out in their play. And our job is to help them see it too, so that when they are um mixing in the mud kitchen or making potions that they understand they're being chemists and that they're doing early chemistry and they're exploring how materials mix and change with different contexts and different additives and ingredients. They're learning to hypothesize, they're learning to um, you know, notice results and change them. And, you know, there's there's an enormous amount of the curriculum every day in children's play. It's just up to us to see it and help them see it.
NickiAnd it does in those early years, uh at least in Australia's curriculum, it maps so easily when you take it out of its box. And I think that's the biggest problem, like exactly like you said, that teachers are going to have is having to just undo, unschool themselves in the learning that they've had.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
NickiSo talking about childhood, why why is play so important in uh in in I guess elongating it or not? I don't want to even say protecting it, because um I do think sometimes that can be taken as an over sheltering, and play doesn't shelter children. No. So can you talk to us about that?
SPEAKER_01Um I think well, I I was recently at a at a conference, the the uh international play conference in um Glasgow, and the IPA uh world uh president, one of her first statements was that play is a biological imperative. It is something that if our children do not have, they will be unwell. And this is unwell in the sense of their physical development, their social development, emotional, sensory, mental health. Um, you know, play is the thing we had long before the institution of school. Um, and as a human species, that was how we developed was through play. Um and it looked different for every culture and and the context in which humans existed in before schools, but that is how we've advanced our knowledge. Um, and so when we start to think about things like our increasing rates of mental health um, you know, conditions in children um and young adolescents, there is a direct um correlation, I wouldn't say causation, but they've certainly linked that in a correlation sense to declining um access to play, um, declining access to playing with peers. Um, and we know now that actually the brain wires up through play. Um there are parts of the brain that just don't wire up if children don't play. Um, so neurologically, the brain is wired to develop through play. So it's more than just a nice to have, it's something that our bodies require in order to be healthy.
NickiIt's such an underrated, you know, you know, we talk about it like it's a luxury, like it's an add-on. Like you said, but when children become unwell when they don't get it, you know, we know that that's a necessity. So how then do we challenge that rhetoric that's going, I don't, you know, no child left behind, and well, my child's falling behind, they're not ready, they're not keeping up, because this is the bane of my existence, even in high school, was I was like, they're just they're not ready, and that's okay. They're not developmentally ready for me to throw Shakespeare at them right now because I actually need to work on just learning to read right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
NickiHow do how do we challenge that and keep that conversation going?
SPEAKER_01Well, my first response is behind what? Yes. Tell me what they're behind, ready for what. And who developed them? Who came up with these things? These are very arbitrary standards or benchmarks or levels or whatever we're putting beside children that are designed. Let's face it, the curriculum is designed in order to help adults know how to teach children and what to teach them.
NickiYes, not for the benefit of children.
SPEAKER_01No, I mean, generally we can look at it, and I know, you know, again, our New Zealand curriculum generally aligns pretty well with typically developing children, right? So if you don't have an issue with your development, you come from a lovely home that's nurturing and caring, you've got everything you need, you're tracking along fine, then hey, you know, quite possibly you're going to walk through school and meet these targets that are set.
NickiI would say ours doesn't in those early years. Wow, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And this is the other thing that I think is quite scary too, because certainly we're noticing it in in the interpretation of the curriculum that when we are working with our senior teachers of senior children, so I'm talking about teachers of maybe 10, 11, 12, 13-year-olds in the primary school sector, um, there's because there's this feeling like we have to get them ready for high school, or in our ready for intermediate, which is the the sort of 10, 11, 12-year age group, um, that they're pitching too high. They pitch way too high. And when you look at the developmental science and how the brain is working at that stage, a lot of those children are still not ready for abstract thought without the assistance of concrete materials. So they have to be manipulating things, playing with things in order to help the brain bridge the gap to abstract thought. Um, it's not until they get to high school, if they're typically developing, that they can begin to think abstractly. But what do we ask our kids of this age? You know, come up with a project on how to solve world peace or, you know, fix the oil problem, or you know, we we because our intention is we want them to really think about these big things going on and be a global citizen and research this. But many of them haven't left their backyard, you know, they haven't been around the sun long enough to know what these bigger to to really have a grasp on them and really understand what's going on and and the impact of these things. So yeah, we've got to we it's not dumbing it down, it's just pitching it right. Developmentally where they're at. Yeah, exactly. Where where they where their brain is at.
NickiSo is teaching children to read in preschool developmentally appropriate? No. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Short answer. No, no, they're not ready for it. But they're not developmentally. Teaching them to read in preschool is about giving them a love of books, about a uh connection to sound and to rhyme and to silly little jiggles and and having a heart for reading, so that when their brains are ready to understand, there's this code that we have to kind of work out. There's a code. There's this squiggles on the page, and you know, when we get to that, um, we've already got a disposition as a reader, and we know what reading's about, and we know that um it's a world of magic when we open up a book, and you know, we can explore all sorts of things when we open a book. That's all teaching reading, and for some reason we're so focused on the actual behavior of reading that we forget about everything else, and yeah, and that's what does the damage to the to our readers.
NickiAnd same with writing. I would say if your child's coming home at three writing their name, I'd say that's a red flag. Yeah. If they're choosing to do it on their own and they've asked for help because they are interested in developmentally ready, go nuts. That's great. For 30 children to come home writing their name at three, not necessary.
SPEAKER_01No, and and this is where I mean there's there's so many other things they should be doing at three, right? To be exploring. But the there's probably two two things I can say to that. One is um I'm not a fan of putting an an age on when children are ready for formal learning. So there are good pull-up, you know, certainly people in in my space who will say children aren't ready for formal reading until they're six or seven. I disagree.
SPEAKER_02I disagree too.
SPEAKER_01I think that children are ready for formal learning when they are developmentally ready ready for formal learning. Some children will be four, some children will be eight. It's you've got to meet them again where they're at. The other thing, and I and I borrow this from a lovely dear friend of mine who shared this example. I thought this was brilliant. She was trying to convince her principal about developmentally appropriate practice. Um, and he was very much a numbers man. And she said to him that she's got this son, and he is, I think at the time he's about eight or nine. And she said, you know what? She said, one day he's going to learn to shave. He's going to need to shave because he's a bloke, right? So maybe I should be getting him ready for shaving. So every morning he's got to go into the bathroom, he's got to put the shaving comb on, he's got to practice shaving so that when the whiskers come, he'll never do it. Yeah. And and of course, this principle said, No, that's ridiculous. He shaved, you know, when when he needs to shave. It's like, well, why, but why do we ask this of others, other parts of children's development, right? That is, we don't expect children to practice getting into the car and driving, you know. So why is it that we do this with academic learning?
NickiThat is a beautiful analogy. I'm thank your friend, because I am now going to pinch that one too.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02It is.
NickiIt's wonderful. And that's even culturally different and age developmentally different. You know, we've got people that need to shave at 12 versus 21 or never.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's, you know, we're we're too much into putting kids into these boxes to say, when you're this age, you've got to do it like this, and you've got to be like this. And the result is we have children who are unwell from those expectations put on them if they don't meet them where they're at, you know.
NickiYeah, because not all six-year-olds are the same, and yet we judge that's that old, it's not Albert Einstein, but that quote of, you know, if you try and teach everyone to climb a tree, but they're all different animals, it's the the inequity of it all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and one of the things that we really try to impress on teachers is you may be teaching a class of five-year-olds or eight-year-olds or you know, whatever year level you're teaching, but you don't have a class of five-year-olds or eight-year-olds. You've got a class of a cocktail. You know, not only are they chronologically five, for example, you'll have some who physically might be capable as six or seven-year-olds, socially might be five, emotionally might be two. You know, this is the the wonderful um nature of us as humans, is we're just not that simple. And we need to recognize the complexity that we have in front of us in our classroom.
NickiAnd that's I think you've summed up what we're missing in education right there, I think. So m as you know, we run a forest school where ex-high school teachers, and actually a bunch of us are ex-teachers, which is also interesting. The old canary in the coal mines, I would say. Um what is the difference? Is there any difference between play and outdoor play? And do we need to differentiate between the two? And do we need outdoor play?
SPEAKER_01Yes, we need outdoor play. Uh I think the differentiation only comes with the context that you've got to work in. Um, and we recognise that schools traditionally were not set up for outdoor play, nature play, bush play, forest play, beach play, um, and that there are potentially limitations that need to be worked through if you want to prioritize outdoor play. Um, outdoor play should not differentiate from indoor play if play is what you are wanting, and play as a pedagogical tool is what you're wanting. In fact, actually, outdoor play um accentuates the learning opportunities for children that you can't um manage in an inside space. I don't know how you would be able to um really adequately teach capacity, for example, um, without water play, right? Or some kind of sensory play. And I would imagine you would be insane if you're trying to get water play going inside a classroom, right? With five year olds, or you know, um, you've got to be outside.
NickiIt's funny because it's one thing I do remember doing at school, and we did go outside for it. And I remember that's one of the few outdoor uh few learning experiences I remember at school because we went outside.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And look, I've seen I've seen a bunch of boys, it was really interesting actually. Um, I was in doing an observation in a classroom, and I think the teacher had wanted to try and I don't know, maybe show that she had some control, which she did, but she felt maybe like she didn't. Um, and so she'd said to the kids that morning, no, we're just gonna play inside this morning. And and she did have some lovely outdoor play going on at other times. I don't know what her reason was, but she held these kids inside. And this bunch of boys you could just see was so out of their comfort zone that in the end she relented and she said, Oh, all right, you can go outside. The moment they went outside, their play just went to the next level. The physics that they were investigating, the social interaction and collaboration, the problem solving, it was so rich, and that was not possible inside the classroom, mainly because they had access to large um loose parts outside. Um, they had access to water. Um the goals that they had that they wanted to test out in their play, they could only do with that equipment and only in the context that they had outside.
NickiSo fabulous for STEM learning, steam learning. It really is so easy to map.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and particularly for our kids. So we we talk a lot with teachers about recognising children's urges or their schematic patterns of thinking.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_01And if you've got children who have a trajectory urge, for example, you don't want that playing out in the past too much, you know. That's an outside play. Um, jumping, running, balancing, yeah, playing with water, playing with mud, playing with fire, you know, there's even the risk of swinging on the chairs, get them outside. Exactly. You know, so these are all things that you know, children are designed to move, and that's the brain saying, Hey, come on, I've got to connect my neurons here, I've got to get moving, I've got to have that dopamine hit to feel like I'm having fun here. Um, and and that's got to be done outside. So, yes, it's really critical. Um, we do have schools here in New Zealand, um, you know, very um urban-based schools with not a lot of outside access or not a lot of greenery, or they're upstairs in a in a two-block classroom. And so we help them problem solve around that. We say, okay, that's the reality. That's that you don't have a forest at your doorstep, so how can we help get kids to nature somehow, or help um them experience that some way? And and that's the next best thing if we can't get them into the real thing.
NickiSo that's again obviously one of our passion projects, and we are absolutely blessed here in Australia and most of our schools, except for it's similar to you, those, you know, very, very urban, upright ones, have access, if not on their grounds, very, very close within a walking distance, no need for buses. So, how do we advocate as parents and educators for this? And how do we take the overwhelm from our overburdened educators to look into this as a possibility for their schools?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think there's two parts to that. Um one is I know certainly here in New Zealand, we've got a couple of organizations who are coming into school and providing opportunities for teachers to see their children in play outside. So giving, you know, bringing in a whole load of loose parts. One of our contractors with Longworth, um, she runs a business called Junkie Monkeys, and they bring these loose parts in and they set it up, and part of their role is educating teachers around what they're doing and hoping that that continues, um, or giving them some professional development around that. Um, I think too though, um I think it still comes back to helping educators and parent communities understand the why behind it and just how important it is. And um that involves a lot of advocacy and a lot of education at a parent level and adult level. Um it it was interesting recently, um, you know, hearing about um the mess that's America at the moment and and the recess, you know, access to recess and access to to movement outside and things. And certainly someone um suggested where I was that um we should almost create the syndrome. You know, if we create a syndrome that they called it um chronic passivity syndrome. And if we say that that children have got that and we medicalize it, and then we say that play is the cure for it, that's the only medicine, then maybe people understand just how important this is. No one makes money out of play though, do they? As a medicine. Yeah, put it in a bottle.
NickiYeah, no, so it takes this tablet three times a day.
SPEAKER_01But that's how that's how, you know, well, that's what's happened with with um, you know, a lot of children who have been asked to sit still for so long as we medicalize it and say that they've got an issue. So it's it's it's a hard one to answer simply, but I think we just have to keep on saying, you know, connect it to mental health, connect it to physical um, you know, illnesses like obesity and um, you know, lack of balance coordination, um, you know, all those kinds of things that we're seeing in children that at our generation, you know, I've I'd had skinned my knees, I'd broken my wrists, you know, um, I climbed tall trees and fallen off and kicked off a horse and you know, all of that, um, that's you obviously you don't want children to be permanently damaged, but that's part of that was being a resilient person.
NickiYeah. And that was part of a typical childhood or child's learning experiences of childhood. And now it's a terrible, scary, frightening thing. But you know what I think it is, and this could be a bit controversial, is I actually think it's the inconvenience of it for parents now, having to go to the emergency room, having to go to the follow-up appointments. I think parents are less scared of the break than they are of the of the fallout afterwards of having to parent around it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And look, I know that there are a number of families under a lot of pressure, and we've got parents that are trying to juggle jobs and to take time off work is a stress and all the rest. But at the end of the day, this is about our children's future well-being. And if we if we want to invest in our children now so that they are capable, independent, healthy young adults and healthy and don't have, you know, increased risk of diabetes and heart conditions and all those kinds of things, then we have to put in the work now. And that is our responsibility as parents to be able to do that. And I also think we we also have a responsibility to create kind people and caring people because we're going to need those people later on. And we need to be able to help our children understand their interconnectedness with humankind and play as a way that that happens. And nature, we we are inextricably linked, and we can't keep burying our head in the sand around that. So how do we help kids, you know, like nature, appreciate nature? Well, they've got to be in it. I know my mother Linda, who ran the forest school here, um, you know, she she would say it's it was the best teaching of her entire career because the children that she had were so connected to that space, they were able to tell you the birds that were in the trees because they could hear them, uh, they could distinguish their calls, they had a respect for every living creature that was in there, the amount of funerals that went on for animals that passed in the night that they found, you know, was extensive. And while some of those kids at times maybe struggled with their literacy and numeracy, and they would be those kids in a classroom who may have struggled, their competencies in terms of the way they managed themselves, the way they problem solved, their creative thinking was next level. And I know she said she's never worked with children like it before. Um, and and we certainly one of them was my son, he's now 13. We're seeing the outcome of that now as as he hits his teen years and his friends who who we still connect with through forest school are an amazing bunch of kids because of that experience. Okay, it's well worth the ambition.
Nicki100% corroborate that story. It's my exact story. I if I had known what forest school teaching could have been like before I went into teaching, I I would have skipped the classroom altogether. It's those relationships and exactly that the interconnectedness, the empathy, and the compassion that these seem to just naturally evolve from being in these sessions is like nothing I've seen in a classroom. Yet growth mindset.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, yeah. And and I mean, I I I can think of one student who I'm I can't wait, she'll be on a Greenpeace boat somewhere in the future at the helm, you know. That's that's her her passion. And and and but she that would be lost in a traditional school setting, you know, she she wouldn't have been able to um express that side of her because it wouldn't have been as valued. Um, and so that's that's the beautiful outcome of forest school. Ugh, that's amazing.
NickiDo you have anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up with our rapid fire questions?
SPEAKER_01No, just keep advocating for play and you know, just play is is the answer. It's it's really that simple. It's we shouldn't be overcomplicating things, we shouldn't be putting a whole lot of big fancy words on trying to get kids fixed or sorted or anything else. Play play is their medicine and play is what they need. Yeah, yeah.
NickiAll right. Now, Sarah, what is your favorite book of all time and why? Or if it's too hard, what are you currently reading?
SPEAKER_01My favorite, favorite book of all time, and I hate to say this because I think it might be out of print now, but it's certainly it's certainly the one that is the most dogged on my um bookshelf, is a book called Putting the Joy Back into Egypt. And it's by an author, a New Zealand author called Jean Hendi Harris. And it is a um, it's like an autobiography of her time as a homeschooling mum back in the 80s in New Zealand, when it was very weird to do homeschooling, and it it documents her experience with three children, three very different thinkers, one who went back to school after being at home, and two that thrived being at home, and all her experiences around it. And the title really is putting the joy back into Egypt. So, in other words, let's learn about Egypt in a joyful way rather than what school requires us to learn about it. Um, and it's pretty inspiring, it certainly um inspired us into our journey. Oh, amazing.
NickiYeah, that's one of the my favorite things as a teacher is to watch my children explore those interests in ways where I think, gosh, that's we taught that in a textbook at school. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, where do you go or what do you do to reset after a tough day? Do you have a special space or a special practice or ritual or just a cup of tea? Or what do you do?
SPEAKER_01I have two things that I do, depending on the weather. Um, one is actually, and it's going to sound terrible terrible in the sense that we talk about creativity, but I paint by numbers. Um and I put on uh you know TV program on my iPad with my headphones. It's usually some kind of UK crime that I'm trying to work out who's a murderer for you. And they paint. Yeah, yeah. And I just and it's because I'm not a painter in my household, I'm surrounded by my husband's an artist, so I'm nowhere near as good as him. And I proudly show him my end result of my Van Gogh Starry night um done in paint numbers one to 24. Um, but it's a no-brainer, it's a no-thinker. Um, that or I exercise. I I um am really into kettlebell sport and I swing a kettlebell around, and and that's my um physical outlet as well.
NickiYou're gonna live forever with those strength, strength exercises.
SPEAKER_01That's the spirit.
NickiNow I read a great quote today, actually, about um a child that was speaking to a mentor and saying he said, Oh, you know, asking those questions that adults generally ask their children, what do you do after school? Oh, violin and chess, and but I'm not very good at them. And he said, You don't need to be very good at them. It's all about the joy. And I think that's I think we still we're still in this society where we still think we need to be good at everything and we can't just enjoy them. So I'm really glad you're finding joy, however it is in your creativity. And you are creative, that is creative.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's ironic because I advertise, you know, thinking outside the the box all the time, but in my spare time I paint inside the lines.
NickiSo meditation, I would call that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it is. It is bringing order to my world.
NickiNow, I think we've covered this question in the entire podcast, but if you had to choose just one thing to change about the education system, what would it be? I think we've already listed about six, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think if anything, I what I'd love is actually to have politicians um listen.
SPEAKER_02No. Really?
SPEAKER_01And really listen to to the people that are doing the work every day and are on the ground every day. I mean, we s we celebrate here in the sense we've got a Minister of Education who's been a teacher and a principal.
NickiWhich is I don't think we've ever had that in Australia, ever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, and and even within that, I know that she, you know, the the the portfolio is mammoth and she's one person to try and shift a machine. Um, but yeah, we just just spend time knowing what the job actually is. Don't don't come in at a at a high level and and not understand truly what's going on.
NickiYeah, and not listening to any of the research. That's what gets me up. We have reams of it, reams of it. And yet we still go for this data, data, data assessment, assessment, assessment, push down, push down, push down. And it's nowhere, nowhere does it say that this is good for children or educators.
SPEAKER_01There is not one single piece of evidence that says this is good, and yet we're we're following this rhetoric.
NickiSo Imagine if we did that in science or health.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Let's just all decide that we're going to do this version of science and there's absolutely nothing that backs it. You know, you're not going to be able to do that.
NickiAnd it's because it's children, right? It's children that don't have the voice to be able to stomp their feet and say, this isn't right, this isn't good for me. Whereas, you know, health patience and science experiments, you know, scientists have a voice. So we need to be that voice for children.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
NickiYeah. And last of all, Sarah, where can we find out more about your wonderful, wonderful work? And do you travel to Australia if there's schools that are interested?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I'd love any chance to come across the ditch and support teachers. Um, so you can find our work uh either on our um Longworth uh website, so longwitheducation.co.nz. Uh we have a Facebook page and uh that's under Longworth Education as well. You can find me on LinkedIn and also um we have our own podcast called Play Conversations, and that's on Spotify. It's great, please have a listen. And so we, you know, I interview a whole variety of experts on play in there, and um you can always reach out to me through there as well. So I'm happy to have a conversation with anyone who wants to talk about play and how it looks in their school.
NickiYeah, I was gonna say there's some really great conversations. If you're a teacher and you're wanting, because sometimes we just can't be what we can't see, and I know it's here, but if you can hear how these schools are doing it, that might be just the the inspiration that will get you making that noise. And we do need to make a lot of noise. It's the first thing I said to Sarah, I was like, I really just want to make a lot of noise about play and play in schools on this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And and we're we're all for that. The other thing too is we run an annual conference here in Nate Pierre, New Zealand, every year called The Joy of Play. Um, and that's in January. And the idea behind that is that it's a celebration to the start of the school year about play, and really we try and get teacher practitioners in front of teachers. So we while we have our keynotes, we have classroom teachers sharing what they do so that other teachers can hear about it and and ask questions and and connect with teachers across the country. So um that's you know, if you're looking for an excuse to come to New Zealand, that's a pretty good thing.
NickiThere you go. I'm sure that's your principals will push that PD. So, you know, head on over and make it work holiday in the school holidays and absolutely and it's right in right in wine country here too in Hawke's Bay as well.
SPEAKER_01So there's added bonuses. Yeah, it's magic there.
NickiI still fondly remember a uh wine bike tour I did with my husband pre-children. It's probably one of the last trips we did pre-children, and so which is probably why it's so fond. Uh thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah. It's so nice to connect with like-minded advocates. It makes us feel less lonely, it makes us feel like there's more than just a few of us making noise. Um, yeah, and please do connect. Please follow Longworth Education on Facebook and Sarah and Dr. Sarah on LinkedIn. And please continue to make the noise because our children don't even know. They don't even know what they're missing out on, and that's the saddest thing. So let's let's change that for them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, awesome. Thank you for having me.
NickiI love, love, love chatting to play experts. They're always really just advocates for children's rights to be treated as human beings, as children and not mini adults. Children know what they need to learn. They've been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. So our job as parents is to get out of their way and give them more freedom to play without hovering over them 24 7. And as educators, let's think about ways we can allow more play into the classroom, or even better, how we can take them out. Until next week, stay wild.