In our over-scheduled, fast-paced lives—where child anxiety, depression, and stress continue to rise—it is imperative to understand the importance of play and to protect it. At Nashoba Brooks, we work hard at play because we know what years of educational research supports: play is valuable and necessary for healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Step inside Michelle Perreault and Kelley Jammal’s Preschool classroom, and you will notice the room has been cultivated intentionally to promote cooperation. Perreault views child-directed play as integral to the development of autonomy gained throughout the year. Time outside to investigate, collect, and explore the seasonal changes allows all students opportunities for discovery and a chance to refocus and decompress. “We honor what they need,” Perreault remarks. “Play is crucial to their mental and emotional health.”
“Our core values, like integrity and collaboration, are invoked through play,” agrees Assistant Head of Lower School Jane O’Connor. “Play keeps us nimble,” she says. “You can always connect through play.” O’Connor points out that play is an invitation for the mind to expand and highlights a classroom makerspace as a place where students go to invent. “Play is not idle time,” she says. “It’s a chance to explore.”
In the art rooms, Lisa Stanley and Kara Angeloni Williams invite students to explore materials. They can uncover all of the properties of glue—and of cardboard and oil and acrylic paints—and they can discover what happens when they mix and blend colors. Some children want perfection, but Stanley and Williams encourage them to play, to try new things, to be curious and persistent.
“We have fun here, and we are not afraid to say that,” exclaims Assistant Head of Middle School Regina Nixon. Whether building a collaborative fort outside, or using cardboard boxes to create our own version of Caine’s Arcade in Grade 3, students are “engaging in a passion” here, and teachers are sharing their passion with students.
All around Nashoba Brooks, students actively investigate, negotiate, and iterate. In jazz band, they are encouraged to improvise. On the new Middle School play structure, they are encouraged to connect. When it comes to learning, work and play are not mutually exclusive; they complement one another. For children, one is literally not complete without the other.
“Creative problem solving, critical thinking, flexibility, empathy, metacognitive awareness: these are all skills that will serve students well in a future in which many of the jobs our students will hold have yet to be imagined,” explains Head of School Danielle Heard. “We are giving them opportunities to play intellectually.” She is quick to mention that entrepreneurs and those on the cutting edge of technology become successful through ingenuity—and the confidence to play. “They are not following anyone else’s script,” she says. At Nashoba Brooks, neither are we.