Play in American Life: Essays in Honor of Joe L. Frost

Copyright © 2017 Mary Ruth Moore and Constance Sabo-Risley, Editors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Interior photos by Mary Ruth Moore, Tom Norquist, Adela Gott.

Cover photo by Adela Gott.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3997-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3998-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3999-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920584

Archway Publishing rev. date: 1/16/2017

Contents

The Life and Work of Joe L. Frost: An Introduction

Mary Ruth Moore

The Frost Play Research Collection

Constance Sabo-Risley

Acknowledgements

Restoring Play—The March Goes On

Joan W. Almon

A Place for Play in the Liberal Arts: Developing an Undergraduate Course on Play to Meet General Education Requirements

Michael J. Bell

Play Deprivation

Stuart Brown

The Lasting Effects of the UT Austin Tower Massacre

David Campos and Mary Ruth Moore

Caretakers of Wonder

Vivien Geneser

Stormy Passages: Searching for A Straight, True Light

Elizabeth Goodenough

Social Media as a 21st Century Playground

Stephanie Grote-Garcia, Tammy Francis Donaldson,

Olive Kajoina and Norman St. Clair

Important Then, Important Now: Arnold Gesell and the Gesell Institute of Child Development

Marcy Guddemi and Blair E. Starnes

Using Behavioral Economics to Create Playable Cities

Darell Hammond, Shawn Lin

KaBOOM!

Piyush Tantia. Sarah Welch

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Bicycle Dreams

Barry Klein

History of the US Play Coalition With a Special Focus on the Critical Role Joe Frost Played in its Development

Fran P. Mainella, Emma Pappas, Stephanie Garst, Ken Kutska, Dr. Brett Wright, Tom Norquist, and Tom Kalousek

Urban Children in the Wild: A Collaborative Success Story

Mary Ruth Moore and Constance Sabo-Risley

The Developmental Benefits of Playgrounds Research Creates Numerous Industry Equipment Improvements

Tom Norquist

From the Park to the Playground: Building for Democracy

John A. Sutterby

Preface

The International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA) is proud to sponsor the production and printing of the Dr. Joe L. Frost Festschrift. This sponsorship follows over a decade of support by IPEMA for Dr. Frost’s work. IPEMA is the original and sustaining sponsor of the Joe L. Frost Children’s Play and Play Environments Research Collection within the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. To learn more about IPEMA, please visit www.ipema.org.

This Festschrift honors Dr. Joe L. Frost, the father of play advocacy. Dr. Frost began his work following his matriculation from the University of Arkansas with a Doctorate degree. He began teaching child development in 1965 and his work as an advocate of play blossomed from that point forward. In the 1970s, he initiated a research project on play and play environments that spanned nearly 40 years. The results of that research has guided non-profit organizations, governmental entities, schools, advocates, and the play industry on decisions related to play, structured play, free play, and the benefits of play.

Dr. Frost has authored or co-authored 19 books, several in languages other than English. Perhaps even more impressive is Dr. Frost’s collection of books, periodicals, articles, research papers, media broadcasts, abstracts, photographs and other items related to play. Over 500 bound volumes existed in the collection and were donated by Dr. Frost and his wife, Betty, to the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. The Joe L. Frost Children’s Play and Play Environments Research Collection, dedicated in 2004, continues to grow each year. It is catalogued online and available to anyone who chooses to access the information.

Dr. Frost summarizes his concept of play succinctly in the following quote that appeared in an article written by Kay Randall from the University of Texas entitled Child’s Play: We’ve complicated something so essentially innocent and straightforward—kids just need a safe setting where they can become strong and resilient and develop into thinkers, builders, creators and explorers.

Each article that appears on the following pages honors the thoughts and ideology of Dr. Frost. Some refer to his actual research and others to his concepts. Some speak to the future and others to the past. Some address the joy of play and others are more scientific in nature. However, the one thing they ALL have in common is a nod and a salute to the Father of Play Advocacy and his devotion to play for all generations.

I am fortunate to have met Dr. Frost and hear him share his thoughts about play. He is passionate about this topic and would speak on it for days, if given the opportunity! IPEMA will forever be grateful to Dr. Joe L. Frost for his countless contributions to the value of play for all generations.

With much respect to Dr. Frost,

Denise R. Calabrese, CAE

Executive Director

International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA)

Foreword

ERIC STRICKLAND

So many students passed through the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin during Dr. Frost’s tenure. Many were highly capable graduate students; many more, however, were undergraduates. It is in that context that I came to appreciate Joe as a mentor. I had the great privilege of serving as Joe’s Graduate Assistant during my time at UT and worked with him weekly in the undergraduate early childhood program. As a graduate student, I was used to watching Joe with other graduate students. In spite of the fact that Joe was already an iconic figure in early childhood education due in part to the publication of his first book, he made no distinction between graduate and undergraduate students. I watched and learned as he treated undergraduates with respect, warm concern, and professionalism. He challenged them just as he did graduate students and never saw that part of his teaching as beneath the stature he had attained. Clearly, Joe valued – and continues to value – people of all types. He sees the best in people and has a unique way of bringing out their best.

Joe’s former graduate students have authored scores of scholarly articles, research reports, and books about play and its importance in early childhood education and child development. While I don’t know whether anything I ever wrote would be considered scholarly, like others who labored under the publish or perish regime in academia, I did manage to have the required number of articles published and made tenure right on schedule – again, a testament to Joe who taught discipline in writing through example. I’m not demeaning my effort, nor the efforts of others who have written profusely and professionally about play; after all, advancing the study of play is important work and has contributed significantly to the development of better play spaces for children. But Joe’s impact there cannot be questioned. He made UT the center of the universe for the study of play and many of his students continue to contribute to the field of play and early childhood education, a testimony to his impact.

But writing about play isn’t play; writing is not visceral enough for me. As I taught in the Center for Professional Teacher Education (now the School of Education) at the University of Texas at Arlington, I wrote. But I also began to dabble in playground consulting. Naturally, I followed the model Joe had demonstrated: work with clients to identify their needs and then supervise their efforts at creating their own play spaces. The model worked well until I ran into that client who wanted me to build the playground we had designed together. Following Joe’s example of taking on new challenges with determination, I plunged in and actually managed to build it, almost single-handedly. As I have said many times over the years, as a result of that endeavor, I accidently started a playground company.

The company grew steadily and four years later, I sold half of the company to Jim Dempsey, another of Dr. Frost’s former graduate students. While Joe’s influence was significant on both of us in that endeavor, I’d like to focus on the real impact of Joe’s influence: the children who played and still play on our playgrounds. During the 31 years that I was at the company and the 22 years Jim served with me, millions of children all over the world played on our playgrounds. What more could one ask for beyond having one’s work let children experience joy, creativity, exuberance, wonder, and success while sharing those experiences with friends? That is Joe’s real influence – touching the lives of children everywhere through his former students and making their todays more joyful through play and making their tomorrows more promising due to playful interaction with people, things, and ideas.

Any of the contributors to this volume could tell similar stories about the impact Joe Frost has had on their life and work. If I had not studied with Joe, nothing that has happened professionally with me in the last 37 years would have occurred, and probably much that is personal would not have happened either. How did Joe impact my life? Too greatly to put into words.

In one way or another, Joe helped shaped each of us who have contributed to this work. Even today, Joe continues to encourage his former students to engage in the world of ideas and to participate in shaping the direction for play as it relates to research, play spaces, and nature. Always the gracious, consummate professional, Joe’s real contribution to each of us can be summed up in the three things he provided us all: example, example, example.

The Life and Work of Joe L. Frost: An Introduction

MARY RUTH MOORE

In 1933, a boy was born to an Arkansas family; his family named him Joe L. Frost. A child of the Great Depression, Joe grew up in the hills of his beloved state, playing outdoor games that he and his classmates invented during the multiple recess periods common to the country schools of that time. Experiencing firsthand nature and the solitude of the outdoors, Joe grew up nourished by the creative aspects of the outdoor landscape of the Ouachita Mountains. His play and his early education, often intertwined, led Joe to grow up to be able-bodied with an active mind ready for his life’s work. Guided by a mother who loved books and the written word, Joe thrived in the field work of his family’s farm and in the little church his family attended regularly. Little did anyone know that this talented young man of the verdant hills of Arkansas would become both the great teacher and author, Dr. Joe L. Frost, Parker Centennial Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin.

Joe studied child development at the University of Arkansas, the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland, and ultimately earned his doctorate from the University of Arkansas. He held professor of child development positions at the University of Arkansas and Iowa State University before joining the faculty of the University of Texas in Austin in 1966. Not only could he write and teach, but Joe also understood the fundamentals of planning and building play environments. Ultimately, these early pre-college learned skills of hard work and how to build would allow him to teach in both the university classroom and in the outdoor classroom in ways that few other professors could do.

Joe became the beloved professor and mentor of many students during his university tenure at UT Austin, chairing 55 doctoral dissertations for students who often became his friends. Many of these students became professors around the country and abroad and carried with them the importance of play and play environments across the lifespan as a basic biological need of the human being. Under his leadership, each doctoral student witnessed firsthand research on play environments in the Austin area; in fact, his research project at Redeemer Lutheran School of Austin is considered by most play experts to be the longest continuous research study on play environments in the United States and is over forty years of age, and still in progress, at this writing.

Joe’s leadership extended from the university to professional organizations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the International Play Association/USA, the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), and the U. S. Play Coalition. Throughout Joe’s life, service is an important thematic pattern, whether it’s for Head Start that needs help, a play environment that needs attention, or a university play research collection that helps students become better scholars.

Joe is now acclaimed worldwide as one of the finest scholars to ever study, research, and write about play. He still writes and is the author of more than twenty books plus six volumes of articles. He has been named a Hero of Early Childhood by both NAEYC and the Children’s Nature Network, and received the Great Friend of Children Award from Association for Children’s Museum as well as the Patti Smith Hill Award from ACEI. He holds an additional honorary doctorate from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, where in 2004 he endowed the Joe L. Frost Play Research Collection at the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Library. The collection is one of the largest in the country and is devoted to play in early childhood and across the lifespan.

Several distinct themes run throughout Joe’s life and work: leadership, scholarship, service, generosity, and faith are the thematic threads that cause Joe to be so very far above the average professor. The final theme – the crowning quality – is the belief that all people deserve the opportunity of pursuing an education, and that education is the way to eliminate poverty. From his work with the earliest Head Start programs in the 1960s; through numerous conferences and panels on poverty, ethnicity and education – including speaking on a panel in Alexandria, Louisiana, with both Dr. Martin Luther King and Barbara Jordan; to his work establishing play as a multidisciplinary field of its own: Joe L. Frost has always professed that every child deserves the right to safe, imaginative play and all of the benefits that result across the lifespan.

Because of Joe’s dynamic difference as a leader and scholar, we now dedicate this volume of articles in his honor. The articles come from a wide range of individuals and areas of expertise. Colleagues, former