The Big Idea- Play and Transformation

            In the classroom, as well as other areas in our lives, we get into the habit of separating work and play.  What has been so inspiring and motivating about this course is that most of the time the work and play were intermingled.  The people in the Playing chapter lived their lives in this way.  As Feynman discovered, taking the play out of work makes it drudgery.  Allowing for play and worrying less about importance makes the work feel effortless.

Alexander Fleming was said to have taken games and made them more challenging.  The math curriculum used in my district does something similar.  The authors of Everyday Math took games, some that kids already know, and tweaked them so that they reinforce the concepts taught in a particular chapter of the text.  The games build on each other as students get older.  This way of giving students practice but making the learning fun is very helpful.  Students don’t feel that they are behind or being punished when they are offered the chance to play the games, yet they are getting practice they need.  I have even seen some students change the rules as Fleming was known to do, to make a game more challenging.  

It was easy to find examples of play in my content area.  Poetry is fun to read and to write if you find the right style and subject.  People play with poetry in many ways.  They play with the content, the rhythm, the words, and the layout as they write.  The definition of what can be considered poetry is in the eye of the creator.  I am encouraged to do some more creative poetry with students by letting them throw away some of the rules.   

An initial step to transformation has to be the acknowledgement that something other than what you “know” to be true is possible.  When Leakey’s team discovered hominid footprints, people were unwilling to believe, based on what they knew about hominids, that it could indeed be possible.  Instead of creating a picture based on the information they were seeing, they tried to make the pieces they had created fit- which they could not do.  Instead of asking if their information was flawed, they assumed that the new information was.  Transformational thinking only occurred after modeling, painting, and reenacting took place.  This has happened throughout history.

The chapter on transformation also discussed the idea that ideas, not conclusions, should be the goal.  We need to be looking for answers, not the answer.  Finding answers should not be the end of our exploration.  If the first method we attempt leads us to an answer we are often tempted to stop there.  If we think about that as a beginning, however, and look for other ways to think about a problem, that is when transformation happens.    The more representations of an idea we can generate, the more people we have the possibility of reaching.  As the authors mentioned, different representations will speak to different people.