Krystina Tapia

Director of Global Teacher Preparation, Anji Childhood Education Research Center

Dates of visits to Anji: October 2016, April 2017, September–October 2017, April 2018, November 2018, May 2019

Interview conducted on January 31, 2019

Jesse Coffino: If you think about how many people have visited Anji—and I was talking to Carissa about this—there is a second layer of people that have seen Ms. Cheng speak, or who have interacted with the materials, who have really gotten into it. Many of them have had similar experiences in some way. It has been interesting to speak to them. But we have this first group of people who have visited Anji, and you’re one of them.

Krystina Tapia: Yay.

Jesse Coffino: In your time in Anji and thinking about Anji Play, it has spread more widely. How that experience has developed, what you’ve experienced, obviously a lot of that is your own firsthand experience. A lot of that’s what you’ve heard people say about it.

Reading things that I have interpreted or translated, and, as you know, reflecting on play memories is a part of that story, about how it’s taken shape. We don’t know how it was exactly done in Anji back when this started.

Krystina Tapia: Yeah.

Jesse Coffino: But I’m wondering, when you talk to people about Anji Play or about true play or just play in general, do you ever ask people about their memories of play? How does it come up?

Krystina Tapia: I occasionally do, and when I do, the experience is really, it’s really deep for them, because it’s not often that people ask you to reminisce about . . . what’s usually a really joyous time in your life. 

My fondest memories of childhood involve playing in my grandparents’ backyard. My grandparents were a huge part of my life in the early years, well, and still continue to be. I didn’t go to preschool, actually, and so they would take care of me. They had this amazing backyard that had a bunch of fruit trees, and my cousins were there with me and my brothers. We would often just spend the afternoon, or the morning, in their backyard, doing whatever we wanted.

I remember there was this show called Star Search on TV, and my cousins and I really liked to pretend that we were going to be chosen to be on it. We’d create these elaborate dance routines in my grandparents’ backyard. We’d pull out benches to create stages, and whatever laundry was on the clothesline, we would take off, and we would turn it into our costumes. I just remember it being a really joyous time, where we made our own choreography and were singing and dancing. It was really this uninterrupted time that we had together. 

And it wasn’t that we were trying to copy any of the routines that we had seen on TV, but it was really this idea that we could create something on our own that could be performed for others, even though we didn’t perform it for anyone. It was more for ourselves. Our interest was sparked and motivated us to spend hours outside, perfecting our routines. It still is one of my fondest memories.

My husband Matt also shared a lot of his memories of when he was younger with me. His mom ran a day care, and so many of his play memories involve sharing, which he’s not super fond of, to this day, because he was forced to share all his stuff with other children, and they would often break things or ruin something he had created.

The memories that he does recall fondly involve him and his friends riding their bikes and going out exploring. There was this rope swing that they created underneath a bridge. It was exciting, he said, because he never knew if, when they got back, whether the rope swing would still be there, or whether it had been confiscated.

It was kind of hidden, so most of the time it was still there, and then they enjoyed the thrill of being able to use it. The rope swing was way more dangerous than what a lot of people would let children play with today, but he clearly remembers the thrill of having it and being able to enjoy it with his friends. 

I became interested in early childhood education . . . I can say, when I was in kindergarten. They would have these prompts, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In my mind, I thought I wanted to be a teacher. I looked around and everyone, all the girls had pictures of them being teachers, and I thought, oh, I didn’t want to be like everyone else. So I drew a picture of a construction worker, because it was completely different than everyone else. I always think back to that, because being a teacher was deeply in my heart, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do, but I also just didn’t want to be like everyone else. I rebelled at that early age of five, and said, “That’s not what I want to do.”

I remember, in elementary and maybe middle school, creating classrooms for my brothers to attend. I would be the teacher, teaching them, I don’t even remember what, but I remember being in the teacher position. Then, when I went off to college, I tried out different things, but was always drawn back to teaching.

When I was in college, I did an applied developmental psychology minor, which had placement in preschools. I was in an infant/toddler classroom. It was then that I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with young children in a school setting.

A lot of me wanting to be a teacher also had to do with growing up in the Hispanic culture, where children are mostly supposed to be seen and not heard. I felt like my feelings and voice weren’t heard as often as I wanted it to be, and I wanted to make sure to give children the opportunity to have a safe space where they could have their views really heard by someone. Even if it wasn’t one of their parents, they still had that person that would listen to them. I wanted that to be a part of who I was as a teacher, and how I could support young children in their growth.

I feel really lucky because, in undergraduate and graduate school, I was able to work at lab schools. They were play-based and child-led. It was always “the children come first.” I feel like that provided a really great foundation for my future teaching.

Not all my placements were like that, though. I also student-taught in a kindergarten and first grade classroom. The first grade classroom, that was really interesting, because it was at a public school, so the teacher still followed the public school curriculum, but she did it by really drawing on children’s experiences, and what their interests were.

For example, there was a social studies unit on community. The class would go and visit construction sites that were nearby, that the children would pass by every day on their way to school. The children would ask the workers questions or just observe and document what they were seeing. Then they would come back into the classroom and they would draw pictures and write words about what they saw.

Those drawings and words were put together to form books. Those books became the foundation of their learning. They would learn how to read and they would learn to write through creating these books about their lived experiences. It wasn’t this thing that was so disconnected from what they were interested in and experiencing daily. 

That mentor teacher really inspired me, because it showed me that, even though she’s in this public school environment, there are ways to still honor children’s ideas and honor their interests, and really make that the foundation of what their learning is. While I didn’t go on to teach elementary school, it was great to see that there was this possibility of blending academics and children’s interests in this really amazing way.

Jesse Coffino: We talk about, one of the things I was talking to, maybe it was Amy Kaiser about, is that, in Anji, just how beautiful those transitions are, between moments. Then thinking about transitions from early education to elementary education, you’re talking about this really beautiful transition, and then you’re transitioning, right? You’re transitioning in these placements . . . So where did you go after that?

Krystina Tapia: After I graduated, I started working for an early childhood program attached to a major tech company in the Bay Area, which was mostly child-centered and play-based. In my time there, I felt fortunate to be able to have a lot of freedom to explore and discover things on my own as a teacher, to work with parents and collaborate with colleagues.

There were many amazing professional development opportunities. One in particular stands out. My manager at the time, she sent out an email to all of the teachers. It was about this talk at Mills College about something called Anji Play, and the first teachers to respond to the email would be able to go. 

I didn’t know what Anji Play was, but I thought it looked really interesting, based on the flyer and descriptions. I thought, “Hey, I want to go.” I remember a couple of teachers from our school went, one of my friends, Teresa, and another teacher named Ashlee. We were all really excited.

We were part of an outdoor committee at our school, so we were really committed to looking at the outdoor spaces at our school and making sure they had really awesome potential for children to explore and play. So this talk seemed really in line with our role in the school community.

When we went to the talk, I remember sitting there and watching Ms. Cheng speak, and seeing all the photos and videos. I had my laptop, and I couldn’t keep up. I wanted to make sure that I captured everything she was saying, because it resonated so much with me. I remember thinking, “I don’t even know how to capture what’s present in all these images. There’s just so many materials and so many rich experiences happening.” I remember thinking “I don’t even know how to convey this to other teachers who aren’t here with me.”

I remember feeling that this is something really special. This is something that I want to learn more about. I remember, Ms. Cheng talked about documentation and taking photos and videos and doing play sharing. I thought that this was really interesting. 

I don’t know if it was that week or in the following weeks, I decided to station myself in this great block space in our outdoor area of our school. I took videos of the children playing in this space. My idea was that I was going to show them back to the children, and see what happened.

I took a five-minute video that I thought was super cool. The children were building all these amazing structures, and there was lots of action happening. I couldn’t even keep up with it all. I was really excited, and I wondered what the children would say about the video. 

I don’t remember if it was that day or the next day, I showed the video to the children. It was just on a tiny laptop screen because we didn’t have something set up to do a more formal play sharing. I just pushed “play,” and all the children were immediately entranced by this video.

They all stopped talking, and all their focus was on this video. Once the video was over, I said, “Does anyone want to talk about what was happening?” A few children went up and shared. It was the children that you saw in the video. They were explaining what they were doing. I don’t even remember the details of the game.

When the children in the video had finished saying their piece, I thought the sharing was over. But then this other child raises his hand and starts talking, too. I said, “Wait a second. I didn’t see you in the video. I didn’t see that you were involved in this game.” He says, “Oh, actually I was, but you weren’t videotaping where I was. You didn’t have a video of what I was doing. I was actually on the other side of the playground.”

I said, “Wait, what?” He says, “Yeah, that was just part of the game. The other part of the game was way over here.” Then he explained this intricate rule, and the game that they were playing. It actually involved almost the entire class. As a teacher, I just saw this tiny interaction happening in the block area. I thought it was an isolated instance of play, but it was a lot more than that. 

Through hearing the children speak, I learned it was actually this really complicated game that they had been playing for I don’t know how many weeks. I had no idea this was going on. The only reason I knew was because this kid that wasn’t even in the video was brave and took a chance, and said, “Oh, actually, let me tell you about what I was doing.” 

From that day on I kept thinking about what else I didn’t see or know about. I remember, around that time, really starting to change my view of how we were using our time in the classroom.

We had meeting times for children, that were supposed to be used for discussions or group conversations or to talk about whatever we needed to talk about that day. I remember them being teacher-led most of the time. I also remember, me and my co-teachers would spend time negotiating with each other about who would lead the meeting, because none of us really wanted to lead. I remember starting to feel uncomfortable and having this gut reaction of not wanting to facilitate these meetings anymore. I remember reflecting on this and also how much the children enjoyed sharing their play experiences about something that I had no clue was happening in my classroom. As a teacher, my thinking started to shift, and I began to realize that there had to be a different way of teaching and a different school experience that we could be providing for these children. 

Jesse Coffino: It’s so beautiful when I think about, with all the interviews I’ve done so far, there’s kind of like this “before Anji Play” and “after Anji Play.” As I was saying earlier, it doesn’t have to be somebody who’s been to Anji. 

A lot of people, when they see these things, they hear these words, they immediately go out and make a change. They change something that’s going on, or they go back to something that they knew or they had. They rethink what they’re doing. They make this change.

Krystina Tapia: I was part of this outdoor committee that worked on the outdoor spaces in our preschool yard. I remember a conversation when another teacher said that children were not allowed to throw rocks or bricks. I don’t remember the exact material.

She said, “The children shouldn’t be allowed to throw rocks.” I said, “Well, I agree that they shouldn’t throw them if anyone’s nearby, but what if no one’s in that space? Why does it matter if they’re throwing them then?” “Because it’s dangerous.” “But how? There’s nobody there to get hurt. I don’t understand.”

Before Anji Play I might have agreed with the blanket statement of throwing rocks being dangerous. But after learning about Anji Play and seeing children as being so capable and my really understanding that what they’re doing is serving a purpose, and that they’re learning, it really made me rethink things.

It definitely put me at odds with some of the teachers that I was working with, because I had started to change the way I was thinking about working with young children. I became the one that was the rebel, that let children throw rocks.

Ms. Cheng spoke at Mills again, and then she toured my school and spoke to a really small group of teachers. One thing stands out which I think is really funny. We had sewing machines in our classroom, and Ms. Cheng said, “Those are really dangerous.” I started laughing to myself, because at her schools, children are jumping off of these really high structures, but the sewing machines in my classroom are dangerous? I mean, she probably didn’t know that I had done research, and they were the most slow-moving sewing machines available, and the children had lots of experience with them. I later learned that Ms. Cheng thought that there were elements in the sewing machines that could be beyond the child’s control, which makes sense considering that safety is her default and bottom line.

However, in that moment it was funny to see what her view of danger was, versus my view of danger, and how they were different but ultimately had similar considerations of safety for the child. After this visit from Ms. Cheng, I continued to be moved, but didn’t really know what to do with this information that I was learning. 

At that point, I was ready for a change, so I switched schools. The school I switched to was problematic for many different reasons, and it came with a whole different set of challenges. It was a lot more academically focused than I was comfortable with and didn’t fit my teaching style or beliefs about young children. One good thing that came out of that experience, though, was that it gave me an opportunity to go to Anji. The first study tour happened to be when we had a teacher professional development week that we could use in any way we liked. I let them know that I wanted to visit Anji Play schools in China and they agreed to let me go. 

Before I left for China, I didn’t even know what to expect, truthfully, but I did know that I needed something to motivate me to get through the school year. I needed some hope of something being done differently for young children anywhere in the entire world. I was hoping that Anji Play would be that thing, but I didn’t really realize how big an impact it would have on me until I was there. 

What greets me in China . . . I couldn’t find you guys, and I didn’t know what to do. I was in a country where I don’t speak the language, and I don’t know where the people I’m meeting are, so I was a little freaked out. I tried to speak to people at the airport, but none of them spoke English. Then I called you, was able to figure out where you were, and was greeted by a lovely group of people having dinner. So my anxiety of not speaking the language, and not knowing where everyone was, was immediately eased.

It was a very weird feeling to not speak the language and not have people understand you. I have traveled quite a bit, and I feel like, in general, traveling is not too hard if you speak English. Most countries you go to have some English that they can use to communicate with you. In China, that wasn’t the case. That was an eye-opening experience. I think that was my first sign that things were going to be different, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just in, like, an “oh, something unexpected is definitely brewing here” way.

The person that I connected with most was Carissa. We connected, and I think that we spent most of the trip just talking to each other about how amazing everything was that we were seeing.

I remember the first day at the first school. It was Lilly’s school, Jiguan. I just remember going in, and the children were already out playing, and just this wave of emotion hit me. I went into the corner and I started to cry, and I couldn’t figure out why. I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, why is this hitting me so hard?”

I was kind of embarrassed, because I didn’t really expect to have such a strong reaction at what I was seeing. A few minutes later I got myself back together, and I thought to myself, “Okay, I’ve got to see what’s actually going on. Why did I have such a huge reaction to literally the first 30 seconds I was at this school?”

It was really magical. The entire experience was. I have trouble explaining it. I feel like it’s hard to explain what you see and what you experience when you first get there, besides it just being pure magic and this place where children have the opportunity to do all these amazing things that you didn’t even know were something that you wanted children to experience until you saw it firsthand.

Jesse Coffino: I didn’t expect that to happen to me.

Krystina Tapia: Yeah, me either.

Jesse Coffino: I cried too. I still have feelings of . . . even hearing you talk about it is bringing up emotion for me.

Krystina Tapia: Yeah, and that was very unexpected. Usually I feel like I’m pretty even-tempered, I don’t really experience emotions that strongly within such a short period of time, and so that caught me completely off guard.

It takes over your body, you’re, like, shut down by emotion, and when you wake up, and you’re in this, like this paradise . . .

Jesse Coffino: It’s just this magical place. What are you hearing? What do you see when you open your eyes?

Krystina Tapia: I just remember, especially at Lily’s school [Jiguan Kindergarten], there were all of these magical corners that you would go to on the playgrounds. There was this place that had a bunch of trees, and it was hidden from view at first. There were children playing with blocks and little ladders.

They were the youngest ones; they had scarves and different things. I remember that area. I think that’s where I went over to get away from the group and have my moment. Then going into the courtyard in the middle of the school building, which was another enchanting place where they had a river of water flowing, and children just being so joyful. Having these suits on so they could completely be immersed in the experience without having to worry about whether they were getting wet.

Just all those factors that would cause teachers worry, seem like they were already thought of. The teachers didn’t have to worry about the children getting wet, the children getting hurt. The environment was created exactly for the children, with materials that the children could manipulate, they could use. It was just so incredible.

The spaces were beautiful, and not beautiful because they had an interior designer come. It was because it was all specifically for the children. The children’s work, their drawings, and their photos, were at the forefront of everything. It just really has this huge impact on you when you walk into the space, that it is theirs. You can truly tell that is their space.

So many schools that I’ve been to, people say, “Oh yeah, this is a space for children,” but truthfully, that’s not the feeling that you get when you walk into their school. You think “Oh yeah, there’s a couple of kids’ things here,” but it’s just like a space where it’s too beautiful to touch, almost. You don’t want to mess it up.

The space that I found myself in on that first day of that first visit was so beautiful, and everything was so inviting, that you wanted to explore with the child. I was wishing I had gone to preschool and was able to have that type of experience that they were having.

The biggest take-away from that trip was just the feeling. That’s just so hard to explain. The feeling of knowing that the children had this place that was completely their own, that they were allowed to explore however they wanted. That they were allowed to be themselves, completely as individuals, and it didn’t seem that there was anyone that was making them do things that they didn’t want to do in that exact moment or they weren’t ready to do. There was just such an overwhelming sense of freedom for them.

You can tell the teachers still had a part in it. It wasn’t chaos-freedom, but it was freedom within this amazing environment, that was just so beautiful. You could definitely feel the teachers’ love and presence there at all moments. The teachers were always next to the children, so it wasn’t like it was a free-for-all.

It was these beautiful moments of teachers truly experiencing those interactions, the learning that was happening with the child, instead of them being the people that were saying, “Oh, look over here, look, the flowers are blooming,” or whatever was interesting to the teacher, they were really able to see the world through the child’s point of view.

And it’s at all the schools, which is incredible. For me, coming from a school that was part of a group of four schools, there’s always this talk about consistency, and making sure the children have similar experiences, and how do we do it, and then not doing the greatest job at that.

And then I go to these schools and what you see in each school is exactly what each child needs. It’s not the same experience. It’s not the same exact materials, it’s not the same exact spaces, but what was available to the children was the same. You could feel the commonalities between the places. You could feel the love, you could feel the joy, you can feel all those things that were present.

It made sense for that community. It wasn’t as if it was being forced down upon the school, you know, “you have to do it this way because that’s how all the other schools are doing it,” but really that the schools were allowed to figure out what it meant on their own and have those experiences available for children that were meaningful to those children that were at that school and what made sense for them.

And throughout this experience, this first week for me in Anji, Carissa and I had found each other. We talked about everything that we noticed, from the spaces in the classrooms to the materials that were being used, to the types of interactions that we were seeing, to how we were feeling in those schools.

I can’t remember exact conversations, but there was just an excitement between the two of us. We are thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever,” and wanting to be able to bring that back or that feeling back to the children that we were working with.

And then, when I returned, my work environment was almost the complete opposite. I remember thinking that if I could even bring a tenth of the joy back, that would be so meaningful for the children at my school. And so I went back and tried to figure out ways, during the day, to bring some of that joy in. Definitely the love, too. I remember thinking, if anything, I want to make sure that these children have a sense of joy and know that they’re loved, because that’s something that you can still have even when doing things that you don’t necessarily agree with.

I remember trying to figure out ways to do that, and also trying to figure out ways to give children opportunities to have that more open-ended play and longer periods of play. I remember there were set recess times. 

I remember, me and my co-teacher, one of my co-teachers was really on board with children being able to play. I remember, we would rush through the things that we had to do, so we could give the children extra time outside. Even if it was an extra five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, anything that we could squeeze into the day, that they had more time to be able to just be free and be able to explore what they wanted to explore, and not have to follow such a strict schedule.

There were materials in the outdoor space at the school. They weren’t necessarily the best materials, but some of them were still open-ended. This one day, the children had made a McDonald’s drive-through out of boxes, complete with a drive-in window. There was a line of tricycles that stretched from the window all the way across the playground, because so many of the children wanted to go to this McDonald’s.

It was so sad, because in the middle of this, of course it was time to go in, and they had to clean up. I thought to myself, “Okay, well, I can keep this experience going by doing play sharing,” and so I shared the photos and videos with them. I asked, “What were you guys doing? Were there any problems that happened?”

The way they responded, it sounded like they were really at a McDonald’s. They said things like, “Yeah, this person wasn’t giving me the water quick enough, and then we were supposed to have chicken nuggets and this other person wasn’t making them.” They were discussing all of these details, all of their understandings, and it was really rewarding to be able to give them that experience.

You could tell that the children were so invested. They were more interested in talking about that than anything that we had been talking about, probably for the past week. It was great to be able to give that to them. And the children that couldn’t have cared less about most of the stuff that we were doing in class on a normal day were actively participating and really wanting to share their ideas about how they could improve their McDonald’s the next time.

I have been to China five times now. The only place I have been is Anji. I went to Shanghai once, for a night, because I got to China a day early and had to wait for people to arrive the next day to go to Anji. I was ready to get to Anji.

I can’t wait to go; I don’t want to leave. It’s my education happy place. I just wish that it were here. I tell people that, ever since I learned about Anji Play, I can’t teach at another school. There’s just no way. After I came back from Anji the first time, it was torture having to go back to a non–Anji Play school every day, knowing what was possible and what the reality of the situation was.

I remember, on my second trip, feeling really anxious, because I wanted to bring this amazingness back to the children that I was working with, but not being able to. I remember people at my school just really clearly not having any idea what I was talking about, or not agreeing . . . it just being a really challenging time.

I remember Intisar [Dr. Intisar Shareef, late Chair of Early Childhood Education, Contra Costa College] was on that second trip. We had a long conversation about it. She finally just gave me this one bit of truth. She said, “Live your truth.” It stuck with me. “You keep doing you. You keep advocating for what you believe in, and eventually, others will notice. That’s what is meant to happen.”

I always think about Intisar when I think about Anji Play, and whenever I’m having any doubts about whether we can have this big of an impact or how we can grow. I think back to what she said, and try to live my truth and hope that the rest will fall into place. The funny thing about that was, at the time, I didn’t realize how much of an impact her advice would have on me, but now it is sometimes the only thing that gets me through the hard parts.

When I finished the school year after the Anji visits, I didn’t continue teaching, but something interesting happened with the teachers that I had worked with. The teachers that I had worked with that were the most opposed to whatever I was saying messaged me, and they said, “You were right.” They said, “What we’re doing is not okay for children. They should have more opportunities to play, and they should have all these experiences that you were talking about. We didn’t see it then, but we see it now.”

That was a really powerful moment because these people that I thought would never change their minds, and were adamant about children having to be taught specific things, had shifted their thinking. Were they now at the level of Anji teachers? Absolutely not, but the fact that they were even open to the ideas that I was sharing, and the fact that they were even thinking about this different viewpoint, was amazing. 

My next trip, I was able to be in Anji for two months, which was an incredible experience. The feeling that I always go back to from that trip is love. I felt such an overwhelming feeling of love the entire time I was there. Small experiences with the children, like them adamantly trying to communicate with me in Chinese, even though I had no clue what they were saying. Some of them tricked me into saying bad words in Chinese because I had no idea what they were saying.

There’s a total trust that the teachers had with me, a foreigner coming into their classroom. When they needed something, they would use gestures to communicate when an interpreter wasn’t nearby. They would ask for things like, “Can you take them to the bathroom? Can you help us out?” They were totally trusting in me and in my abilities to help them through it and take the children to wherever they needed to go.

And the cooks in the school cafeteria, they made me special lunches, because they would say that they had made something that a foreigner would like, or the meal would be too difficult to eat with chopsticks. 

The love that was present at the school, with these little three-year olds that had never been to school before, let alone a school as big as the one that they were at. They were on the third floor; they had to climb up many sets of stairs to get to their classroom and figure out, once they got there, where their classroom was. I remember, so many days, a teacher from the second floor coming upstairs with one of the children from our class and happily dropping them off in the classroom.

There wasn’t blame or shame in the child not being in the classroom with you. There was this sense of community. It was never, “You’re not where you’re supposed to be,” but it was this community that allowed children to be exactly where they wanted to be, needed to be, or allowed them to get lost, so that they could learn where they were going, where they were supposed to be in the future. Without judgment and without fear of someone getting in trouble (the child, or the teacher that lost them). It was just this sense of love throughout the entire school day, throughout the entire school. The relationship between the people there was incredible and so powerful.

The parents, too. One mom studied English at university, and she says to me, “Finally I have someone to practice with.” She would take me to visit her parents in rural Anji, so I could see what the countryside was like. She would take me out to dinner so that I wouldn’t be alone on weekends. It was just such a magical place, and I feel like it all stemmed from this amazing set of schools that were created, and what they value, and how it’s trickled into the community around them.

When I think about the people doing Anji Play in their schools, I’m so jealous. I think, “You have free rein, you have been given this amazing opportunity, one that I wish I could have had as a teacher.” I feel like I share that with them as much as possible, because I want them to realize how special and how amazing and incredible that opportunity that they’ve been given is.

Without visiting Anji, it’s hard to understand its power and magic. And for me, it has been a really different experience from going to the classroom to working with adults, adult learners. There are lots of similarities. There’s lots of differences, too.

As a teacher I was more open to children being able to share and giving them the time and space. I realize that’s the case when I work with adults. I’ve had to reflect on this a lot. Trying to think about, how do we afford the same opportunities to adults that we give to the children? What does that look like for adults? That’s been a challenge for me, too.

I can spend days talking about Anji Play, but is that going to be meaningful to the people that need to implement this? Is that going to resonate with them? Maybe, but most likely not. Really trying to see where they are and meet them where they are, and trying to figure out ways to communicate that have an impact on them, will probably make more of a difference. But that isn’t always the easiest, and I’m not necessarily the greatest at it, but I keep trying.

It’s really rewarding when you see a teacher go from not understanding to having that light bulb moment where they’re saying, “Oh my gosh, what have I been doing my entire career? I can’t believe I’ve wasted so many years doing things this other way.” That’s really rewarding. Even if we just have one or two teachers experience that, it is so important. Those people are then able to share their experiences with others, and hopefully create more moments like that, too.

And now there are lots of people from my old school that have been drawn to Anji, too. I’ve been able to reconnect with many people through Anji Play. Anji Play unites people. It’s really amazing how people with similar views and values seem to somehow end up in Anji together, or at least talking about Anji Play or wanting to do something with Anji Play.

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