PlayFair Teams

http://www.marshaforest.com/playfair.html

PlayFair Teams is an extra-curricular program designed to increase integration of students with a disability into the mainstream. It addresses social justice issues in schools and local communities, and it is an activity which students enjoy. It brings groups of students together in a school or classroom club once a week for a set number of weeks (usually 8 weeks) with the goal of creating a presentation for their class or the student body.

What is great about PlayFair Teams is that it provides a place in which students with disabilities are fully included with their peers. The presentation they create can vary widely, from a short drama or song to a video. Presentations can touch on many topics, but must include some aspect of education, disability and social justice. PlayFair gives participating students a greater awareness of the exclusion of people with disabilities. It creates a group of students who set an example to their classmates that friendship is possible between people with and without disabilities. An important long-term goal of PlayFair is that its lessons of compassion and of having friendships with people who are different will be taken beyond the school setting and out into the wider community.

Jack Pearpoint, co-founder of PlayFair Teams, summs it up well when he says, “We believe that together we’re better, everybody belongs, and PlayFair Teams is a good way to begin that journey.”