Host Suki Wessling interviews Rebecca London, Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, and Mariah Roberts, Executive Director of County Park Friends, Santa Cruz, about the importance of play and unstructured time to health, happiness, and above all, educational success. In this wide-ranging conversation, Rebecca and Mariah shed light on the best (and worst) practices when it comes to nurturing children, teens, and adults.
Rebecca was part of a team that received a highly competitive, nationwide Institutional Challenge Grant, supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The grant will allow UCSC faculty and students to partner with United Way to offer research opportunities and mentoring to local teens. She speaks about trauma-informed teaching and the importance of engagement in education.
Mariah introduces listeners to a wide variety of programs spearheaded by County Park Friends to bring art and nature to community members, and to bring community members to art and nature.
Finally, we speak about the lessons learned in the pandemic, and how schools should use those lessons to move forward to a new educational paradigm.
For further exploration:
- County Park Friends
- UC Santa Cruz and United Way partner to empower youth through research in local communities
- Back to school: What elementary schools need to consider in re-opening their doors (Slugs and Steins Lecture)
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