Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Interview with Tracy Part 1: Learning through Play
So this semester we are focusing on agency. We’re interested in taking a deeper look at the foundational beliefs and ideas that shape our classrooms. One way that we are doing this offline in through a partnership with Dr. Tracy Donahue. You’ll more about her in a minute, as we reshare a conversation with had with her last fall. We’ve never repeated a podcast episode before, but this week felt like the right time as our grant work with Tracy has us researching what education is like outside of Michigan- specifically play. We’ll be traveling with Tracy next week to Iceland to explore several outdoor preschools, Reggio Emilia schools, forest schools, and fully inclusive schools and more. To say that we are excited is an understatement. We’ll take you along for our adventure, sharing updates on social media and longer reflections in upcoming episodes. So, while we’re packing, take a minute to introduce yourself to our colleague Tracy and learn more about why we think Play is foundational to agency and belongs in the classroom.
About the episode: Today we're talking with Dr. Tracy Donohue. Join our guest as they reflect on their professional experiences and how they have prepared them to work with teacher education students who are learning to teach through play. As you listen, we invite you to also reflect on the background you bring to education, how you value play and what you would be willing to investigate to challenge yourself in these areas.
Introduction Music: David Biedenbender
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So this semester, we're focusing on agency. We're interested in taking a deeper look at the foundational beliefs and ideas that shape our classrooms. One way that we're doing this offline is through a partnership with Dr Tracy Donahue. You'll hear more from her in a minute as we re share a conversation that we had with her last fall. Now we've never repeated a podcast episode before, but this week felt like the right time, as our grant work with Tracy has us researching what education is like outside of Michigan, specifically, what does play look like? We'll be traveling with Tracy next week to Iceland to explore several outdoor play preschools, reju Amelia schools, for schools, fully inclusive schools, and more. To say that we're excited is an understatement. We'll take you along on our adventure sharing updates on social media and longer reflections and upcoming episodes. So while we're packing, take a minute to introduce yourself, to call our colleague, Tracy, and learn more about why we think play is foundational to agency and belongs in the classroom.
Tracy Donohue:We have this big conversation over and over of it is not a dichotomy learn versus play, that actually learning is play. Okay,
Introduction:now we're recording. So welcome to teach wonder. Welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham.
Ashley O'Neil:My freshman year of college, I had two roommates. Roommate one had goals of going pre med. So she was taking zero writing courses her first semester, but had Calc, bio and chemistry all at the same time. Roommate, two and I both wanted to be teachers, so we had a broader array of classes, including history and communications and Spanish, and we were both also in this introductory teacher course. The bulk of our homework actually came from that teacher course. We'd been pretty familiar with school and had a handle on our other classes we'd never taught before, and this teacher class had us in first grade classrooms the second week, doing 30 minute lessons on social studies. So every week, we were preparing new lessons for them. I'll never forget the dichotomy of homework in our tiny dorm room, so roommate one header stacks of calc notes and flashcards for bio and a bulletin board of equations. Roommate two and I were using markers on the back of cereal boxes to make houses for lesson neighborhoods. You'd often walk into our room and see roommate two and I practicing our lessons with each other while roommate one borrowed our pencils to color code flashcards, but you would also often see roommate two and I on the couch using those color coded flashcards to quiz roommate one as she colored streetlamps and stop signs to go with our cereal box houses. Now, College definitely became more rigorous for me in that traditional sense. I'm no stranger to flashcards and late night study sessions myself and roommate one did take an art class that resulted in her creating a wire squirrel that was so intense it affected our TV signal. But that first semester of freshman year, that scene of studying for bio while lesson planning for first grade of my roommate coloring while doing flashcard review, it is one of my strongest memories of that year, and it rather perfectly sets the stage for our conversation. This week, we're about to jump into this interview and spoiler it's about learning and play. This conversation talks about the tenets of play, why it's vital for all people, regardless of our age or our grade. We talk about how students at CMU are learning to incorporate play as teacher educators, and we hear so many thoughtful and helpful examples of play in the classroom. But before we do that, we're starting this interview by having our guest share her background, and we're doing that because it illustrates a point that matters in this conversation. Our background and history create a lens for us and new experiences and opportunities can sharpen, adjust and filter that lens as you listen to the experiences and opportunities that build our guest professional career, think about your own and how it may shape the way you are currently viewing your classroom and this interview, here's Julie.
Tracy Donohue:So Tracy, if you would please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background as a faculty member here. Okay, so my name is Tracy Donahue, and I this is my second year as an assistant professor here at Central Michigan University, and I think it would behoove myself to get tell you like pre Central, if that's okay. So I started I had as a third grade teacher in Raleigh, North Carolina. I've only ever taught in title one magnet schools. So I started at a visual and performing arts school, teaching third grade, and we got to teach electives. So I taught the basic core curriculum, and then four days a week, our children actually k5 but my electives were three five. They would switch classes. They would sign up for electives and change and. So I taught a sewing elective, I taught a history elective, I taught a shaping up elective, all kinds of different things. It was super fun, because you also got to know kids around the school, outside of your classroom. And so in that process, with a good friend of mine, who we grew up in, teaching together, we got our masters in reading education. I thought I wanted to be a small group literacy teacher, and we got our masters at NC State together. And during that time, because funding changes every year, with Title One, I became a part time math coach and part time literacy intervention teacher. So I was going from teaching small group kindergarten literacy to fifth grade classroom math coaching. And every year it kind of shifted, and I got to play within my work in terms of co teaching, everyone is on a continuum of where they'll be accepting of that. I worked at Powell, at that one school for about 10 years. Ironically, we're talking about play today. I've been looking back into my old stomping grounds to share with a presentation with a student group here on campus, and now they are not a visual and performing arts school. They are building ingenuity through Play School, and they're the only elementary school in the country, I think, with that theme. So I reached out to them, because the assistant principal is a good a former friend of mine, and so they have a play Integration Specialist with her PhD that works on staff. So I was like, put I just wanted to reconnect with them, so I'm hoping to talk with her. But I started there and worked in some capacity in instructional coaching after my years in third grade, and realized I really like working with adult learners. And then I moved to a different magnet school within Raleigh to for one year, and then we moved out of state, but it was connected with NC State, and it was an engineering magnet school, and they had allocated, it was a low I've only worked at low performing schools, but it they allocated a quarter of their Race to the Top funds to the school and clean slate started all kinds of new things. I was the intervention coordinator for that school, so I worked with the teachers k5 and then I was also a literacy coach with that so during that time, I also had the opportunity to teach at a community college developmental reading. I also thought I like to dabble. So I was like, let me try this again, working with adult learners, doing a lot of similar things we do in third grade reading classrooms with adults. I would make these adults who some were older than me, act out work new vocabulary words, and I learned it feels silly, but it's an element of play in that as well. We moved for family reasons, to Iowa for a couple of years, and I taught a community college class on developmental reading there. And then I started looking and kind of wanting to spread my wings a little bit. And I got a job as a literacy consultant for the Iowa reading research center. And so there i i cord, I did a lot of things. One big project was working with families and literacy and trying to I blogged about literacy practices with my children, you know, bird watching, reading about birds, all kinds of things. I also met a lot of really smart people around the state who had their doctorate degrees. And I was like, I don't know if I could do that. And they're like, I couldn't put I can't pile up any more student debt. And they they were all were like, well, you should look into fellowships, and you should look into this. So then two years later, we moved here. I had three kids, a tiny newborn, and I was I worked for them, doing their social media for a while. And I was like, What am I going to do with my life? I don't know any. I have no teaching network here in Michigan. And so I applied to some programs, and I got into Michigan State, and thankfully, it was the best place for me to be, because I taught one early literacy class, and then I was a field instructor, so I got to go in schools and support student teachers. And, you know, watched one of them put worms in kids hands, and, you know, get my hands dirty, which felt good to be back in schools. I spent five years at Michigan State. I got to teach us a lot of different courses in literacy, and then I realized, oh no, no, I really like teaching early math, so I went to that side. And so I'm, I'm kind of dabble in a lot of subject areas as a as a elementary, early childhood teacher does anyway, and so I'm honored to be here now. This position came available with the new banding. There's a pre K through third grade band. And so this job came available, and my advisor was like, this is like, made for you. And so I I feel so honored to be here, because one of the things in the job description was talking about using developmentally appropriate practices, especially with a focus on pre K through third grade across content areas. And so I was able to hone in on teaching pre service teachers those skills at Michigan State. And then here we are. And so with that, they were asked me what I wanted to teach. And luckily enough, I have to give a shout out to Joe Ellen. Seder, Dr Lou Seder create had just created this learning the content areas through play. I believe she had taught it online once, but nobody had taught it face to face first. And so I they had me list classes. This was one that appealed to me. And so I have been lucky enough, and because of, like, shuffling around, I've actually been the one to teach it, the only person to teach it. This is my third time on campus. She has taught the online version, and so I have built upon her work. And I I think of her often. I like to share when I have pictures of my students work with her, because it brings me joy, and I hope it brings her joy as well. So So
Ashley O'Neil:all of these diverse experiences give Tracy insight into the students that she impacts at all levels, the Early Childhood, Elementary students, her undergrad, pre service teachers, both as the students they are now and as the teachers that they're going to be. Our conversation pivoted here, and we're going to get into the work that Tracy does with students, and it's focused heavily on play. But Julie and I know that that word has a ton of personal contextual meaning for everyone, your own childhood, movies, commercials, toys, your own kids, potentially, they all mix together in your brain to create this definition of play. So I asked Tracy to think about how she defines play to set the tone for our conversation.
Tracy Donohue:I so it's funny because I'm sitting that training that I had to push this back for is positive psychology, and we were talking about flow theory today, and so that's where I think of play. For me, I tell my students, I play when I drive, I play looking at exits. I'm just fiddling around, tinkering in my mind. So play can be tinkering. It can be I'm fully on flow mode and focused in something. It can be as much or as little at different times. So it it's hard for me to define exactly what it is, and it doesn't always. It sometimes is hard. And I think sometimes we think of play as just playing with dolls, like you said, or play is playing in dramatic play, and I have to dress up and I have to look silly to play. But actually some of us are just sitting I'm going, how many more exits do I have? Okay, if I go up one speed, you know, one mile per hour, how I'm going to eat, and I'm just sitting there problem solving in my mind that is polite to me. So I'm not sure if that's a textbook definition. What
Ashley O'Neil:we love about this definition is that it's not tidy and textbook. And in this instance, that's really helpful. You see, there's no mention of specific materials or age here in this conversation, and the definition that Dr Donahue gave us is removed from a specific tool or program or toy. In fact, that whole playing with the speed and location to make a game out of the commute home that is all in your head, really. So what Tracy is talking about here is an approach to an activity instead of a specific magic activity itself. I remember my new parent brain looking for the perfect example of play on Instagram, and I was often brought to these pretty open ended toys or these activity ideas. And sometimes I worked for my child, and sometimes not, because through lots of trial and error with my own kid, I realized that you can have the same materials and same steps for an activity, but doing that activity, in and of itself, does not guarantee that it's play. For example, the days when I'm singing and auditioning for Broadway while I dust my house does something different in my brain than when I'm aggressively wiping the bookshelves before a guest arrives. Both are cleaning, both use the same tools, but they are not both play. So now let's talk a little bit more about that textbook definition as a mindset or an approach, Tracy's going to share the five characteristics of play that she uses in her class, and she'll share them with examples. So let's list them on their own. First we have joy, meaningful learning, iteration, social interaction and active engagement. Back to Tracy,
Tracy Donohue:I'm digging deeper in these, what I call characteristics of play. And I look at them my students, I say, Okay, pull out a literacy activity. Find one online. And let's look at where are these characteristics of play? And if they're not there, or they can't come from this, how could you modify that task? Because we know they're all going to go on Google and find stuff I do all the time and but how can I tinker with this, play with this to make it have more playful opportunities so there's joy. So I think there's a lot of number of things that can bring us joy that might not look like what we consider play as being a child based thing meaningful learning. Am I learning something from this? I mean, if we think about mountain biking, we've talked about mountain biking before. That is play. You're playing in the woods. You're like, Okay, I can't go down this rock formation today, but next time, I might try this one rock and then the next time, you know, and then that brings me to iteration So, and I'm sure in the maker space, you'll see a lot of. Uh, iterative processes, but let me try it this time, see what happens. Let me try it this time and see what happens. And then social interaction. I mean, we play with our friends, even if we're just sitting on a couch talking. And then active engagement. Am I actively engaged? And there's a whole continuum I just had in this positive psychology training about what that can look like too. So yeah, play looks different for everybody, and it also makes me think of my students sometimes, especially at the beginning of the semester, I'll take in a bunch of tubs. I think you've seen me with my cafeteria card. I'll take in tubs Magna tiles or animals or just anything, because I have access to all these great things. And I'll say, Okay, we're going to have unstructured play. I'm going to turn music on, and y'all just play. And it depends on the students. Last semester, I had people that go yes, and they just dive right in. This semester, I have a bigger class, and maybe that leads them to be more reticent, but I have some that just look at me and they're like, can she just get on with it. Like we're adults here, you know, and I can see that in them. So then we talk about that. And does it feel weird to sit here and play? Okay, let me get the tiles out and let me just pretend to play. And some of them still don't kind of get past that even, but it's nice to watch them kind of grow and realize, like, oh, I should be playing in my life too. And that was going to be sort of my follow up question is, when you set up scenarios in your class for the students, do you look for your scenarios that you offer them to have those five components, the joy and the iteration and the engagement? And I'm missing two of them, but those five and when they offer opportunities to young children, do you expect them to incorporate all five, or some of the five or or it sounds like open play without necessarily calling out those five areas is fine as well. So I have a heart. So this is a there's like a balance to it, because once you start saying, I need you to incorporate all five of that. My Type A students want to go, check, check, check, and what sounds like meaningful learning might not quite be meaningful learning. So I I do ask them to reflect on them for sure. And I'm evolving with this framework. It's I've adapted some pieces here and there with that, but what I do is, in their assignments, they have one their first assignment, the only one that we've turned in so far is this game transfiguration that Joe Ellen designed, and it is such a beautiful opportunity. They take a game, it could be beer pong, it could be monopoly, and they adapt it to be developmentally appropriate and kid friendly for a child that they're working with. So I should show I have so many beautiful photos, and I can show you another time, but show and tell is easier when I can just show you what I have. They created. One of my students did this. She's working with a third grader. This Kingdom Hearts monopoly. She painted this board. So even that was play in itself. And then this is more simple, but she created a multiplication golf game. And this one I love, if you've played, what do you mean she created, she took photos and different things. But the question was, when you get to be the line later for the day. But then she played that with kids and realized they don't even get that like this, the sarcasm and stuff. So so then we reflect on that, getting to know you. Jinga, she painted and and so they do this, and then they implement it, and then they reflect on that. And that is kind of before we really get into a lot of content. So they're real. I'm really just looking to see, can they look at what is and and I don't like putting developmental things in a box, so we look at like, generally, would this work for a three year old? But all three year olds are different, especially some kids in the cdll are gonna I watched one little boy count, 14, and then she goes, what would one more? He goes, 15. I wouldn't expect I don't know if he's four yet, to be able to do that, but I you know, they are pretty sophisticated counters. And so then they do four major, or I don't want to say major, four learning activities. And I think from being in the maker space, y'all have inspired me to not quite make them so discreet in terms of literacy, math, science, social studies. So while they do these four, they have to design a learning activity. And so my first semester, I did that, they created this. They implemented it. They reflected a typical teacher assignment. I have changed this, modified it a little bit because I want them to develop fun learning opportunities, but I also want them to see that that can happen in any moment, like we were saying in thick conversations, is what we call it, or open conversations, or extended however you want to do it. So we do a lot of practice of I've been doing fish. Goals. And so they'll be playing Magna tiles. And I'll say, okay, for my outsiders, what skill Do you want me to focus on in here? And then I go in and say, Okay, we were doing rhyming. Okay, I see an orange tile. Can you tell me something that rhymes with orange? And they always look at me like it doesn't have to be a real word. And we're just implementing whatever literacy skill they choose. And we talk about how that can be that is just as meaningful as this activity that I planned. And a lot of times, those ones that I plan fail or not or or the kid goes, No, I want to do it this way. And so you're off. So I don't I want them to learn some flexibility and fluidity. And so they do one of those for each and then when you when they reflect, they have to think of those characteristics of play. And then also, especially in math, I have attributes of high quality math tasks, and these are things I want to be looking for, because my early childhood people, they love some patterning, they love it, they love some colors. They love some shapes. They don't love doing number activities. So I am making them do number activities, because what I see as I look at just people I've worked with in general is number sense. Opportunities are missing. Kids are going to get patterning, they're going to get all those things. But the number is huge. So I just kind of like we do shapes, we do those things, but I say no patterns, and anyway, so high quality tasks, and I ask them to reflect, like how or think about that when they're planning. And then science, I have them think about the characteristics of play, but our big mantra is notice and wonder. And then you inspire me to think about story throughout. And so when we were here last semester, is create a story for what you built. Create a story for this. So we've really incorporating literacy throughout. And then my take on social studies, because their take is social studies as government, social studies as communities. So we talk about, I think of social studies as listening to other people and learning from them. So come in your community and just other people's stories. So
Ashley O'Neil:we have a lot of thick and actionable suggestions and ideas from Dr Donahue in the form of these kind of stories and examples from her class, which is great. She discusses thinking about play in different content areas across different contexts and the considerations that go into all of these things. Now she's going to talk about another key consideration.
Tracy Donohue:Our content is heavily focused on equitable and inclusive play as well. So I should say that all of our work in the semester is grounded in is this accessible. I'm I'm working with Mason. I know Mason can do this activity, but I want to think about, if I'm in a classroom with a bunch of three year olds, would all three year olds be able to do this, and what modifications might I have to make? And we did an activity. We do an activity, I think, the very first day, where they we build with spaghetti, Old Spaghetti and old marshmallows. But, you know, it occurred to me, or maybe from my reading, I don't know that actually children with food insecurities that can be harmful to some children. So it's not necessary. Like I said, my dad would laugh at me and be like, Okay, you can't play with food. No. It's not that. It's knowing the people I'm working with and knowing, okay, if this is harmful for this one kid, we're going to use toothpicks and Play Doh this time, you know, and stuff like that. And that's fine for all kids then, right? Like to be speaking in marshmallows, and if it's harmful for one kid, it's not worth it. I won't do it, right? I just want to say I appreciate how much you're modeling for your students what you want them to do when they work with children, because I think that doesn't always happen when we're training new teachers, and so not as a criticism of anyone else Or else this program. But I just, I just think that's really nice when you say and then we do fish bowls, and we talk about right, and then ask them to reflect on I think that this so important for them to see. I think often in education has been my experience that we don't make our thought processes explicit to people that are learning to teach and in doing so, we make some of it look easier or simpler than it is because we've learned how to do it already, and probably that's true of any skill, right? Like lots of people, make mountain biking looks super easy, and I right, so it's probably true of any skill, but I just think that's really nice that all the modeling that and the explicit decision making that you're doing with them. Thank you. And I'm lucky I get to teach something fun too. So I, my class is fun, but also the topic is fun, and I I I try to in this another class I teach is it's such a loaded title. It's called Best Practices of early childhood settings. I try to model as much as I can in a bear classroom up there what it's like to experience so we have morning meeting every time we have class, and it might seem silly after a while, we have read. Loud every time, because I tell them, If I drop that, then that. What does that say to you?
Ashley O'Neil:So you mentioned you just you touched on earlier about making play inclusive and accessible. So can you talk a little bit about what conversations you have with students I'm particularly thinking of like a neurodiverse population. So that's my like angle for this, but maybe, maybe that's not what you're talking about. But how do you have conversations with them about honoring the type of play that they might do, so that you've got your bubble generally, and then you've got your other bubble. How do you have conversations about the type of play that they do and honoring that and working I hear a lot of you saying, like developing flexibility with for the adult students, right? Like for your future teachers, developing that flexibility. So how do you have that conversation with them about following students children's
Unknown:needs? So
Tracy Donohue:we do have some specific conversations to maybe underrepresented populations, especially, I teach in a very not diverse racially population here, but we talk about inclusivity and accessibility for all, but I don't know who they're going to interact with. So it's more of big ideas that I'm thinking of. And the point I try to stress is you have to know who you're working with first. You wouldn't just like the food insecurity thing, and it's getting to know your students and what their needs are, getting to know the children and their families, learning about the children, learning what works at home. So I would we haven't had specific conversations to nerd, neurodivergent populations. However, I hope that by me stressing the importance of understanding their needs and what they need, that they are able to translate that to really anybody
Ashley O'Neil:Sure. One of the next questions that we asked Tracy was about the differences she noticed in pre service teachers and their mindset going into this class based on the grade levels that they thought they were going to teach. So for example, did students who anticipated teaching preschool, kindergarten and first grade approach things a little bit differently than students who planned on teaching an older grade level?
Tracy Donohue:We have this big conversation over and over of it is not a dichotomy learn versus play, that actually learning is play. And so if you think about Minecraft, older kids like Minecraft, it's building, it's got playful opportunities. And so helping them kind of open up what we said about like that definition of play, I think is important. I personally am on a mission for people to also see early childhood as through third grade. Because a lot of times we hear early childhood, oh, that's play, and we think of birth through five, and the definition is up to eight years old, which is the through third grade, in my opinion. And then I would argue adults like to play, because I see it in my class all the time. I think high school. I think my middle schoolers that they're middle school, my own children, play more than they did in fifth grade. Just, you know, I think you have to be silly to appeal to them. I'm guessing and they, I think all of us need an element of shake off the seriousness and have some joy and some silliness,
Ashley O'Neil:some joy and some silliness. That's the ask this week. Remember those five tenets, joy, meaningful learning, iteration, social interaction and active engagement. Let's focus on two. How are you going to approach or infuse a task with joy and active engagement? This week, it could be your Monday morning commute, your phonics lesson, or that last 30 minutes before the end of the day with your students. We'll be back with the rest of our interview with Tracy in two weeks, but we'd love to hear what you've been up to. Always feel free to email us. At cease@cmesh.edu C, E, S, E, at C, M, I, C, h.edu, in two weeks. Stay tuned to hear more examples and some explicit design choices that set Tracy's students up for meaningful and iterative interactions. This has been teach wonder you