How We Played It Forward: Designing Playful Professional Learning at GATESOL 2025

Play isn’t just a topic—it’s our method. This framework guided our GATESOL session, helping educators experience how inquiry, collaboration, and creativity can transform professional learning.

At this year’s GATESOL Annual Conference, we didn’t just talk about play-based learning—we built it right into the experience. Our session, “Play as a Bridge: Supporting Multilingual Learners Through Inquiry-Driven and Play-Based Learning,” invited educators to feel what purposeful play looks and sounds like—through laughter, movement, and authentic collaboration.

This post marks a slight style departure for us at the Joyful Learning Collaborative. Rather than focusing solely on classroom practice, research, or policy, Stephanie Moore and I are turning the lens toward professional learning itself—how we designed a session about play that was also rooted in play.

It also builds directly on Stephanie Moore’s recent piece, Play on Purpose: Bridging What We Know and What We Do for Multilingual Learners, extending that conversation from student learning to educator learning. Together, these two posts explore how joy, inquiry, and collaboration can shape not just what we teach—but how we learn together.

Why We Did It

If we believe that play supports curiosity, creativity, and belonging for multilingual (and all) learners, the same must hold true for educators. Adults learn best when they are engaged, curious, and connected—just like their students. We wanted participants to experience firsthand how playful structures can build community, spark inquiry, and translate research into action.

Our session goals were both scholarly and practical. We set out to:

• Analyze how play-based learning supports language and social-emotional growth.

• Explore examples of playful practices that affirm linguistic and cultural diversity.

• Design inquiry-driven play activities adaptable for different grade levels.

• Apply concrete strategies for multilingual inclusion.

• Develop actionable “Monday Moves” educators could implement immediately.

To achieve all of that in an hour, we intentionally structured the session around three core movements: Design, Reflect, and Act.

What It Looked Like

Design

Using our Play Challenge Card Game, educators drew cards representing grade band, subject area, play type, adaptation focus, and challenge type. Each combination prompted new ideas and pushed creative boundaries: “How could this blend of guided or structured play support multilingual learners?” “What would this look like in your classroom?” Tables buzzed with creativity as participants built playful lessons that balanced standards, curiosity, and inclusion.

Each Play Challenge hand combined grade level, subject, play type, adaptation, and challenge cards—sparking playful design ideas for multilingual learners.

Reflect

Next came the Beach Ball Share-Out. Each color on the ball corresponded to a reflective prompt—from “Which card combination pushed your thinking in a new direction?” to “What did you notice about how you and your group collaborated or played together?” Tossing the ball around the room kept energy high and reflection joyful. This quick, kinetic debrief invited laughter, self-reflection, and peer connection while reinforcing key takeaways about language, equity, and belonging.

Act

Finally, participants completed My Monday Move—a short action-planning template to help them take one small, actionable, playful step forward in their own teaching or professional learning context in the coming week. These commitments ranged from trying a bilingual word game to transforming a team meeting into a collaborative “design sprint.” Each “Monday Move” became a personal commitment to bring joy and purpose back into instruction.

Educators collaborate during the Play Challenge activity—brainstorming ways to connect content, culture, and curiosity through play.

Our Beach Ball Share-Out turned reflection into motion—each color representing a playful prompt to deepen thinking and connection.

Image Credits

The above images are courtesy of the Joyful Learning Collaborative, captured during Play as a Bridge: Supporting Multilingual Learners Through Inquiry-Driven and Play-Based Learning at the 2025 GATESOL Annual Conference (Thursday, October 30, 2025).

How We Planned the Play

Behind the fun was careful planning. Just as with planning for classroom-based instruction with children, we had to be intentional about our learning objectives and session design. We followed a tight agenda to balance research, modeling, and interaction:

1. Introduction and context (5 min): defining multilingual learners and framing play as equity.

2. Research and strategies (20 min): exploring types of play (free, guided, structured) and language scaffolds.

3. Interactive workshop (30 min): hands-on card game design experience.

4. Reflection and action planning (10 min): connecting insights to practice.

5. Q&A and sharing (10 min): building a resource exchange community.

By embedding playful learning in every phase, we modeled how professional learning can embody the same principles we advocate for classrooms—agency, choice, curiosity, and belonging.

A Reflection and a Challenge

As we debriefed, one participant said it best: “This reminded me that play is not just for kids—it’s for anyone who wants to keep learning.”

That’s the heart of this challenge to you. How might you bring play into your own teaching, leadership, or professional learning?

Try one of these:

• Adapt the Play Challenge Card Game to design a new multilingual lesson.

• Use a Beach Ball Share-Out to spark reflection in a team meeting.

• Launch a “Monday Move” in your Professional Learning Community. Try to set one playful goal a week.

• Invite teachers to co-create or remix games from their students’ home cultures.

• Turn routine professional learning into a curiosity lab with role play, mystery envelopes, or storytelling prompts.

Then tell us how it goes! We’re collecting examples, stories, and images from classrooms and professional learning spaces around the world.

Share your experience in any of these ways:

• Upload directly to our shared folder → Google Drive link

• Use the contact form on our site → JLC Contact Page

• Or tag us on social media → Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Be sure to use the hashtag #PlayItForwardJLC so we can celebrate and share your work!

Playing It Forward

If this post resonates, we invite you to read its companion piece inspired by our GATESOL session, Play on Purpose: Bridging What We Know and What We Do for Multilingual Learners by Stephanie Moore and any of our other content that sparks your interest!

Together, these posts remind us that when we model play as educators—whether with children or colleagues—we’re not stepping away from rigor. We’re stepping into what real learning feels like: curious, connected, and full of joy.

Because play doesn’t just connect learners. It connects us all.