Anxious Play

This past Saturday I went to the Little 500 Qualifying Races. My husband coaches a team, the Christian Student Fellowship Men's team. The weather was beautiful, and the excitement at the track is contagious.

I started the day cheering on my friend Kath, who rides for Theta's team. She's an INCREDIBLE athlete, and an amazing cyclist. I had so much fun watching her compete, but I also felt a lot of nervousness and anxiety while she was actually racing. Especially when they have to do those exchanges! AH! So terrifying!!! But, despite the anxiety, I really had a blast.

Later, watching Justin's team compete, I felt anxious not just for the boys but also for Justin. I know how much they have trained and how hard they have worked, and I was so nervous that they wouldn't do well.

This made me think about anxiety, worry, nerves, anticipation, and play. I felt like I had a playful experience on Saturday, as well as enjoying the day, but I also felt quite a bit of anxiety. Throughout the day I used the word stressed, but I'm not quite sure that's what I was feeling. It might just be semantics, but it seems to me that there's a difference between feeling anxious and nervous and stressed. I don't know that I can think of a situation where I felt stressed and also felt like I was playing. I did, however, on Saturday feel like I was playing even though I felt anxious. Interesting, and something to think more on.

ONE MORE THING!

MARY- I BLAME YOU!!!!!!

Failure... leads to Insight?

So I'm a failure- I failed to bring home my embodied player this week!!! I left it in the cupboard in our classroom. I feel like such a loser- I was excited to take pictures of my player with me during Spring Break. Also, I like to follow the rules, and since the "rule" was to write a blog after Spring Break about our times with our embodied players, I felt rather badly about forgetting my player.

Levi, Krystal, Seth, Leah, and Me

However, as I started to think about Spring Break, and who I would like to be as a player, I thought of my sweet friend Leah. Leah is 8 years old, in third grade, and practically perfect in every way. She's my best friend Krystal's daughter, and I really love her. While I also sincerely enjoy and love both of Krystal's other kids (Seth and Levi), there's something special about Leah and I's friendship.

This past week I went to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis with the Jones kids and Krystal, and we had a blast! I had never been, at least not to my recollection, and I was really excited to go. It was everything I hoped for and more! We saw basically all of the exhibits, and of course, took lots of fun pictures.

Thinking about who I would want to be as a player made me think of Leah, because Leah is wonderful when it comes to play. She's incredibly kind, and while very shy at first, once she opens up she is quite the talker. She's really fun to be around and to play with, as she loves to have fun, laugh, and go with the flow. Throughout the day, despite having seen these exhibits before, she still took it all in as though it was the first time. There were multiple times when her brothers wouldn't want to do something because they had done it before, but Leah would take every chance to do anything offered at the museum, whether it was a craft, digging for dinosaur bones, or playing dress up.

Leah digging for bones

More than anything, Leah doesn't let anything stand in her way of play. She has fun no matter what she is doing. Even if it's something she's done a million times, she makes it fun somehow. She's not inhibited the way so many of us "old folks" are.

Leah playing dress up with scuba gear

Leah striking a pose in Egypt

Leah and Krystal- "Walk like an Egyptian"

Leah in Egypt.

Leah and I

After the Children's Museum, the girls went to Trader Joe's, our absolutely most favorite grocery store ever. While we were in the store a song came on, to which Leah said, "That's our school song! We dance to it every Friday!" So, I asked her to show me the dance. Without hardly blinking an eye, in the middle of the grocery store, she starts dancing. I LOVE THAT! While I generally have few inhibitions, I love that she didn't even seem to think about the cultural norm of how to act in a grocery store. Before long, Krystal and I were both dancing with Leah, and all of us were laughing hysterically. The great thing is that everyone else in the store that we saw laughed with us, and seemed to love that we were having such a great time.

So, to sum up this post, I want to be more like Leah. I want to be uninhibited with my play- to enjoy it fully no matter the situation.

Play despite sickness

I've been sick all weekend- really from Thursday until even now as I write this. Being sick is really not much fun, and it's hard to play when you're sick. But, I also don't feel like I didn't play at all this weekend. I finished my book Insurgent and started a new book. I watched a lot of TV on DVD, which is one of my favorite things to do.

This activity actually made me think about flow. I easily lose track of time when I watch TV on DVD. There are no commercials, I can hit "play all" so I don't even have to control the remote, and the next thing you know, I've watched 3 hours of television! (Don't judge me!) This made me wonder if I'm experiencing flow, or if it's more just "zoning out", and what the difference is between the two.

Looking at this diagram that Lina found, I would say that when I am watching TV it's in the "Relaxation" zone. I definitely have the skill level needed to watch, and the challenge level is low as I watch TV that doesn't require a whole lot of thinking. So there's definitely a difference, I think, between experiencing flow v. zoning out or relaxation when watching TV.

But this then made me think about reading Insurgent. My inclination is to say that I'm experiencing flow, because reading is a more cognitively taxing activity for me than reading. However, reading a book like Insurgent doesn't present much of a challenge for me, as it's writing on about an eighth grade level. But I don't necessarily feel like it's totally relaxation, as the challenge level isn't too low. So perhaps, according to this diagram, I'm in the control zone. I'm not sure though, and still feel like it is flow- I am enjoying the experience, and I feel like I'm acting in complete control. According to Dr. C, flow is a “Holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement” (pg. 36).

Perhaps there is an element of flow that really comes down to the person's opinion/feeling about the experience, and not just the challenge and skill required.

I love flow.

Work and Play

Today I taught K-1st graders- and it was so much fun. First of all, it was nice to have confirmation that going back in to the schools is indeed where I need to go. It's always nice to have experiences that confirm decisions you've already made. :) Second of all, it really got me thinking about play v. work. Technically what I was doing would be considered "work." However, I ostensibly lost track of time. I think as a former teacher you lose the ability to COMPLETELY lose track of time (or maybe that's just my personality), but I definitely didn't realize just how long I had been teaching the kiddos. So, even though it was work, it would perhaps seem as though I was experiencing flow.

I've been thinking a lot lately about flow after reading about the construct in Ambiguities of Play and now having read Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. According to Csikeszentmihalyi, "The state of flow is felt when opportunities for action are in balance with the actor's skills; the experience is then autotelic." (p. 49) The following model is given:

Model from www.bioss.name

The question then that has been going around in my head is this- are work and play at their peak the same? Csikszentmihalyi would say yes, Sutton-Smith would say no. I think I'm finding myself agreeing with Csikszentmihalyi. (I do, however, reserve the right to change my mind). When I think about my experience today it is very similar when it comes to flow as play experiences. Now, there are still of course differences between play and work, as there is even within those categories. But when I think back to work today, as well as other days of work teaching pre-service teachers where I just felt great afterwards, I think I experienced flow, just as I would in a play experience.

So, the next question is how to experience work at its best all the time, or at least most of the time.

I Cannot Live Without Books

"I cannot live without books." Thomas Jefferson

I really love to read. It's perhaps my favorite thing to do. But with graduate school I often don't read for fun very much. Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoy most of the readings that I do for school, even when I don't agree with the reading. But, there's something about choosing a book and reading it for no purpose except my own. 

Photo from barnesandnoble.com

This week I took time to read Insurgent by Veronica Roth. I read her first book in the series, Divergent, in about two days. I'd like to read Insurgent at the same pace, but due to a big statistics test this week and lots and lots and lots of grading, I'm only getting to read a bit here and there. But I still love it! I get to escape into the world of the story and forget about my worries and problems. 

I'm always amazed when people say that they don't like to read. But I have to be careful not to privilege reading or think it's better than what other people like to do. 

For me, reading is play. Thinking about play and reading, for me, makes me think about flow and Csikszentmihalyi. When I'm reading for fun and pleasure, I often experience a state of flow- I can read for hours and hours and not realize it. I rarely experience that when reading for school. It might be tempting to solely attribute this to the fact that the reading has been assigned, but I don't think that's the whole story. I think it has more to do with cognitive load and ZPD. When I read for fun, I am generally reading books that require little effort on my part, whereas when I read for school it is often very cognitively taxing. When I read for school, I am definitely in my ZPD, stretching from what I'm able to do on my own to what I can do with a little help (discussions of the reading in class). When I read for fun, I am rarely in my ZPD, as I can read with no help whatsoever. 

Perhaps play isn't always about the difference between work and play, or force and choice, but deals more with cognition and theories of learning.

Privileging Play

I've been thinking quite a bit about our class discussion two weeks ago, where we talked about how sometimes children's play is deemed inappropriate or cut off by adults who do not understand what the children are doing.

I've also been thinking about how we privilege certain types of play. I saw this in Sutton-Smith, where he quotes Neulinger, writing, "the primary dimension of leisure, then, is the freedom or, to be more specific, the perceived freedom. By this we simply mean a state in which the person feels that what he is doing, he is doing by choice and because he wants to". I can't say that I agree with this. In fact, I think this is an example of privileging certain forms of play. In the "west" we do tend to theorize about play as being a free experience in which you choose exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it. But, that's not the only way to play. Often, I am forced to do something, but that experience ends up being a playful experience. Take, for example, class activities. In many classes we are forced to do certain activities. I don't choose to do them, yet they can still be playful.

On that note, we babysat this past weekend for our dear friends who have three wonderful children. The daughter, Leah, wanted me to make bracelets with her. While I love Leah, making bracelets is not my favorite thing. I'm not one to make stuff. So, you could argue that I was forced to do this activity. However, because I love Leah and want to make her happy, I made bracelets with her, and in the end found it to be quite fun and would describe it as play.

I think we must always be careful about how we define and therefore privilege and oppress certain forms of play.