Playshire is a Developmental Play Cooperative located on an acre of space designed for children to lead their play, move freely, and connect deeply with nature and other humans of all ages.
Our community is guided by viewing individual differences as strengths, assuming personal responsibility for our collective health and well-being in the ongoing pandemic, and using play as our paradigm for life.
Playshire is a home for parents and practitioners who have left behavioral paradigms behind to embrace the sacred work of attuning, witnessing, and creating a responsive environment that honors each child and their unique journey.
We are rooted in our commitment to inclusion, kindness, growth, and contribution and engaging with love, joy, fun, and purpose, even in the unprecedented seasons of chaos and challenge we face.
We are located in the Piedmont Region of N.C., where we plan to offer:
-Open-Ended/Mud Kitchen/Sensory Play Sessions 2x a week
-On-site Monthly Gatherings with bonfires, games, etc., and organized group trips to regional outdoor venues 1-2x a month for Coop Members.
In the future, we plan to offer:
Individual Outdoor Occupational Therapy
Floortime-Based Play Groups (facilitated by trained individuals /teams) on site
Leadership Development/Personal Growth Experiences for parents/practitioners/adults
“Spring/Summer Play Camps,” that give interested families a chance to try out the Playshire Experience and make new connections with like-minded adults.
Playshire “Pop-Ups” will eventually enable us to take a mobile version of our work out on the road to interested communities.
FOUNDERS
Rebekah and Michael welcomed their son just before the pandemic. Former globetrotters before the pandemic, they cherish adventures, whether sleeping under the stars in the Outback or floating down moonlit rivers at midnight. They live in the Piedmont Region of North Carolina with their four children and their tabby cat, Yang.
Rebekah grew up in Florida, spent summers in Appalachia, and lived most of her adult life in New York City. Rebekah has been working with children since she was 14. Her first classroom internships started at age 19, and her career began in a multi-age early childhood classroom in Tampa, Florida, where she became a Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year Finalist and a National Board Certified Teacher for Age Three-Grade Three. After graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on Human Development and Psychology and the Arts in Education, she became a founding teacher of a dual-campus charter school in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, where she was immersed in Project Based Learning, Reggio Emilia, and other experiential, nature-based approaches to education. As a Principal in New York City, she gained national recognition for leading a school turnaround in East Harlem. She is a certified Strategic Intervention Coach, writer, pianist, Floortime Fan, and play enthusiast.
Michael is the Vice President of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) at the Center for Creative Leadership and leads the global EDI practice. This role combines his extensive professional experience and passion for social change with his gifts for strategic leadership, innovative thinking, and business development. Michael’s interest in group identities and issues related to justice and equity began with living in Liberia as a child and beginning to make sense of the American experience from outside of America. He has consistently taken direct action to support building the capacity of leaders and communities historically undervalued in the U.S. and abroad as an activist, faith community member, project manager, leader, and educator.· Before joining CCL, Michael worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and held research and leadership roles in international development organizations. As a management consultant, he specialized in system-wide capability and leadership development to support large-scale network transformations. Michael has experience in a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, agricultural production, and human capital analytics, and has also worked on USAID-funded projects in Africa and the Caribbean. He served as a strategic advisor for the education division of a Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods company and for 3 startups that worked to scale human capital management software, coaching, and team development.· Michael received his MBA from Harvard University, a BA in Liberal Arts from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor of Theology degree from Hope Bible College.
Our Inspiration
Play has always been a huge part of my life as a child and an educator. As a teacher and principal, I(Rebekah) was known for fighting to prioritize play as it was being systematically and tragically stripped from young children’s experiences in school and even preschool. I wrote about it, shouted about it, advocated for it, and designed as much play into every educational environment I supported as possible.
But it wasn’t until the birth of our son that I really experienced its power on a personal level. The Occupational Therapist who evaluated our son for Sensory Processing Disorder introduced us to a play-based approach known as DIR—Floortime, and life has never been the same. I thought I knew about play, but experiencing it through this child-led, “wait-watch-and-wonder” approach was pure magic. Rebekah and Michael have been engaged in deep learning and skill development for DIR-Floortime since 2022 through Parent Coaching, Floortime Conferences, and courses offered through the International Council on Development and Learning.
Simultaneously, our son’s desire for nature-based play and engaging in “heavy work” with all kinds of materials (and not toys) led us to discover Anji Play, an approach developed in China that is driven by the principles of love, risk, joy, engagement, and reflection, and a fundamental belief in the ability of the child and their right to engage in self-directed, uninterrupted play as their primary activity. Rebekah has participated in several Anji Professional Development Courses, and she and Michael have consulted with Anji on the design of our outdoor space.
Given our purpose around inclusion and centering neurodivergence, we see an incredible opportunity to combine the principles of DIR-Floortime, Anji Play, and our decades of practice in leadership development and personal growth into a unique offering for our community that will grow over time.
We feel fortunate to have a team of environmentally conscious permaculture designers, an outdoor Occupational Therapist, and the CEO of Anji Education guiding the play-scaping of our yard as the centerpiece of Playshire.
