{"id":429,"date":"2013-12-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.playworks.org\/pacific-northwest\/2013\/12\/09\/inspiring-our-next-generation-2\/"},"modified":"2025-03-28T11:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T18:58:19","slug":"inspiring-our-next-generation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playworks.org\/pacific-northwest\/2013\/12\/09\/inspiring-our-next-generation-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiring Our Next Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Portland Monthly Magazine recognized Playworks in their 2013 <em>Light a Fire Awards<\/em>. The annual awards ceremony is a celebration honoring the individuals and organizations who make Portland more prosperous, beautiful, healthful, and sustainable\u2014in a word, better. This year, Playworks was recognized for <strong><em>Inspiring Our Next Generation<\/em><\/strong>. See the Portland Monthly story\u00a0below or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthlymag.com\/news-and-profiles\/city-and-region\/articles\/light-a-fire-november-2013\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here<\/a> for the full story and list of recipients.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>PORTLAND PLAYWORKS<\/strong>\u00a0lives and breathes recess. Inside its headquarters on SE Madison Street, shelves overflow with bright orange cones, multicolored dodgeballs, and plastic goalposts. Impromptu foursquare games are a\u00a0daily occurrence for the staff, but they\u2019re merely practice for the four-year-old nonprofit\u2019s real goal: teaching thousands of kids the social tools they need to play safe and healthy in the 14 metro schools it works with daily (in addition to 80-plus regional schools it services indirectly).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGroup play isn\u2019t what it used to be,\u201d says Jonathan Blasher, executive director of Playworks\u2019 Pacific Northwest branch. Instead of being that carefree respite for games and sports that most adults remember nostalgically, he says, recess is now a time when almost 90 percent of negative issues in schools erupt.<\/p>\n<p>To confront that change, a think tank of teachers, summer camp directors, and sports instructors created Playworks in Oakland, California, in 1996; Portland\u2019s division started in 2009. The goal: to create positive, respectful, and welcoming play environments for often-stressful low-income communities. And Playworks\u2019 20 staff members do it by taking all that equipment off the shelves and into schoolyards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t do win or lose, boys versus girls, or team captains,\u201d Blasher explains. \u201cThere is a common language that everyone understands, and we solve conflicts with simple games like rock-paper-scissors.\u201d To this end, one of Playworks\u2019 most effective projects, the Junior Coach Program, pairs older elementary students with younger students to learn games and solve their own conflicts as they arise, giving the older kids responsibility and the younger ones role models.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlayworks has been about creating a kind and cooperative atmosphere around the school,\u201d says Susan McElroy, principal of Daniel A. Grout Elementary, which has spent four years in the program. \u201cAll my kids follow the same rules, procedures, and conflict resolution processes, which translates to less fighting at recess and more instructional time in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Portland Monthly Magazine recognized Playworks in their 2013 Light a Fire Awards. The annual awards ceremony is a celebration honoring the individuals and organizations who make Portland more prosperous, beautiful, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"region":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-updates"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Inspiring Our Next Generation - Pacific Northwest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Portland Monthly Magazine recognized Playworks in their 2013 Light a Fire Awards. 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