Let's Play! Teaching Strategies for Playful Learning

Instructor

Megina Baker has over twenty years of experience as an early childhood teacher, teacher educator, and education researcher, both in the United States and in Sweden. Megina holds a Ph.D. from Boston College in Curriculum and Instruction, and degrees from Tufts University and Cornell University in Early Childhood Education and Human Development, respectively. She is currently a Program Developer for the Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood, where she designs curriculum and professional learning for early childhood educators in Boston's Universal Pre-K programs—building on prior work with PZ colleague Ben Mardell in writing the integrated, play-based Focus on K2 curriculum. 

Prior to joining BPS, Megina was Director of Teaching and Learning at Neighborhood Villages, a systems-change non-profit dedicated to supporting childcare programs in Boston, where she helped to co-design a teaching and learning support system and a playful curriculum for toddlers. A former faculty member at Boston University, Megina mentored student teachers in the Early Childhood program, taught courses on playful learning, early childhood curriculum, and pedagogical documentation, helped to found the BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being, and collaborated with former PZer Stephanie Cox Suarez to run the Documentation Studio. She is a former board member of the Boston Area Reggio-Inspired Network and sits on the Editorial Board of Voices of Practitioners, a National Association for the Education of Young Children journal focused on teacher research. Megina is co-author of several books: Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhood Education in the Boston Public Schools; Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education; and A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools.

Co-Designers

Jennifer Oxman Ryan is a senior project manager and researcher on Project Zero’s Pedagogy of Play (PoP) initiative. Funded by the LEGO Foundation, PoP is engaged in playful participatory research methods to investigate playful learning and what it means to embrace play as a core resource for how children learn in school. 

Jennifer has been with PZ since 2006, having worked previously on Agency by Design, The Good Play Project, and Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It. Her current research interests include play, arts and maker-centered education, school/community partnerships, and professional learning communities. She has published in various venues, and her recent book Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape their Worlds was published by Jossey-Bass in 2016. 

Ben Mardell is the former project director of the Pedagogy of Play, a collaboration with the LEGO Foundation and the International School of Billund, exploring how play can have a central part in children’s learning in school. Ben has been associated with Project Zero since 1999, initially as a researcher on the Making Learning Visible (MLV) project, and helped co-author Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners and Making Teaching Visible: Documentation of Individual and Group Learning as Professional Development. After continuing his work as a preschool and kindergarten teacher, Ben returned as a researcher on MLV and co-authored Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools. Ben publications include From Basketball to the Beatles: In Search of Compelling Early Childhood Curriculum and Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhood Education in the Boston Public Schools. When not at PZ, Ben enjoys playing with his family and participating in triathlons.