Play

 This week's readings brought up many thoughts, questions, realizations and memories for me. While reading Yoon's article it brought up many pieces from not only my childhood but from when I was an early childhood educator in a pre-K classroom. The first piece I'd like to recognize is how when I was younger, I thought how great it was to see a black girl have her own TV show. "That's so Raven" to me (a white girl), felt like great representation for young black girls. After reading Yoon's article where they described Raven as being "used as a comedic prop, portrayed as materialistic and self-centered", my thoughts changed. Yoon also describes her best friend Chelsea as the "heteronormative protagonist, who was grounded and compassionate." This to me feeds into the harmful stereotypes of black girls that Yoon had described in the reading. Youth are influenced by everything around them from the TV shows they watch to the toys they play with. 

I loved loved loved the "Chillaxing" reading because it was about a local non-profit youth space. While reading this I wish I had a space like New Urban Arts when I was a young person. You can feel the energy from this space as you are reading, its warm, its welcoming, its creative and allows young people the space to truly be themselves. I love that the space is structured intentionally for young people to explore and express themselves in different ways. It infuriates me that grind culture is a thing because I fall into it sometimes. Young people have so many high expectations of them and the second that they take time for themselves to REST they are labeled as lazy and unmotivated. Truth is we all need to make time to rest and take breaks. Life can be overwhelming at times and if resting is the way someone takes care of their mind and body then so be it. I also think that older generations expected the younger generations to fix the problems they have caused over the years and expect us to grind all the time. That is completely unrealistic to me. 

I am looking forward to my facilitation on play, it is one of my favorite themes in youth development. I believe that play is important at every age! Play can be defined in so many ways! Thats the fun thing about play, we get to decide what it looks like. 

Questions that came up for me in the readings:

1. How can I incorporate play with my college aged students?

2. How can I incorporate play for myself in my day to day? 

3. What is it about the word "play" that people feel that it is a reward rather than something we should be incorporating daily?