Realizing and Imagining Schools as Sites of Community Care: Lessons from Children Playing During a Pandemic

Abstract

This paper is the result of an action research project that aimed to understand how families were playing during the COVID-19 pandemic and what action might support them. Schools were revealed as important yet taken-for-granted providers of community care for children through their offerings as spaces where children create friendships, move, engage in the arts, feel a sense of belonging, contribute, and play. This paper takes a strength-based approach to learn from children and families playing during the pandemic to explore such realizations of schools as sites of community care while also inviting and offerings imaginings of schools in partnership in care-offering alongside the community and children. Keywords: COVID-19, play, community care, aesthetics of play, schools, children and public space