The Power of Play: How to Keep the Joy in Learning with Geoff McLachlan

Laughter isn't just the best medicine, it may also be a pivotal part of a successful learning experience. In this episode we speak with big-bearded and gregarious Geoff McLachlan, founder of Professionals at Play and explore how the simple joy of play can prove rejuvenating both students and educators alike.

As the unstructured playgrounds of the past have been replaced with the excessively structured learning environments of today, we have lost our ability to play and, with it, much of the resilience once learned out on the playground, as well as many of the nurturing relationships developed there.

Join in as we discover how a sprinkle of humor coupled with a playful spirit can indeed pave the way for a robust, inclusive educational setting where being a good human is as important as being a good student.

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.

Transcript

Ad VO: 0:06

Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg.

Eric Price: 0:20

Everybody needs a hug sometimes, and that's especially true of our teachers and students these days. Today, with the help of one expert guide, we'll take an adventure in kindness right here on Outliers in Education.

Ad VO: 0:32

I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools, everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people. I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for kids.

Eric Price: 0:49

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Outliers in Education, where we seek out folks who are not only striving to make education better in this country, but actually doing it. We're giving them for tips and tricks and wisdom. I'm Eric Price, and with me, as usual, is my hug-able co-host from the Center for Educational Effectiveness, eric Bolz. Bolzie, we're one month into the new year and how are your stress levels?

Erich Bolz: 1:13

My stress levels have never been better, EP. Unfortunately, that might be attributable to the fact that I'm rarely on the front lines of public education anymore, like I was for three decades previous, because we know there's some real stressors out there today. In many regards, I think the work's never been harder. There's stressors for students, stressors for teachers. We have stressors around some of the antidotes, in terms of how some of us perceive just the phrase social, emotional learning. Yet there is, I think, an obvious optimistic cure, and that is strengthening relationships student to student, student to teacher. As you know, ep, it all comes down to the relationships.

Eric Price: 1:51

Yep, just like real estate, right Relationship, relationship relationship. As I said at the top of the show, everybody could use a hug sometimes, and today's guest actually does that professionally. Well, not actually giving hugs, although I'm sure that, Geoff, you do that as well, but HUG is actually the name of one of a variety of programs Geoff McLachlan brings to students and educators around the country in his effort to lower stress levels and help us all rediscover the joys of learning together. He's the founder of Professionals at Play, a speaker, trainer and coach, as well as a former teacher. Geoff, welcome to the show.

Geoff McLachlan: 2:26

Hello everybody, Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Eric Price: 2:30

So, Geoff, you started Professionals at Play back in 2016. Tell us a little bit about what that is and what you're trying to accomplish.

Geoff McLachlan: 2:40

Well, I started off in education as an early elementary school teacher all the way down in kindergarten Wow. Now I'm assuming this is a podcast and people can't see me, but I got a big beard A lot of times. When kids would walk into the school, like the very first day of school, I was so excited as they were. But of course they would come around the corner into the classroom and they'd see this guy with a big giant beard standing there and there were oftentimes screams and sometimes accidents and parents going. Well, where's the teacher?

Eric Price: 3:10

Like that's me.

Geoff McLachlan: 3:11

They're like I'm not leaving my kid with you, where's the teacher? So but I started off in education, really loved it, had a great time. And then I got pulled into the speaking world and working with students and again absolutely love it, love working with kids. But then, as I got a little bit older, a lot of gray hair happened, working with a lot of people across the country, and eventually I said, well, wait a minute, at some point I'm not going to be as effective with younger students as like some young, cool hip guy. And so I decided well, wait, maybe I'll start working with the educators, the people that work with the students on a daily basis, because then we have some things in common and I thought that would be a really good place. I could amplify the message and the amount of people that are going out there and actually doing the work. And so that's when I started professionals at play work with educators and corporations across the United States now, and it's it's a lot of fun.

Eric Price: 4:10

And when you talk about young, cool and hip, you're talking about people like bulls, right yeah?

Erich Bolz: 4:14

absolutely, yeah, exactly.

Eric Price: 4:16

I wanted to get that in there 100%.

Erich Bolz: 4:18

So, Jeff, give us an overview of what it looks like when a group of educators engage with you.

Geoff McLachlan: 4:25

First of all, there's always play involved. Obviously, the company is professionals at play, and I truly believe that everything we really need to learn and to be successful started on the playground, right, it started on when we were little kids. Now the playground has changed a little bit over the last, you know, many decades of my life, and specifically in schools. You look at, like what happened? We used to have merry-go-rounds, we used to have monkey bars. We used to have the playground was just a little bit dangerous, just enough that you learned a lot. You learned I mean, you learned physics. It was an actual physics experiment, right?

Geoff McLachlan: 5:01

Well, then they started to get a little safer and we started to put cushioning down, but we still have the playground and you learned all the social skills that you needed because it was unstructured playtime, and so when I work with adults and I work with students, we take the opportunity to put ourselves back into the playground situation and we do that through facilitating large group activities, but a lot of it is a lot of playbase and then conversation. So when people play together, it starts to break down the walls, they start to become, they go back to that childhood wonder and creativity and curiosity, and it doesn't matter how old you are. I've had people play that were, you know, in their 70s and maybe the rate of play goes down a little bit. But at the same time, the creativity, the joy, the wonder and the conversations are just this childlike is when they were little kids, and so play is always on the agenda whenever I do any kind of training.

Erich Bolz: 5:56

So when you, when you're engaged in training, I'm envisioning selling this message to a high school staff. So how do you get me to uncross my arms and engage? Give us some examples of what that looks like.

Geoff McLachlan: 6:10

Okay, so I know it seems a little silly. When was the last time you pulled somebody's finger?

Eric Price: 6:16

Well, really probably not too long ago, if you ask Bulls and Mades. Really that's a bad audience, that's a bad demographic, Jeff.

Geoff McLachlan: 6:24

But here's the thing If there's any guy in the room, you say pull my finger, and they all giggle, why? Because at heart we're all teenage boys, right, and that's. We never really grow out of that. And so if we can plug into that sense of playfulness, that joy, I will actually have people pull each other's fingers and they and it's I know I say it, but it's, it's hilarious.

Geoff McLachlan: 6:45

I just did a TEDx in Spokane and I asked the entire audience to play and when I did this, I mean you could hear an audible groan as I asked them to stand up. But then I got everybody a partner and as soon as I started them playing, the very first thing I had them do was put out a hand, just like this, towards their partner. The other partner makes a finger, like this, and then they put their pointer finger in their partner's palm and then I say, on your marks, get set, go. And when I say go, you try and pull your finger to safety, you try and grab the other person's finger. It was almost impossible to get them back because they were laughing so hard, Right? And I mean you never think like. You think that all of a sudden pulling a stranger's finger wouldn't create that kind of reaction, but it does and it's a. It's safe yeah.

Eric Price: 7:31

I don't know about all of you, but I'm feeling better already. Stay with us and we'll be right back with more stress-free insights right here on Outliers in Education.

Erich Bolz: 8:25

Great to have you next time.

Ad VO: 8:27

Thank you out the whole Educator Series online SCL training available now from CE at effectivenessorg slash workshops. That's effectivenessorg slash workshops.

Eric Price: 8:46

And we're back. We're in the middle of a playful chat with Jeff McLaughlin, founder of professionals at play. So, jeff, let me ask you this when we talk about some of the structures that we've put in for kids, and if we look back, I mean, you know, decades ago, when we were kids on the playground, where there wasn't that structure, we had to make up all the rules. What have kids lost as a result of that, and how do we see that show up socially?

Geoff McLachlan: 9:13

That's a great question, as the playground has changed. It's not a lack of resilience, but the resilience has gone down a little bit and you're starting to see I mean, especially post COVID, you see, like so many more mental health issues with students you see, everything is like and instead of having the resiliency of, okay, this was an event, it happened, I got through it and now I'm okay, now we're seeing long-term lingering effects and people think that, oh my gosh, I can't go out in public or I can't talk to this person because it's dangerous. And that lack of resilience versus when we were younger, we fell down on the playground, you scraped your knee and there was no one there to help you. You kind of brushed yourself off and you got back up and you kept going Because that's that's. You wanted to keep playing.

Geoff McLachlan: 10:00

And so you, you learned that resilience through play and through adversity and we learned that, yes, it hurts right now, it's a moment in time, but it's going to pass and then we're going to get on to the next thing, and so that that resilience piece is really huge and play helps to create resilience. You mentioned like coming up with your own set of rules. That's incredibly vital for creativity for negotiating, for all the things that we can do that we would consider now social, emotional learning. That was just stuff you did on the playground, yeah absolutely yeah, you did not.

Eric Price: 10:32

when we were kids, you did not need to know which color of face I was. You know if we were playing football and you cheated, right? I let you know that immediately. I did not need to point to the red face, right? Yeah?

Erich Bolz: 10:43

Right, jeff. What do you notice about adult resilience, about teacher resilience, during this time? You've been at this since 2016,. The world has shifted seismically since 2016. What have you noticed in that time?

Geoff McLachlan: 10:55

Well, the probably the biggest thing is that through COVID we saw education change drastically. So educators, as you were trained to teach a subject, to have classroom management, to engage with your students and obviously to care about them, to create those relationships it became so much harder because it was through a screen. If you didn't have that camaraderie already in the classroom, it was much harder to develop and so it's just another barrier. So the screen is a barrier between connection, and the hardest part about education is the biggest thing that we do is connect with students. Everybody knows that a great teacher, the number one thing that they do with their classroom, is they connect with their kids and they know that. Those kids know that the teacher cares and therefore the kids care, and that's a 90% battle right there. If you can do that, you're 90% of the way there. The learning will happen if you have the relationship.

Eric Price: 11:48

So Jeff, I teach a bunch of up and coming teachers right, preservice teachers and if you were going to kind of encapsulate what you just shared there about making those connections, what would you say? And then, if you gave them some directions about how to do it, what would you say there?

Geoff McLachlan: 12:03

The biggest thing is be curious, be curious, ask questions. If you allow your students to ask why, on five, seven, 10 different levels, just keep asking why, why, why, we'll eventually get down to it, right, but we teach that out of kids now, which is unfortunate because you know by about the third, fourth, fifth grade they're going why and the teacher goes because I said so. Stop asking why, right, we literally teach the curiosity out of them. And so, as up and coming educators, maintain that curiosity, not just about your subject but about your students, because every single kid is going through something. If you can just keep asking why, eventually you'll get down to the thing that really matters to them, about your kiddos.

Eric Price: 12:45

Absolutely About your kiddos. Just keep asking the relationship because you're always curious about it.

Geoff McLachlan: 12:50

Wait a minute, tell me more about that. Well, what about that? Does this? Now, when you say that, what does that really mean? Like when I, when I have a kid, say, oh, that makes me really happy, I'll say, great, I know what happy means to me. But what does happy mean to you? Right, like just a simple definition of terms, because then we're on the same playing field. Now we're playing fair because we have the same set of rules, and that's vital for any organization, any group, any classroom to be successful. We just have a common language, we have a common set of rules. Everybody plays by the same set of rules, so we can all win.

Eric Price: 13:21

So here's. Here's one for you, jeff. What is your best story about someone that didn't believe in play and then started to play and then you made a believer album? Do you have a story?

Geoff McLachlan: 13:32

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I was at a school in just outside of Chicago, chicago Illinois, big middle school, about a thousand kids in this middle school and I was doing a. I did a keynote and then I did a day of play with them. And during the keynote for the entire school, I had all the kids on one side of the gym and I tell a story about unicorns and believing in things and kids are like oh my gosh, and I mean I'm, it's crazy. I've had kids come up after years after me like you're this guy, you're the, you're the. They have no idea who I am, but they're like you're the, you're the unicorn guy. So I'm like, yes, I am, but I was.

Erich Bolz: 14:06

I didn't tell the story.

Geoff McLachlan: 14:08

And then I did a little experiment where I'd put four chairs out, have the kids sit down in the chairs. They would lean back on the lap of the person behind them, they would arch their back and then I'd pull the chairs out. Right, so you create a physical table out of students. And I went and picked kids. I said I need somebody to volunteer, I need four of you, and I had about 800 kids raise their hands and I was like dude, this is the coolest school ever. And so I just start picking kids out. I'm like you and you and you. And then I pick a kid out of the front row and I'm like you, come on down. I didn't pay attention to the kids that I was picking and we got them there. I said, okay, do you play sports? And every kid said yes and I said, okay, cool, are you guys afraid of getting hurt? And they all said yes and I said, okay, I'll take that as a no. Are you guys okay with danger? And they're like yes, no, yes, no, cool, I'll take that as a yes. All right, here's what we're going to do. And then I set them up and I do the experiment and they do it Well, as they're all going back, one of the kids, when he goes over and sits down, I noticed that he was sitting with all the special needs students.

Geoff McLachlan: 15:12

And I look over and I'm like his paraprofessionals are just in tears, they're just sobbing and I was like, okay, cool, and I do the rest of my keynote. And they come up to me afterwards and they're crying. So as soon as they're crying, I'm like what's going on? How's it going? The crying unicorn now, exactly, I'm the crying unicorn. And they said I don't know if you know what you just did, but that kid is autistic and almost completely nonverbal. Wow. And he just got up in front of a thousand kids. Wow. And he said did he do this thing? But he said his name, he talked. That's more than we've heard him talk. No way, wow. I mean, I was sobbing at that point and we're just all hugging each other and I'm like, okay, I got to work with the rest of the kids now, but it was fascinating because it was all about support and caring and these kids, like you had a thousand kids just going crazy and screaming for these kids, like you can do it, come on.

Erich Bolz: 16:17

Yeah.

Geoff McLachlan: 16:18

And then the rocket ship blasting off, just the cacophony of noise, of support, and it was one of the most. I wish I would have had that on film because that was like in terms of my speaking career, that was, I think, the loudest I've ever been in a gym, with kids cheering for each other. And if we think about that right, that support, that level of support, if we had that at all schools, if kids showed up and people cheered for them, if educators showed up and people cheered for them, I don't think we'd have hardly any problems at all in schools.

Eric Price: 16:47

It's just like a regular board meeting. That's what that sounds like to me. Yeah, just play and cheering, that's right.

Geoff McLachlan: 16:54

I mean at least the ones you guys ran, the ones that you did, yeah.

Erich Bolz: 16:58

AP and I never had the courage to run board meetings, jeff. We just sat there as unwitting participants. So, switching gears slightly. Sel has become sort of one of those polarizing acronyms or catch phrases right now. How have you, or how would you, combat the notions that it's something we shouldn't be working on?

Geoff McLachlan: 17:18

Oh, it's something we're always working on. The hard part is that people have twisted it. People have associated it with for lack of a better word like they think it's a far left ideology. And it's not an ideology, it's a simple how do we behave as human beings? The hard part is it's not about ethics, it's just simply about kindness. How do we teach each other to be good to each other?

Geoff McLachlan: 17:39

A lot of people get that mixed up with. Well, if you believe this, then you're this, and they start pointing fingers and getting argumentative and judgmental. In reality, social-emotional learning is really about how do we get along, regardless of what you look like, sound like, where you're from, the politics you practice or don't practice Any of that. The beautiful part is that play incorporates all of those things, because you don't care what somebody looks like or sounds like If you're playing and having a good time. It's all about the moment, and it's one of the few times you're really truly physically present with another human being is when you're playing with them, and so if I think we can make that little paradigm shift from this is a political ideology to this is a how to be a good human, and it's not judgmental, it's not political-based, it is simply a. It's the stuff that we learned in kindergarten that people are now getting all in a tizzy about because they think it's like you're going to teach our kids this Like no, it's just work hard, play fair and be kind.

Eric Price: 18:36

So, jeff, let me ask you this If I am a type A, get a done, you know, scope and sequence type person, not that that's bad but then I would say, hey, I don't have time for play. What would be your elevator pitch to me about no, here's. Here's why it's important.

Geoff McLachlan: 18:53

I'm going to ask you questions. I'm actually I'm just going to simply say hey, how do you feel about that? How does your staff feel? Do you know your staff's hopes and dreams? Do they know yours? Do you know their stress level? Do they know yours? Because if you can take a little simple, you know, verbal survey of our stress levels are high. Our kids are feeling stressed out. I'm feeling stressed out. We don't have time, we just gotta go, go, go because the state standard testing is coming up and we've gotta get ready for that. Cool. Well, how do you feel about that?

Geoff McLachlan: 19:25

Because now it's in a caring conversation and honestly, I'm not the end all be all answer. I don't have all the answers. Like I said that earlier, I can say that if you take the time to actually play, you take the time to take a little bit for yourself, to help your staff out, your productivity, your engagement, your stress levels are gonna come down and I mean just laugh for a little bit. If you laugh for a little bit, you feel so much better. It's like okay, okay, we're a little bit lighter. Now what if you start a you know any of the staff meetings or whatever with a simple like two or three minute video of something hilarious and everybody laughs and you go okay, cool, let's try not to do that today, okay all right, go out there and do your thing, people.

Eric Price: 20:06

Well, jeff, you might not have all of the answers, but I certainly think you've got more than bulls in me, come on. And so this is that time that we now get to see how good bulls he really is. He is the master of summarization. So, bullsie, what do you got from us, from the professionals that play thinking?

Erich Bolz: 20:25

Well, I actually took a few notes. Ep this is. We do this just for my listening comprehension skills, jeff, just so you know, every time, every time, yes, so really, we hear this message over and over again and I see it.

Erich Bolz: 20:39

I substitute once a week as a principal local school system so I see firsthand that kids are less resilient and we've heard from so many of our experts on this podcast. We've been fortunate enough to hear from folks that you probably know, like Greg Benner, jim Sporelater, eric Drieson and Luke Wall from only seven seconds and filmmaker Aaron Christopher, really all working in these spaces around trying to help mitigate this trauma-informed typhoon tsunami that we're dealing with, and that this also impacts educators. That play, creates resilience and fosters creativity. Well, education's an incredibly creative profession that requires resilience. So see some huge parallels between the students and the adults alike. Screens are barriers. Screens are barriers to connections and I made that huge connection to the only seven seconds work. And how do we find ways for folks to connect when we know that loneliness has literally been classified by the surgeon general as an epidemic in our country for kids and adults alike? Relationships before rigor we know that.

Erich Bolz: 21:41

We see that in our outlier conditions and characteristics the constant reminder to be curious. I think the most successful of us are successful often because we're driven by curiosity, and I think that's always something important. Jeff's story about the student with disabilities in Chicago really resonated with an earlier episode where we had coach Jim Johnson on who is the coach of the student? Who the basketball player affectionately known as TMAC, tmac, and really that Jeff's story is an eerie parallel to that power of inclusion and the incredible multiplier effect it has, and when we include we probably actually receive more benefit than we convey.

Erich Bolz: 22:21

So absolutely appreciated that SEL defines how we behave. It's really about kindness, play as a vehicle for SEL. It helps us stay in the moment, Changing minds and hearts through questions, always a good reminder and incredibly important leadership skill and approach for all of us. You know, don't get angry, get curious, ask questions and play being a gateway to culture building, which is having a strong culture, key component that we found in our positive outlier study. I just like to say simply, jeff, thanks for taking the time to teach us and reinforce that it's important to be a good human.

Geoff McLachlan: 22:56

Thank you so much, man. That's so everybody you mentioned, like all the people that you've had on the podcast. That's what we're all doing. That's the beautiful thing. There's a bunch of people doing it and I think a majority of us are just trying to be a good human and get little humans to be good humans growing up.

Erich Bolz: 23:13

Well, and what I love about your space is it's a collaborative space. It's no one single approach has the answers. We need all of these incredibly gifted practitioners coming alongside of our public educators and really bolstering these issues that are daunting around social, emotional learning. So what I love about your space is the collaboration. There's always room for one more person with one more good idea that I like to call them low touch, high impact that teachers can implement tomorrow that don't require taking that resiliency window down by giving your downtime to a profession that's taken so much from you on the day and on the moment. So thank you again.

Eric Price: 23:48

And the most important thing, jeff, about your space, of course, is pulling that finger, and we appreciate you bringing us back to that eternal truth, jeff, how did I miss that? Jeff, thank you for the what you've shared with us about professionals at play. We can find you at professionals at playcom. Thank you for joining us on the show, jeff.

Geoff McLachlan: 24:05

Thank you so much you guys, have an awesome, awesome rest of your week. Work hard, play fair, be kind and make the world a great place.

Erich Bolz: 24:11

Well, thank you so much, Jeff, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. You can find this episode and more, anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts or visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time. This has been Outliers in Education.

Eric Price: 24:26

Bang baby, Nice Sweet.

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If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools Effectivenessorg.