Recess Battles: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling

Acknowledgments

xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I began this research project carrying my one-year-old on my back: he now shaves, giving new meaning to the phrase longitudinal study. Along the way, many people have carried this project with me, providing support , humor, and encouragement for an offbeat, play-inspired major work. I am grateful to the University Press of Mississippi for taking on such an unusual multidisciplinary topic. Initially supported by a Spencer Grant and a Mellon Award, the project blossomed at the University of Pennsylvania. A great player of ideas, Brian Sutton-Smith both challenged and encouraged this project. To him and to his colleagues, Roger Abrahams, Dan Ben-Amos, Frederick Erickson, Kenny Goldstein, Adam Kendon, and Robert Blair St. George, I offer my gratitude for their flexibility. The University of the Arts supplied several faculty grants for digital equipment and art supplies that literally frame this study. My colleagues and my playful art students model many of the ideas in this book—the play of ideas is a serious art, and no one ever said it had to be boring. I owe my first formal training in child observation to David Elkind at Tufts University, who along with the playground designer Anita Rui Olds challenged me to see the complex beauty of children’s play. Milton Chen, Carol Gilligan, Donald Oliver, and David Perkins of the Harvard Graduate School of Education showed me how to observe without romanticism . But the first expert I ever encountered is still my favorite: my mother, Marjorie Richman, a board member of the Child Center of New York and an earnest advocate for poor minority children, a great xii Acknowledgments teller of stories. Thanks to my dad, Seymour Richman, promoter of all things technical, for his multimedia advice and encouragement. A sweeping, dramatic low bow to you both. I have been blessed with steady technical hands, attached to the bodies of Mira Adornetto, Larry Cohen, Eileen Flanagan, Pritha Gopalen, Debby Pollack, Joey Raicovich, and Erin Slonaker. In this multimedia world, no one can do it alone. Thanks to Purdue University Press and Myrdene Anderson for allowing bits to be reprinted from the fine volume The Cultural Shaping of Violence and to Libby Tucker of the Children ’s Folklore Review for allowing part of “Sui Generis” to be reprinted. Thanks also to Taylor and Francis for permission to excerpt from Children ’s Folklore: A Sourcebook. When I desperately needed writing feedback, friends, family members , and colleagues offered good cheer and specific suggestions: Jerry Allender, Carl and Connie Beresin, Gabe Beresin, Matti Beresin, Noah Beresin, David Bromley, Mindy Brown, Rory Cohen, Wendy Epstein, Eileen Flanagan, Fran Fox, Nancy Heller, Susan Landau, Mara Natkins, Barb and Charlie Richman, Libby Smith, Bob Zatzman, and Heather Zimmerman. Anonymous reviewer Dan Cook did the bravest thing of all, unmasking himself to offer encouragement and networking. May you all have such critics that become friends. No one has listened more than my husband, Neil, with wise editing , basketball advice, and countless 2:00 a.m. queries about whether this was indeed the best-sounding title. You alone have shown me how words cannot express the deepest emotions, though play and love can. No one has given more than the teachers of the Mill School, who do the nearly impossible task of educating children in an underfunded and overcrowded environment. No one has opened their hearts to me more in this project than the children of the Mill School. I wish I could thank you all by your real names, but then again, I promised. To Ms. Wembley, who cried with me over the struggles of urban education; and to Tashi, who sang loudest; and to Tommy, who gave me his last, red, sour Crybaby : Thanks. RECESS BATTLES ...