Kids are experts of their own experiences

PlayGroup’s teachers bring significant experience and expertise to our groups. We participate in rigorous continuing education, on top of our many certifications and credentials. And yet, if we had to distill all of our extensive knowledge and training down to one essential, it would be this: Listen to kids. Everything we do at PlayGroup begins from this simple, yet often dismissed starting point. We listen to each individual child in our groups (whether they communicate verbally or through various other methods), and we build our curriculum from there. What’s more, we never stop listening to our kids. We’re proud to say that our “graduates” have started working with PlayGroup as support teachers and as consultants. We’re thrilled!   

How we do it:
At PlayGroup, we prize and prioritize the experience of our students, and our graduates have truly unique perspectives to offer. With their advice, we’re able to increasingly tailor our curriculum to best support our kids, improving with every generation of new self-advocates from whom we have the privilege of learning.  

• We ask for feedback. When developing curriculum, we’ll ask our graduates, 

  • Would this curriculum feel motivating and interesting to you? 

  • Are we missing something about your experience in social connection?

We stay flexible with our materials, incorporating responses and without getting
defensive or staying overly tied to “what we thought would work,” or “what we’ve done in
the past.” How do we know what we’re doing at PlayGroup works? When we ask our graduates the above questions they often respond, “ask the kids!”

We treat our kids as the experts they are. We are transparent in our requests that we are asking our kids for their opinions, and that we value those opinions. We show them the results of their input, and we respect their boundaries and agency. If kids don’t want to weigh in on something, we don’t push, and if they want to offer feedback on something other than what we brought up, we… listen! When we are working toward goals around flexibility and perspective taking, it starts with our modeling.