Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities: Creating Safe and Happy Places for Children

Prologue

ix Prologue I am a professor in biological and agricultural engineering at Louisiana State University, and I have the best job on the planet. I came to Louisiana in the fall of 1996, in the middle of a U.S. Senate race that pitted Mary Landrieu against Woody Jenkins. The charged campaign, narrow victory by Landrieu, and ensuing furor over alleged election fraud introduced me to Louisiana politics and colorful characters from the start. My beginnings at LSU were far less charged, but for me, just as interesting . I have been conducting research and teaching classes in biological engineering since that fall of 1996. I came to Louisiana by way of Columbus , Ohio, and Ohio State University, and with me I brought a huge dose of earnestness (Midwesterners have the market cornered on earnestness) and a burning desire to transform engineering education from the production of highly skilled barbarians to the creation of holistic problem solvers. In the spring of 1997, I was assigned to teach a first-year biological engineering design course. My initial goal was to have students work in groups to design something “real” that they would find interesting. This goal led me to the use of service-learning, a method of teaching in which students master their learning objectives by working with a community partner to address a critical community need. A committed group of people on and off the LSU campus helped me develop an idea to focus on public school playground design for this course, and to involve the community and their x / Prologue expertise in the design process. This collaboration developed into a program called the LSU Community Playground Project. The process of designing and building community playgrounds is not extraordinary in and of itself. Much of the construction process involves killing grass, moving dirt, and other mundane activities. Ask a playground construction volunteer who has just spent an entire day placing engineered wood fiber or another suitable playground safety surfacing material under and around play equipment, and you will be treated to an earful about the mundane. Although many of the activities around designing and building playgrounds can be routine, the process of working with community is anything but. This book is organized into two main parts. The first contains the collective stories of people and communities as we have worked together to ensure that every child in the local public school system has access to a safe, fun playground that the kids themselves helped to design, and the second focuses on larger issues involving community, including how to get involved in your own community and how to make your efforts sustainable over time. The LSU Community Playground Project has taken me on a fantastic journey with people and to places I would never have traveled otherwise, and it is why I have the best job on the planet. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities This page intentionally left blank ...