Whenever I’m visiting one of our partner schools in a Playworks city, I meet a parent or a teacher who wants to take me aside and tell me an incredible story about how our Playworks coach – or one of our staffers, or a board member, or a junior coach – has done something so completely out of the ordinary as to slightly alter the earth’s rotation. During these moments, I am transfixed, but I too often forget a part of the story and am unable to pass it along.
So, it occurred to me, upon reading an article about companies accepting and passing along praise written by the Heath Brothers, that there were probably a lot more of these stories out there, and more importantly, people who wanted to tell them.
This week Playworks is launching our Give Us a Hand campaign. We’re asking that people in our communities, all across the country, who experience a Junior Coach or a Coach or a Playworks staffer or volunteer doing something extraordinary let me know about it. And I, in turn, will thank them personally and make sure that their story is told. How cool is that?
We’re not perfect, but we play hard. We’re building this plane as we fly it, and as an organization made up of a lot of wonderful, funny, deeply flawed but well-intentioned humans, we make mistakes every day. But that’s the really incredible thing about play. It’s all about messing up, and taking responsibility for it, and building skills and getting better. And so I’m asking that if you see a Playworks human doing something wonderful that I should know about, please send me an email at highfive@playworks.org so that I can give them a virtual high five and make sure people have a chance to hear when things go well.
What stories would you like to share?
