Project Director:

Lou Bernieri, Phillips Acadamy, Andover, Massachusetts

The Project for Literacy, Athletics, the Arts and Youth Service (PLAYS) works in collaboration with schools, community organizations, businesses, universities, and government agencies to help teachers and students revitalize the educational, athletic, and service cultures in their schools and communities.

PLAYS supports cooperative projects devoted to a new vision of literacy that links competitive and non-competitive athletics to community service. PLAYS provides training, materials, and technical support to adults and young people who wish to launch and direct projects in their schools or communities. An important goal is to help create environments that will strengthen school reform efforts and help young people reach and maintain standards of achievement -- personally and academically. PLAYS draws on the best coaching traditions to set tough standards and to teach young people the importance of struggling through adversity.

PLAYS takes place in schools, where young people's action research, writing, public service, and participation in sports are part of their school programs, in after-school or summer programs, or in the context of youth organizations. The PLAYS approach encourages a lifelong commitment to participating actively and critically in public discourse -- and to choosing healthy behaviors.

PLAYS is engaged in a collaborative project with DC SCORES, a privately funded after-school program that uses soccer, a writing workshop, cross-age tutoring, and community service to build self-esteem and increase student success in and out of the classroom. Twenty coaches, 72 mentor tutors, and 432 young people have participated since June 1994. The DC SCORES director is Julie Kennedy.

The objectives of PLAYS include:

LITERACY: To catalyze a powerful grassroots literacy movement based in the schools and community organizations of New York and Lawrence, Massachusetts. This program will connect with larger educational reform agendas at those sites. Literacy flourishes in classrooms and other settings that involve young people in studying issues that are vitally important to them and their peers and then communicating what they know effectively and clearly to readers they themselves target. Young people will prepare fact sheets; organize and direct community town meetings; write and produce staged readings, improvisations, and plays; and work with artists and graphic designers to produce comic strips, videotapes, and multimedia projects.

ATHLETICS: To improve the physical and mental health of young people through participation in competitive and non-competitive sports, combined with workshops about vital health issues for adolescents. A central feature of the aspect of PLAYS will be the year-round sports clinics sponsored by PLAYS and the summer workshops and summer sports camps.

YOUTH SERVICE: To build a community service model at each site that focuses on service projects directed and organized by students from the community itself in collaboration with schools, businesses, government agencies, and other organizations. In the process, young people learn vital skills and acquire habits that will help them succeed at school and at work.

Write to Change will conduct qualitative research and evaluation of PLAYS, specific to each project and each site, developing approaches to assessment that emphasize how research and evaluation help bring about positive change. Outside evaluators will provide information about key aspects of the program, including quantitative data on the progress of young people as well as the extent to which PLAYS accomplishes goals.

Self-assessment is an important component of PLAYS. Local teams (young people, community organizations, PLAYS staff, participating teachers and administrators, business and higher education partners) will design and carry out shared inquiries that document the practice of PLAYS. This participatory assessment builds opportunities to describe PLAYS systematically from different perspectives and to examine critically and collaboratively the process and its outcomes.

Because PLAYS aims to develop an approach to teaching and learning that is widely adaptable in urban and rural communities, publications (prepared by students with the help of mentors and technical assistance) and video documentation are significant features of the program.