Engaging Exchange Protecting Play Online Conference
November 3, 2025
"When we protect play and stand back to observe it with interest, we come to understand what it really means to believe, document, observe, revere and tell the stories of young children’s everyday lives. We document the time when Tanesha told us to be quiet because her babies were sleeping. We write about the time Muhammad asked me if he could do my hair for me and then proceeded to do so, all the while talking to me about what he was going to do. We learn to write stories instead of behavior management plans. We bear witness to the child’s engagements for the first time in some ways with their world. And as Terry Tempest Williams says, “Bearing witness is not a passive act.”
