Playworks National: Powering Play Across America

For 23 years Playworks has helped kids thrive at school. We have demonstrated the transformative power of play for developing important life skills, creating positive school environments, and increasing children’s engagement in school. By creating opportunities for kids to experience joy, teamwork, and a sense of belonging in their school community, we are instilling in them the importance of friendship, respect, collaboration, and inclusion, all of which are critical for success at school and in life.

Playworks partners with teachers, principals, and districts to build a culture of play that enables kids to feel a sense of belonging and empowers them on the playground, in the classroom, and in their communities. Through a mix of service offerings that range from day-long trainings to a full-time on-site Coach for the school year, we help our partner schools learn how they can leverage play to create a positive learning environment. We help teachers see how simple changes during the unstructured time of recess can have a huge impact on the entire school day. We help school staff organize inclusive games and invite everyone to participate, teach them how to use simple strategies such as rock-paper-scissors to resolve conflicts, and encourage them to jump into games with the kids and model positive language and behavior. The result is dramatic, and research backs up what we see on the playground every day: kids are active and engaged, feel included, and treat one another with respect.

Over the past year, Playworks directly supported safe and healthy play at 646 schools across the country serving a total of 341,628 students. Through our Coach program, we are serving more than 127,754 kids at 239 schools. An additional 181,548 kids at 347 schools have our TeamUp service, and 33,078 students at 60 schools have Part-time Coach. Through Pro trainings and professional development we have supported safe and healthy play for hundreds of thousands more kids across the country.

We were thrilled to have two of our Coaches - Former Playworks Coach Max Langaard and current Playworks Coach Matthew Bailey - featured on Good Morning. They highlighted the lifetime bond they developed and their shared love of basketball - and were suprised with NBA finals tickets. They are both incredible role models! Watch their inspiring story here: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/living/video/youth-basketball-coaches-surprised-nba-finals-tickets-63448112