After close to 20 years of thinking that I was done with school, a dear friend of mine connected me with the HATCHPlay program (formerly called Playlab and led by founder Shannon Merenstein) in Pittsburgh Public Schools. While I made this connection only weeks after moving to Pittsburgh in 2022, it has shaped the trajectory of my professional life ever since. What started as a casual program tour and then a short-term consulting arrangement has led to years of work and partnership that led me to pursue a PhD in Human Development and Learning Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, with a focus on expanding understanding and equity related to play in schools.

What has kept me thinking about this work over the course of years is deeply personal. While I was raised primarily in a “pro-play” household with an abundance of time and materials for play, learning more about play studies– particularly from scholars highlighting minoritized perspectives and identities –has helped me better appreciate how factors of my own identity color my understandings of play and its role in schools. As a mother of two young children, I have also struggled with the false choices offered to me between privileged, playful private schools and the more accessible, yet rigid, public system—a “choice” not afforded to so many families. In the HATCHPlay program, I saw a hint of the coming together of these two worlds: the joyful, affirming spaces that play provides within public schools where such spaces can be all-too-infrequent.

My desire to better understand this work through the eyes of the dedicated educators who co-created it guided me to pursue a qualitative interview study with HATCHPlay educators for my first research study as part of my doctoral program. The incredible work of the program leadership and teachers continue to inspire me to think more deeply about issues like access and equity in the field of school-based play, the role of play in teacher reflection and professional growth, and how play interacts with institutional systems and personal trajectories of experience and identity development.