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Editor's Notes

1. Summer Sandbox, August 2011: 21 participantsPLAYing Outside the Box, Fall Semester 2011: 10 participantsPLAY On Workshops: Fall Semester – Laughter for a Change, an after-school improvisational theater workshop open to both educators and high school students, led by seasoned improviser and in- structor Ed Greenberg;␣␣ AnimAction, an animation workshop held on Saturdays only for educators, led by experienced animator and instructor Clifford Cohen; or␣␣ KCET Departures, a community storytelling workshop held on Saturdays only for educators, led by KCET Education Director and long-time producer Rubi Fregoso.
2. 1.Participation, not indoctrination. -----------------1.Participation, not indoctrination. There is a critical need, in the field of education, to transition from professional development for teachers to professional development with teachers. Participatory learning relies on a model of “distributed expertise”, which assumes that knowledge, including in an educational context, is distributed across a diffuse network of people and tools. We believe that professional development for teachers should similarly be conceived and implemented in a non-hierarchical, inclusive and partic- ipatory manner, thus modeling the type of dynamic pedagogy that characterizes participatory learning.
3. 2.Exploration, not prescription.--------2.Exploration, not prescription: In order to inspire this sense of ownership and co-design in the participants, PD initiatives must allow ample room for personal and professional exploration. Attention must also be paid to what teachers want from a professional development experience, rather than just what is required of them. By allowing teachers to explore who they are and what their professional goals are, the PD program can provide educators with an opportunity to connect to the content and to display their own individuality in the process.
4. 3.Contextualization, not abstraction.-----------------3.Contextualization, not abstraction: PD programs should be tailored to the specific questions and particu- lar career goals of the participants. We acknowledge the tension between the desire to create scalable and flexible initiatives, and the need to cater most effectively to specific disciplines and levelsof instruction; this challenge is all the more acute when it comes to sharing strategies for integrating media and digital technologies into the classroom. However, we believe that there is a way to reconcile this tension. By addressing the common core standards teachers need to fulfill, while in the same time accounting for the various disciplines and grade levels, program designers can craft versatile PD initiatives that represent – and feel like – a genuine investment in professional growth.
5. 4.Iteration, not repetition. -----------------4.Iteration, not repetition. In order to sustain ongoing learning, the design of successful PD programs must provide opportunities for constant improvement, troubleshooting, and evaluation. In this sense, assessment emerges as a problematic yet nevertheless vital topic in the realm of professional development implementation. We hope that assessment practices in professional development will increasingly mirror the participatory shift in program design and reflection.
6. THINK, PAIR, 2 PAIRS, SHAREHow can you apply these principles to your own work?
7. Thank you to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support on the PLAY! program and release of this publition drafts from Anthony Maddox, Kathi Inman Berens, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Ioana Literat and Meryl Alper. Special thanks to our partner, Jane Kagon, Executive Director of RFK-Legacy in Action, Jacqueline Olvera-Rojas and Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools where we hosted the PLAY! program and to our staff and volunteers including Kirsten Carthew, Akifa Khan, Erickson Raif, Marina Micheli and Sophie Madej who helped to make the PLAY! program a success. We want to especially thank our PLAYing Outside the Box partners (Clifford Cohen, AnimAction, Inc; Rubi Fregoso, KCET; Ed Greenberg, Laughter for a Change; and Jojo Sanchez and Julie Mat- sumoto, Operation Street Kidz) who volunteered their time to introduce teachers to community resources. We offer special thanks to Explore Locally, Excel Digitally after-school program participants for inspiring this program, especially Michel Diaz, Carmela Yalung, John Yalung, and Johny Marcial who attended part of the Summer Sand- box with their teachers. And most of all, we thank the teachers who participated in the PLAY! program. The PLAY! teachers were willing to take the time and energy to shift the conversation and practices in the classroom and we are incredibly moved by their rich ideas and insights that helped shape our thinking with PLAY!. And last but not least, we want to especially thank Henry Jenkins for his guiding wisdom and experience and Jonathan Taplin for his unwavering support.
8. -it has been a genuine privilege. Thank you!