For former Playworks coach turned second-grade teacher Dana Lovecchio, play doesn’t just enhance learning, it’s central to her teaching approach.
“I like to think that everything I need to know about teaching I learned at Sports4Kids and Playworks,” says Lovecchio.
Lovecchio served as a coach for Playworks (then Sports4Kids) from 2002 to 2004 in the San Francisco Bay Area and went on to work to improve Playworks programming as a regional and national program staff member.
Now a teacher in Fremont, CA, Lovecchio uses the group management techniques that she picked up while serving as a Playworks coach. With Playworks’ attention-getters and games, Lovecchio says she can proactively move her students from one learning environment to another. Lovecchio explains that she didn’t learn group management in her teacher training programs, but learned it on the blacktop as a Playworks coach.
Before serving as a coach, Lovecchio had dreams of becoming a professional actress. But, when she led her first recess as a Playworks coach, she realized that she could apply her creativity to make a positive change.
“When I stepped on to the playground and saw the change that you could make just by playing with kids and having fun, while still being really creative, it just opened me up to the ideas of being in the world of education.”
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