cwilson's blog

Every July, Playworks brings together professional staff from around the country for a week of intensive training and professional development. The goal of Playworks Camp is to ensure our programs are run as professionally and effectively as possible in every city and school that we serve. Camp week is jam-packed with trainings and workshops that range from curriculum development to best practices in facilitation to curriculum building to coaching and human resource management.

I'm often asked to come up with "real examples" of children who have beneffited from our program. Of course, the most dramatic ones are kids who have previously been challenging and unruly on the playground and have gone through an extraordinary transition.

We are often asked why we focus our full-time coaches on low-income schools. There are many reasons, but some days these reasons are more profound than others. 

Not too long ago, I led our East Bay Junior Coach Conference in Richmond, California. More than 125 fourth and fifth graders from 10 schools in West Contra Costa joined 15 Playworks coaches and staff at Lincoln Elementary in the city’s Iron Triangle area. It was a spectacular sunny day after a week of rain.

It has been extraordinarily exciting to see the conversation that has arisen around play the past few weeks. We've been hearing from many people about the role of a recess coach on the playground, which is why we were deeply gratified to read Playtime Is Over, a thoughtful, insightful op-ed in The New York Times by David Elkind. Dr.