Playing To Learn

Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast · Sep 8, 2026 · 20m

Longtime full-time teacher and longtime part-time improviser Kate Wiersema talks about her very fun and incredibly helpful book Playing to Learn: Using Improv in the K-8 Classroom, which creates suggestions and games that provide a "structure for fun" in the classroom. Kate shares how these games and tools can be used for curriculum as well as emotional learning; how these tools require no extra supplies and help build a sense of community; how learning can be collaborative rather than adversarial; how they can help get out of the rote of everything becoming "standardized;" the importance of…