My Reflections on Anji Play

I am excited and honored to write a reflection of my time at Anji. It is more challenging than I imagined when I accepted the invitation. 

My life is focused on creating environments where young children can thrive. Where they can play and grow and experience life on their own terms. Anji Play fit right in with my ideas and thinking. And yet, so much comes to mind as visiting Anji Play was an experience unlike any I have had. 

I observed, marveled at, thought about and felt validated by so much during the week seeing programs that my cheeks and eyes hurt from watching and smiling.

On other days, I could not stop taking notes and asking more questions. Every day I was inspired and more inspired. I have many reflections. 

For the sake of space and sharing thoughts that will do justice to Anji Play and I hope be helpful to the reader, here are my reflections on my week at Anji Play.

Anji Play is before-your-eyes evidence that one person can be the catalyst for authentic and deep change for children. 

Ms. Cheng looked at children and saw that they were not happy at school and the environment of school was not working. She embarked on a reflective path to make a better learning environment for young children. That was 25 years ago. 

I witnessed how one visionary person truly became the agent of change. I was moved by the words of Ms. Cheng from the first time I heard her speak. Not only is she immersed in the child’s world, she sees the world from their view.

I was taken by her seemingly simple (and yet not simple) observation that “the children were not happy”. Children in their natural state will be happy; they are supposed to be happy. That is what spurs learning. I agree. I was hooked in.

Ms.Cheng’s openness in telling her story of thinking that better and beautifully designed materials would make children happier was refreshing in its honesty about how her well-intentioned and misguided idea. 

She trusted her observations and recognized that beautiful materials were not the key to happiness. Instead, she moved toward simplicity, a view that less is more. Open ended materials allow children to discover and engage in the world. It seems so simple and straightforward. And yet it is not. 

Stepping back and respecting children as Anji Play teachers do must be taught through a thoughtful, ongoing and reflective process. 

Ms. Cheng’s unconditional love and respect for children drew me in. Not that I speak or understand a single word of Mandarin, her language. Nor does she speak mine. Yet, when she spoke (translated) I felt it, I could see it. And that connected me to her.

Of the many aspects embodied in Anji Play, I will begin with discovery. What is discovery? 

Unplanned, but can include planning. Not necessarily goal driven. Stumble upon. 

Anji Play is about supporting discovery. Letting things happen. Letting children do. My own discovery of Anji happened this way. 

I was reading articles on children’s unstructured play, as I researched and tried to understand why allowing children to play freely has taken so many steps backwards, at least in the US. I wanted to know what people are thinking and why it is so difficult for adults in schools and communities to grasp the necessity for play, the child’s arena for life and learning. During this online search, I stumbled upon the term Anji Play in an article.

I don’t recall exactly where I saw the reference but I know I was intrigued. Rarely do I read of a place that is allowing children to play openly and with such respect for the child-playing as they wish, however they desire, without adults leading or interfering. 

Trusting children to be children. I immediately looked it up and soon after met with Jesse Coffino, and before I knew it I was traveling to Anji, China to see this wondrous world of children, teachers and play in action. 

My reflections are from this week of visiting schools, some in serene mountain villages with a handful of children, others in larger urban settings with hundreds of children. 

What I saw was joy, joy, joy and deep engagement and reflection. When children are truly engaged on their own terms they are learning, growing, challenging themselves and others, connecting to people, and experiencing unbridled joy. 

I don’t think I have ever seen, watched or heard so much pleasure be openly expressed, day after day. In Anji, the children were given the space and time to grow on their own terms. 

Discovery is a cornerstone of that as it leads to many moments of “Aha! I did it”. That is the base upon which learning grows.

From our first visit on day one in a steady rain, we watched children “dig-in” to their play. I mean this literally. 

We were a large group of close to 30 people from Bangladesh, Singapore, Australia, Africa, US, and the children, so engaged in their play, did not take notice of the eyes of people watching. 

They were busily engaged in their play. Play is their serious endeavor. In a chilly rain driving down, children wore rain ponchos, and played as if the sun was shining. They dug rivers and canals, made pathways and tunnels and islands, delighted as water ran through their streambeds or wiped out islands of sand they had mounded. 

They worked solo or in pairs or groups.  The rain was not a bother to them. Instead, the elements were part of their play.  That is true child engagement. Adults may mind the cold rain. The children did not.

Here is what I saw at Anji: 

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When I watched children play, as well as vibrantly participate in the massive clean ups each day, many thoughts about who children are and how they make their way in the world came to mind. 

A child can know what they desire to do and how to do it when we allow them the room to explore and play. When children don’t know how to do something, they gather the agency to try, to take risks and figure it out. 

Too often I witness adults getting in children’s way by telling them what to do (or not to do) or having adult-driven goals of what and how a child should be carrying out a task. 

What I watched at Anji Play was different. The lack of goal orientation was evident. The adults’ trust in children was displayed. They trusted that children could figure out what they wanted to do and how to do it. 

The adult role was to set up an environment accessible to children and to make available materials and routines to support the children to play as they wished. 

This was evidenced in the teachers standing back as a supportive presence. Adults were there if needed but otherwise allowed children to play as children chose and wished to.

This trust was implicit. I am not sure how the trust is conveyed to the children, nor how it was initially established with the children at the start of the school year. 

Children’s trust has to be earned, so I know that what I saw was earned over time, which is what allowed children to explore in a big way and joyfully play. A child has to first feel safe before they can try things out, work with others, experiment, or take risks (and many risks are taken at Anji Play).

Without a sense of safety a child will not and cannot explore. I keep returning to the question of how this trust is established with the children in Anji.

The children trotted along with a clear sense that they could turn to an adult if needed. They counted on adults being there for them. That security, knowledge that adults would not interfere nor correct or scold them, but would help if needed is what frees children up to explore and roam and discover and thrive.

What this observation of teachers conveys is that the practice of teachers is deeply intentional. 

Intentionality is essential when it comes to supporting children. It includes thinking about how to support children, the differing needs of individual children, how to stand back and be present but not interfere. 

Standing back takes tremendous thought and learning how to be available when needed, yet at a respectable distance. 

At each school, the teachers knew how to support children by stepping back. ‘Hands down’, they say. In my work with children we ask our teachers to ‘sit on your hands’, sit back and observe first. This aspect of Anji and listening to Ms.Cheng speak of the necessity to stand back rang for me.

Why is stepping back and hands down so important? 

The message to children is that teachers respect and believe in them. When a child feels trusted by adults, the child feels competent, that her ideas are valid and she doesn’t need adults to tell her what to do. 

In turn, I saw children joyously approaching materials, spilling out ideas and putting themselves to work. The joy of implementing their own ideas, sometimes themselves and often with other children, could be seen, heard and felt. Children approached materials eagerly, demonstrating the generation of their own ideas about what they wanted to do. 

They would purposefully move materials around or look for materials they wanted, with clear intentions, no adult directing them. 

The beauty of open-ended materials is that they can be used in many ways.Possibilities are numerous. 

The materials are there to allow children to impart their ideas. The open aspect means there is no single correct way to use them, no right or wrong. 

Children moved or rearranged blocks, tunnels, boxes and ladders in a myriad of ways. They changed pathways and angles of an apparatus over and over again. 

This happened with large outdoor materials, as well as tiny beads or art materials. If they had an end goal in mind, it was not obvious, and when they did have goals, I saw children collaborating to change things around. Flexibility happened through interactions and play.

Children’s ideas matter. One of the central parts I saw in Anji Play is conveying to the children that their ideas matter. 

By getting away from right-or-wrong children are freed to speak for themselves and trust their ideas. The having of ideas is a cornerstone of childhood. 

As the child develops and gets to know who they are and learns how to cooperate and work with other people, having a voice matters. The sense that their ideas are important, that they will be heard, that they can voice their ideas is central to children in every culture. 

Yet too often I witness children being closed down, not listened to, not given a chance to find their voice or have their ideas validated. 

At Anji Play children had ideas and were encouraged to think, to figure out how to work together, to plan their play, to implement their ideas, from digging in wet muddy sand to building elaborate group block structures. And then they looked back and reflected.

I saw this over and over again. When we allow children to play as they wish, to build the block towers however they want without correcting them about what should go next and where, or allow them to paint in any color in any stroke they choose, the child learns, “I can make decisions” “My ideas matter” “I can figure it out”.

One of many examples that come to mind is a long play sequence of children building a contraption from large wood boxes and ladders configured as ramps. 

Similarly, I watched a girl deeply concentrating on stringing beads. 

In the US we so often want the children to share their joys with the adults. They need not at Anji.

They can embody their own joy and successes and be motivated to do more. When children are given the opportunities to set their own goals and figure it out, they will push the boundaries and keep creating challenges.

This process builds, bolsters and modifies the child’s sense of self as well as their desire to help others. This is best exemplified in my final example:

It was a moving scene to watch over a short time span as a child developed from hesitant and unsure to increased confidence and immediately turned to help others accomplish, too. First the child learns for himself, his sense of self blossoms and as it does, he reaches out to a friend. That is a core of Anji Play- to give them room to become masters of their ideas and connected to others.

Anji also demands that every child have the space and pace they need to play. It shows that every child has the right to play- and play –and play. The right of every child to play can be accomplished, but we need to work hard to protect and give that right back to children, in China and in the world.

Thank you, Ms. Cheng, for recognizing and working on that need for children to be able to partake in self determined play. May the joy of Anji catch on throughout the world.

LOVE, RISK, JOY, ENGAGEMENT, AND REFLECTION