Episode 3
Play for Play?
INTRO
Welcome to Brain Matters, a podcast where we explore anything and everything related to the brain and learn how we can improve YOUR life. In each episode, we talk with scientists, researchers, and educators to better understand how neuroscience and psychology can help young people learn more effectively and take care of their mental well-being.
Episode Intro
In today’s episode, we’re talking about something that might sound simple, or even childish: play. When students are under pressure from school, tests, college applications, and everything else, play can feel like a waste of time. But what if play is actually one of the ways our brains recover, stay curious, and keep learning?
We’ll explore why play matters not just for young children, but also for high school students, and how playful learning can support mental health, resilience, and motivation.
We’re excited to be joined by Cate Schultz.
Vivian: Hi Cate,Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast. Happy to have you here.
To Start, Could you introduce yourself to our audience and share a little bit about the work you're currently doing? What first, like kind of drew you into the intersection of children's mental health Play and science learning.
Cate: Yeah, so thanks for having me. I'm Cate, I just finished my second year of my PhD in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Before that I was at UNC Chapel Hill for my undergrad, and I did Psychology and Education, with a minor in conflict management. What sort of got me involved is I originally thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. I loved teaching, I loved tutoring in high school. I worked in a lot of outer education spaces, I created an outer education program. At a local home shelter I worked with a lot of different really amazing people to get that off the ground, so that was what made me sort of really interested in supporting children's learning.
So I was taking classes for an accelerated master's program in elementary education, but then I actually took, still to this day I think maybe my favorite class of all time. In college, it was called the Therapeutic Value of Play, and it was in education school, it filled a requirement, so I was like let me do it. And what was really fascinating was the professor was an adjunct, which for people listening, who you might not be familiar with that, it means that they're not, they don't only teach or do research at the school, they usually have another job or expertise. So she was a child life specialist, which is similar but slightly different to a play therapist in the pediatric hospital setting. So they normalized the hospital environment for kids through play. They explain procedures. They sort of demystify a lot of the fear and the unknown, and all of it is through play. So it was super cool to learn about used to be a teacher like play in education. but also play as a coping tool, for kids and during adversity. And so then I got super into the class. She said based on the fact that I was really interested in nature, and the fact that I loved the class and I was really interested in education and play. Then I should volunteer with this nonprofit at the hospital that does, the only one that I know of in the country that does science education, for children in the hospital called Wonder Connection. Through play, so it's not every day that you go to an oncology unit and you exploit a volcano with a kid, but that was what I was doing, and it was amazing. It was the most interesting job I've ever done. I was like not as stressed as I think about. Like my neuroscience classes and stuff, because I was like,well, I just explored a volcano for two hours.Yeah, it was.It was super cool. So actually I ended up working part time for them later in college. But, there's a lot of research on science education, and it's growing obviously, but there's less research on, honestly, just a lot of coping skills for children in the hospital because it's such a vulnerable population, but there's also less research on science, as a source of empowerment, specifically for children and during adversity more than just making up for educational gaps. Like more than just doing well in a standardized test, that's obviously something that's important for literacy and numeracy, but also having kids feel a sense of control and agency that you get to feel as a scientist. It's a pretty unique outlet. So then I wanted to do research.
So I applied for a research fellowship which I got, and I went and worked in England for a summer, which was super fun in my British Research experience at the university of Cambridge, and specifically study play, which is super cool. They're actually funded by the LEGO Foundation.
Vivian: That kind of makes sense, LEGO you know.
Cate: Yeah, exactly, so that was super cool, and because I was through the fellowship paid but basically been an unpaid intern for the summer. I helped with all these different Ph.D projects on play, so it was like play in home settings for children who are flagged behaviorally at risk or play in the hospital or play for parenting strategies and so, I feel like I really got a comprehensive view of the different ways that research in early education, but also research on play can be done. So then I sort of pivoted from elementary ed., got more involved in research at UNC, and then applied for the grad school straight out of undergrad.
Vivian: Wow, your pivots like really cool, because I feel like it's kind of a big transition from my teacher to researcher, but like your program talked about like dabbling a lot of projects.What do you mean by like play? Are you just, is it like playing in different ways with children like different games?
Cate: Yeah, so it's actually really interesting. There's a lot of obviously different ways that play can look. So when I was working at UNC children's hospital and also Duke children's hospital my senior year, it was play based science, so it was all science activities, but the focus was there was no graded assignments. There wasn't even anything that you would write down as a reflection, it was all like experiments and things that you could try and the kid was leading the experiment, not me, I was just facilitating. So that was sort of that version of play of like exploding a rocket is obviously play in a way.
Then, other forms of play like what I did in England, I worked with a really an amazing researcher named Sydney Conroy and she was actually researching the impact of the pandemic on children, and she was doing it through play based methods so she had like a sandbox. She was having kids elaborate on their experience and how their emotions changed during the pandemic, but they would like to move little icons. Maybe like this person is your friends.Where were your friends during the covid time and then they would play, but a lot is obviously going to come out of that and that is more like play therapy focused, but there's a lot of different ways you can research it. Then, Sydney Hoffmeister is in the year below me in my ph.D program. She's awesome. She researches a lot about math games, to help children's learning in math and how parents can do it with not a ton of time or resources, and still likes to help their child's learning at home through fun math games. So there's a lot of different ways that I feel like it's definitely intertwined in my current program like a lot of people research play in different ways.
Vivian: Wow. Does she have a website where she puts all her games out like? Is there a way to like access all these games you're talking about?
Cate: I would honestly have to ask her what the name of the organization was, but a cool thing about our program is because it's Applied Developmental Psychology. They wanted to be more hands on, and so in the first year of the program,you have an internship. At some organization that serves children and families, and she worked at an organization that designs research based Math games and so like she just presented on it to our whole research community.
Vivian: Ok well, so you're like basically designing games.That's super cool because like before I still wanted to do it in like this podcast, for a minute I was thinking of doing games and then I tried to get into and I was like, this is a lot. So I like pivoting this, but wow, it's really cool.
Cate: Yeah, and one thing I'll add is also like.I agree with you that you don't realize how much thought goes into designing games.When you're designing a game you're like, wait I can't make this rule that won't work. One of the assignments in that class I still remember like four years later was that we had to make a board game as our final project and it had to serve a unique need, and I did like a little penguin board game for children with social and emotional disabilities. It was like the penguin went to the stimulus shelter when it was overwhelmed from its social group and learned how to regroup and stuff, but I was like, I had a roommate who was a physics major freshman year and I was cutting out tiny little penguins and she was like crying over physics, and I was like, yeah, I think I chose the right major. But also, I joke with my partner that like I never took physics and so he's like How do you know where a ball is gonna go when you toss it in the air but
Vivian: Let it go?
Cate: We let it go. Yeah.
Vivian:Okay so, that's super interesting. When high school students are under pressure, play can sound like childish or unproductive, but from your research.Why might play actually matter for mental health resilience and learning?
Cate: It's a really good question. I think that something that's interesting is it was actually a question on the final exam for this class that I took, and I still remembered it like. I think it's Stewart Brown, but it was the opposite of play is not work, the opposite of play is depression. Obviously it is a pretty half d statement, but I think it's true to a certain extent, like I think that often high school students can be under a lot of pressure, especially today, like standardized testing matters a lot more. There's a lot of competition to get into college, there's a lot of competition to thrive and succeed against your peers. But also like play is such an important part of being a human being and like reconnecting with yourself, and also, we're learning a lot and my program and also just like through the research I've done is like play doesn't have to be only for play's sake like sometimes it is and there's also like if you end up going down the rabbit hole play research, there's actually like some controversy in the field. I think it's like the more play you can infuse the better some people are like, play for play is only really play, but I think educational play is great I think that if you can make classes more engaging. 3rd graders are never gonna thrive when they're lectured too.Why don't you make it interesting and it's challenging and it's definitely more work?And we've,You know a shortage of quality teachers in the United States, like we have so many quality teachers, but they're overworked and they're underpaid. So, then it's really hard to ask them to go above and beyond when they're already at their bandwidth.But at the same time, those teachers who do have such a positive impact because children engage more and then they learn more, then they retain more.
So I think that the same applies to high school students. I also think that in my high school I was blessed that like I had a few teachers, I remember my environmental science class. We played like a predator prey game on the first day and I was like, wait, this is so cool to an IB class like the same as AP, but he was so game, interested, and I think that everyone was more interested in like excited to learn because of it. So I think it's important, and I also think it's important for your mental health. Everyone's like personal playtime is different and actually like was just looking back cause I was helping someone else with my application to get into grad school, although it varies by program like you kind of usually have to have a personal statement, the same way you do for as a senior in undergrad or in looking at undergrad, and mine was about how I've done all this research on play, but like running is my personal playtime, like I like frolicI game, I like listen to music and like stop to look at ducklings this morning.
I think that it's like you shouldn't lose that just because You have like eight hundred things on your doctoral student to do list like it's still important because otherwise, I wouldn't be motivated or excited about the eight hundred things. So I don't know I think the same old five style school students or anyone at any age group.
Ending for EP3
So the next time you feel like play is just a distraction, pause and ask yourself: what kind of play helps me feel more alive, more curious, or more connected to myself?
For Cate, play doesn’t always mean toys or games. Sometimes, it looks like running, listening to music, being outside, or stopping to look at ducklings. And for students, especially students with a long to-do list, play might not be the opposite of productivity. It might be what gives us the energy to keep going.
In the next episode, we’ll move from play to brain health. We’ll look at how students can use science, data, and even their own stress signals to better understand their brains and bodies.
See you next time on Brain Matters.