The Playful Podcast: Recent Episodes
Kim Barton
The Playful Podcast is a wandering journey of wondering about possibilities for lifelong learning, leisure and play. Here, we share ideas generously and linger at intersections of recreation, education, and occupation. The purpose of this podcast is to support my own reflective practice, to have a reason to connect with other early learning professionals, and to test out new ideas. I'm excited to play and learn along with you!
This episode was recorded on a walk home, where I ponder how we could shift our understanding of pedagogy towards a study of subtle systems and relations? What would that conceptualization invite of us? Join me as I ponder this question in this first episode of season 3.
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Why do we document? How do we document? What do we document? When do we document? When does documentation become pedagogical? What activates pedagogical documentation? What about pedagogy inherently documents? What routines and rituals facilitate and sustain my reflective, responsive, relational documentation practice? What are the precursors to creating stories about our practice that can reveal and illuminate our communal thinking, children's insights, and the big picture questions we are pursuing in our community? These are just some of the questions I'll be pursuing in season 3 as I explore the use of podcasting in my pedagogical documentation practice and reflective practice journey. Join me to hear my own reflections in action, how I decide to respond to various encounters, how I reflect and capture my decision making, how I critique my own best intentions, and how I become changed by studying my own documentation over time.
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I've spiralled my way back to this question with a desire to unpack why I feel some tension around the terminology of "emergent" curriculum. Is curriculum the active agent? Does it reveal itself? If so, what role do educators play in taking up the passively emerging information? How do we use our interpretations of our experiences with children to respond and expand upon their learning? And what the heck do ukuleles have to do with this conversation?? Join me in wondering about an educator's role in offering responsive, informed, and intentional curricula.
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In response to questions about celebrating Halloween, I noticed an opportunity to explore why and how we celebrate in early learning communities. From thinking about relationships with families, to upholding integral rituals, to fostering cultural competency, to honouring what a seasons invites, and creating a community protocol for making decisions, this episode documents my journey of reading literature, taking questions to our staff meeting, and capturing our thinking. By wandering through the joys and tensions of celebrations that pedagogy invites, this offers a series of thoughts and decisions that are merely one example of pursuing questions about celebrations within in our community.
Disclaimer: this is one version of the story that took place. As a pedagogical leader, I am in the privileged position of having paid time to reflect deeply on events that take place across our centre, and this episode is offered from my own singular perspective on the topic. Anyone else might tell the same story very differently.
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I'm embedded within the September welcoming routines and rituals, and it's caused me to reflect on building relationships through the lens of parallel practice. As a pedagogical leader and course instructor, I wonder about the experiences afforded to educators and students that foster or erode connection, and how these experiences mirror that which we hope children and families experience. Play along with me here if you're curious about designing experiences that support congruency between auspice, operators/administrators, educators, children, and families.
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I've been curious about mentorship for several years, and I'm only just starting to connect my histories and futures of mentorship with the role(s) of healing, learning, and living well throughout the human experience. Wonder with me, here...
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In this episode, I capture an ah-ha moment where I challenge the all-knowing assumptions of research by claiming its limitations, and instead leaning into the potential of pedagogical inquiry. I reflect on the constraints I sense as a researcher, and the freedom I can embrace within pedagogy. I briefly reflect on my graduate school research to highlight how research feels close-ended, contained and methodological (in order to be reliable and reproducible) whereas pedagogy, while still being as transparent as possible, feels more open-ended and liberating while still generating knowledge.Join me if you're up for feeling empowered as an educator-as-researcher!
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What does communal growth require? What questions will we pursue together? Why? And what impact do we notice our pursuits have on our community?
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From literally exploring movement across our program to being moved emotionally, and to reflecting on how movement during the spring of 2023 is very timely, this episode stretches the question "what moves us?" to its edges. The episode captures my interpretations of children and educators exploring movement and what led us to generating this question as the title for our art exhibit this year. A link to this episode was posted at the art exhibit for students, faculty, staff, and families to listen to and reflect upon. This episode is intended to model how we can seek out new understandings to everyday observations that then launch us into asking huge questions about how the world works. You might want to brace yourself for some abstract thinking to stay with me for this one, and when you do, I hope it launches you into new ways of thinking about your experiences that move you, too.
Find the show notes and transcript here: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/15/what-moves-us/
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Sometimes we are moved into shifts. And that is what happened here. In this bonus episode I discuss how, in the process of refining my values, vision, intentions, and ethos within this space, I was moved to reconsider the name of the this podcast/journey. While play is embedded within my values, I realized I required a new name that opened me towards new possibilities and propelled me to take up the quest within the questions. Welcome to Pursuing Questions, formerly known as The Playful Podcast: Imprints of Inquiry. Possibilities for Play. Provocations for Living. Welcome to the quest within the questions.
Find the show notes and transcript here: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/16/the-essential-shift/
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Pauses appear to be the opposite of so many scripts we hold as a collective society. They may counteract efficiency, fail to demonstration meaningful progression towards a goal, are sometimes viewed as stagnation, and often are difficult to represent within outcome-driven agendas. Here, I offer that pause can offer possibility, and aim to describe how a pause can be extremely generative to our well-being and pedagogically. Pauses create space when there appears to be none, and demonstrate that even the most urgent of moments are actually worthy of our time, curiousity, and lingering with possibility.
For show notes and transcript, visit here: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/07/the-potential-of-a-pause/
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In this mini-episode I capture several thoughts I've had over the past several years that have led me to absolutely revere spirals as metaphors in my personal and professional life.
I'd like to give a generous shout-out to the content creators of the music in this episode.
For show notes and transcript, visit: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/04/spiralized-experiences-what-can-the-shape-of-a-spiral-offer-us-within-our-human-experience/
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Welcome to my version of "season 2" of this playful podcast. I took a long, playful, pedagogical, and personal pause and now I'm here again to revisit many of the topics discussed in the first 10 episodes. I'm excited to offer these ideas here, but even more excited to hear your thoughts on these topics... so reach out! Let's generously share our wonderings, questions, ideas, pursuits, intentions, dreams, and visions for a playful future.
For show notes and transcript, visit: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/04/seasons-of-inquiry/
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Victoria, owner of Side by Side Consulting Services, is a skilled thinking partner for early childhood educators and brings many rich experiences and wisdom to this 2-part conversation. In this episode, and part 1, we engage is an authentic, reflective, and open conversation to explore our experience with, and our ideas about young children's experiences with art, music, and dance. We discuss parallel practices of play, the importance of building relationships with high quality materials, and the influence of time in getting to know materials such as clay or a guitar. If you're curious about how you can support and honour children's expression through various art forms, this episode is for you!
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Welcome back to a playful episode about play! While I intended for this episode to be about play theorists, the benefits of play, and how play and learning are interconnected, I ended up taking a walk and capturing some recent reflections from my own practice and experience about how I value and notice play, lately. Here, I share my hot takes on keeping play alive in our language and observations, what I've been learning about Anishinaabe perspectives about animals (and how that, to me, feels playful) and what children need post-COVID. I also included a voice note on my phone where I reflect on my own experience with play and sound lately, and Jean Clinton's idea of positive upwards spirals/Carol Anne Wein's suggestion of supporting the wirldwind effects of synergy and positive energy in classrooms. I'd love to hear your thoughts on play as well - how do you keep the play alive in your life?
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What happens when a Human Resources manager (mom), a student teacher (middle sibling), and a grad student (eldest sibling) FaceTime for 5 minutes? Well, when it's my family, we start theorizing about inclusion. What started as a spontaneous video call, turned into a deep conversation that challenged what we thought about inclusion, and called us to rethink how we have experienced inclusion of disability. This prompted us to hit the record button to capture our wonderings, and it also prompted us to pause our conversation to include the most important perspective: Sandy. In my family, my youngest sibling, Sandy, lives with Down Syndrome, and in this episode she generously shares her ideas, opinions, and memories of attending multiple high school proms. This episode left me with more questions about inclusion and belonging, and begs for a next step in including educators' perspectives on the history of this particular example of inclusion. Just a reminder that there is a transcript of every episode available on Buzzsprout to assist in understanding what is discussed in each episode.
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This is not so much an episode but 'going public' with this piece is a growing part of my documentation practice. This 'episode' is a spoken word poem that I wrote over a year ago that marks a particular place in a learning journey. I wrote this under the mentorship of Andrea Breen during my the first semester of my graduate studies at the University of Guelph, and it captures and explores how I felt about knowledge (as an academic, educator, and student) at that particular moment in time, particularly with regards to being invited into alternative ways of knowing, being, and doing. It's by far a perfect articulation of what needs to change, and it clearly still holds many biases, so I'm excited to see how a further poem about the same topic might turn out differently.... or not. For more context and citations, please see my show notes at https://playfulpedagogies.ca/.
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In this episode, I had the great pleasure of chatting with outdoor education 'guru' Bob Henderson. As an experienced educator, guide and writer, Bob exudes wisdom when discussing of ways being with people outdoors. Through this conversation Bob and I find many not-so-surprising connections between my own experience as a student and Bob's experience as an educator, despite Bob never teaching me. We cover everything from adventure narratives to play as cultural defiance to the value of baking cinnamon buns on trip. Running with Bob's ideas, we reflect on multiple ways of being, the role of relationality while being outdoors, the usefulness (or lack thereof) of hobbies, being in the present, tumbling and fumbling, and the possibility of 'joy' conferences in the future. This conversation is full of nuggets of wisdom for nature-based educators everywhere!
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In this solo episode I reflect on my experience attending the fall conference held by the Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario (COEO). I wander through reflections and realizations that I had during the conference and since, covering themes of what 'belonging' means and to whom, the limits of the English language, and my obsession with spirals. Note: this episode was recorded at the beginning of October 2021.
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In this solo episode I reflect on the fight that ECEs are in to professionalize our work and gain respect by leveraging away from being considered as glorified babysitters. I wander through wonderings about different types of care and education across time, space, and cultures, and ask questions that feel unsettling to my own identity as an ECE. Note: this episode was recorded at the beginning of Sept 2021.
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In this solo episode, I (finally!) discuss what play is! I challenge my own vision of play, getting along, and sharing. I also highlight other folks' knowledge, such as definitions of play, types of play, schemas of play, and rhetorics of play. This episode is rooted in early childhood education and care perspectives on play, but I make links to how this understanding can be extended lifelong.
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In this solo episode, I introduce a mini-series that I intend to continue called Pondering Pathways, where I take a walk around my neighbourhood while reflecting on what is required to access play. I follow up from my questions about Treaty 3 from my first episode and then I contemplate some systemic limitations related to ability, race, socioeconomic status, and culture. I take a deep dive into some thoughts about music in early learning, seasonal outdoor play, and what is required to engage with sophisticated environments and tools. This episode is a little bit of an experiment… it’s a bit choppy or distorted at times and includes some input from the more-than-human world.
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In this solo pilot episode, I introduce myself and my orientations toward play, share some ideas about my intentions for this podcast, and try my hand at defining 'pedagogy' from the ECE perspective. After disclosing some of own playful journey into podcasting, I try answering the rapid fire questions I created for future guests. Let's hope my dream list of guests will manifest! For more show notes check out https://www.playfulpedagogies.ca.
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