Why Academic Coaching Should Be Playful. (Yes, Even for College Students)
I have a pet peeve.
It comes up from time to time when I'm talking to educators who work with college students. And it came up recently inside the Learning Lab modules: a college success coach had just finished learning about our framework for studying in multi-modal ways — something I call the "Study Senses."
Here's how it works: coaches teach students to draw specific images on their paper or whiteboard — ears, eyes, a mouth, and a stick figure. It looks playful. It might even feel a little like kindergarten.
There's a specific, brain-based reason why we have students draw first — a reason this coach clearly understood. In her reflection about the module, she wrote:
"I understand now that the study senses are fundamental to learning. I've talked all around it in my coaching but never actually focused on the specifics […]. Will college kids think that's silly? Maybe, but it is brain science!"
Oof. Silly. That word made my pet peeve rear its ugly head again, even though she was just imagining what college students might say. I went on a bit of a rant:
What's wrong with “silly?” Why have so many of us, the older we get, been taught to distrust playfulness in learning? How might we bring play back into higher education without losing the rigor that everyone expects?
These questions sent me into a research rabbit hole, which I'll walk you through below. Spoiler alert: play is not the opposite of rigor; it's one of the ways rigor is produced! That's college-worthy to me.
But let’s unpack it.
Play is not childish
Play is not something you outgrow. It is something you get talked out of.
Stuart Brown has spent decades studying play across the lifespan, and his work is a reminder that play is not a frivolous extra. It is a biological drive, essential to curiosity, adaptability, creativity, and resilience. Brown’s framework also makes clear that play takes many forms: it can be physical, social, imaginative, improvisational, or simply deeply absorbing.
That matters because play is not just about ease or fun. Real play includes uncertainty. It includes experimentation. It includes the willingness to look a little foolish while trying something you have not mastered yet.
That is also why play belongs in learning. You cannot learn something new without risking confusion first. You cannot build understanding without making a few messy attempts along the way. Play helps us tolerate that uncertainty, and in doing so, it supports the work of learning itself.
What identities get hit the hardest?
The pressure to look serious doesn't land the same way for every student.
While researching this, I was reminded of some facts I've known for a while but that still hit hard: students with disabilities are disproportionately likely to experience exclusionary discipline — removed from the classroom for behavior that, in another student, might be read as quirky or energetic. Those harms are compounded for Black students with disabilities, and racial discipline disparities appear early and persist across K–12 schooling.
By the time these students reach a college classroom — or a coaching session — many have learned, far more explicitly than their peers, that looking anything other than serious and compliant carries real risk. So when a student says, "That feels silly," they may not be rejecting the activity. They may be running a calculation they've had to run their whole life: is it safe to look like this right now?
That is one reason "seriousness" can be such a heavy social script — and why, for some students, it isn't a preference. It's a survival strategy.
And none of this is an accident.
Play and rigor belong together
This is where the learning science matters.
The more anxious students are about performing, the more likely they are to fall back on shallow study strategies: rereading, highlighting, cramming. Those strategies feel productive, but they tend to produce weaker learning.
By contrast, the strategies that are often most effective can feel more playful because they are active, generative, and a little risky.
Retrieval practice asks students to pull information from memory rather than just recognize it on the page. Concept mapping asks them to organize ideas spatially and make relationships visible. Peer teaching asks them to explain ideas out loud in a way that reveals what they actually understand. Self-generated recall asks them to produce meaning before it is fully packaged for them.
These are not cute extras. They are core learning behaviors. They work because the brain learns by doing something with information, not just looking at it.
So yes, play can look silly. But that silliness is often the sign that a student is doing the kind of work that makes learning stick.
Educators need play practice, too
We do not just need to help students recover playfulness. We need to work on our own playfulness skills, too.
Play looks different for different people, and Stuart Brown is right to remind us that there is no single correct form of play. Some people play by moving their bodies. Some play through stories, music, puzzles, drawing, improvisation, or hands-on making. Some people play by exploring ideas until a new pattern emerges. And just because you do not like one kind of play does not mean you are not playful. It may simply mean you were socialized out of it.
Many of us — especially those of us who have spent years in schools — are what I like to call recovering serious people. We are knowledgeable and compassionate educators, but sometimes we take schooling too seriously. The same goes for those of us in private practice, where the pressure to produce, improve, and stay efficient can make play feel indulgent or unproductive.
That is part of why we teach a class in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab called Playful Practice. It is like recess for your brain, body, and creativity — except with a little more structure and a lot more insight. It is a low-stakes laboratory for unlearning the seriousness of schooling and practicing lightness, presence, and embodied curiosity.
And sometimes that is exactly what adults need: not just permission to play, but practice.
Enter the Study Senses
This is why my Study Senses framework matters.
The Study Senses are my way of helping students make learning multi-modal and embodied. I ask them to make information visual, to speak it, to hear it, and to get hands-on with it — to use their eyes, ears, voice, and hands as part of the study process.
That sounds simple. It also sounds a little silly.
But it is brain science.
When students draw a concept, they are translating information into a visual form that changes how they think about it. When they speak an idea aloud, they are testing whether they actually understand it. When they hear themselves or someone else explain it, they strengthen memory and comprehension. When they physically manipulate information — through gesture, movement, note cards, objects, whiteboards, or diagrams — they create another path into understanding.
In other words, the Study Senses are not a gimmick. They are a structure for active learning.
And they work best when students are willing to risk looking awkward for a moment.
That is the hidden link between play and study. Play invites experimentation, and experimentation invites multi-modal learning. The student who draws the ears and eyes on the page is not being childish. They are externalizing cognition. They are making thought visible. They are giving the brain more than one route into memory.
What coaches can do
So what do we do with all this?
We stop apologizing for learning experiences that look playful.
A diagram on a whiteboard. A gesture. A quick sketch. A made-up metaphor. A partner explanation. A movement break. A physical model. These are not childish add-ons to “real” learning. They are often the bridge into it.
When students say, “That feels silly,” we can help them notice what they are really reacting to.
It feels unfamiliar.
It asks them to take a risk.
It may challenge the identity they have built around being a “serious” student.
It may also be exactly what their brain needs.
Our job is not to make learning juvenile.
Our job is to make learning active, embodied, memorable, and safe enough for students to experiment.
That may look silly from the outside.
It may also be the most rigorous learning they do all day.
Most students study wrong. Here's what the research actually says.
Our free "Science of Studying" guide is waiting for you in the library.
Check Out Our Free Library →What this means for us as academic & executive function coaches
When a student calls something "silly," we have a few options.
We can back off. Adjust the activity. Match the energy in the room and let the seriousness set the terms. We could even use it as an opener: “Well, if that feels too silly for you right now, how do YOU like to play?!”
But before we start to problem solve the student's resistance — it's worth asking about our own. Because the same schooling system that produced a serious, play-wary student also produced us. We went to school, too. We learned what “expertise” and “professionalism” is supposed to look like according to the powers that be.
And if we haven't done some active work to reclaim our own playfulness, we might be pulling back from a goofy activity before the student says a word — because we're worried about being dismissed, about not being taken seriously, about looking unrigorous.
Once we've checked in with ourselves, the coaching move with students becomes clearer. Not overriding their resistance, but not surrendering to it either. Creating enough safety that they're willing to try the thing and see. Naming it out loud: "Yeah, it might feel a little goofy. That's okay. Are you willing to try it anyway?"
Because here's what we know: the students who will try the weird thing — who can stay in the slightly uncomfortable space of not-knowing while they experiment — those students build the most durable skills. Play, by its nature, requires tolerating that space. And tolerating that space is exactly what so many of our neurodivergent students struggle with most.
So when we protect the playfulness in our coaching, we're not making it more fun at the expense of depth. We're practicing the exact skill they need.
In defense of playful expertise
In the world of academia — even in the adjacent world of academic and executive function coaching — there is pressure to perform seriousness — the serious vocabulary, the serious-looking frameworks, the authoritative stance at the front of the room or in a blog or LinkedIn post.
The Anti-Boring Toolkit — and the way we teach in our videos and training calls — doesn't look like that. And I'll be honest — I feel the cost of that personally. I have more questions than answers. I lead with collaboration rather than authority. I named my business something playful. I wouldn't be surprised if being a playful woman in a field that rewards serious-looking expertise has made it harder for some people to choose to learn with me
But here's what I keep coming back to: the playfulness isn't decoration on top of the methodology. It IS the methodology. When we strip play out in the name of seriousness, we don't make learning more rigorous. We just make it less effective.
How we build playfulness into the Anti-Boring Learning Lab
Playfulness is baked into how we teach and learn in the Lab — not just as a vibe, but as actual methodology. For example:
I model it. I can't help but be bouncy, energetic, playful, silly — and that will become very obvious when you watch the videos in the micro-credentials and join our Zoom calls.
We get creative. One of our most important philosophies is that we teach the science of learning to students — and that could sound VERY SERIOUS. But instead, I teach you the “anti-boring mini-lectures:” nine pieces of science taught using whiteboard drawings, humor, surprise, and more.
We experiment. Not "do this perfectly every day" but "try this, see what happens, adjust." Make mistakes. See if you can have fun doing it. This is how we approach our work with students — and how we recommend educators engage with their own learning, too.
We even have a class called Playful Practice. For educators who identify as "recovering serious people," we hold a regular Zoom class to practice being less serious. It’s impossible to explain what we do in those sessions, but suffice it to say — it’s FUN! Lab members who come report surprisingly major changes in their coaching demeanor and personal lives. It feels like what I can only describe as a playful prayer, on behalf of every educator and student who has been told their aliveness doesn't belong in a classroom. That might sound grandiose. But I mean it.
This is what we're building at the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. And we'd love for you to be part of it.
Want to explore this with a community of coaches who take play seriously?
The Anti-Boring Learning Lab is where educators who take play seriously come to obsess over the science of learning — together. We have 41+ tools across 9+ micro-credentials: the Study Cycle, the Study Senses, executive function strategies, creative quizzing techniques, systems for crushing overwhelm. All of it research-backed. All of it designed to help students become more effective, engaged, and self-sufficient learners.
And all of it taught with — you guessed it — playful rigor.
If you're reading this in June 2026, we've just launched our summer cohort — and it's not too late to join us. Come check it out.
If you're reading this later, start here:
Mini-lectures, coaching tools, and frameworks you can use right away. No commitment required. And whenever you're ready to go deeper, The Lab membership — including Playful Practice, community calls, and a cohort of educators who refuse to make learning boring — will be here.
Frequently Asked Questions
We're adding a new segment to our blog posts where we summarize the content through the lens of frequently asked questions. It's apparently good for SEO, and also good for those who want to skip the rant and get straight to the point. Enjoy.
Is play just for kids, or does it matter for college students and adults, too?
Play isn't something you outgrow — it's something you get talked out of. Research on play across the lifespan shows it's a biological drive that supports curiosity, adaptability, and resilience at every age. That includes college students working through hard material, and the coaches and educators trying to help them.
Why do "playful" study techniques like the Study Senses actually work?
Because they're brain science, not gimmicks. When a student draws, speaks an idea aloud, or physically manipulates information, they're not just reviewing — they're generating. Retrieval practice, concept mapping, and self-generated recall all work because the brain learns by doing something with information, not just looking at it. The techniques that feel a little playful are often the ones doing the most work.
Does playfulness in learning conflict with academic rigor?
No — play is not the opposite of rigor. It's one of the ways rigor is produced. The study strategies that feel safest (re-reading, highlighting, cramming) tend to produce the weakest learning. The ones that feel riskier (and potentially more playful) — explaining out loud, mapping ideas, pulling information from memory — tend to produce the strongest.
Why do some students resist playful learning more than others?
For some students, "seriousness" isn't a preference — it's a survival strategy. Students who've experienced exclusionary discipline or discrimination in school may have learned that looking "serious" is what keeps them safe. So when a student says an activity feels silly, they may not be rejecting the activity — they may be protecting themselves.
How can coaches respond when a student says an activity feels “silly?”
Before addressing the student's resistance, it's worth checking our own — we went through the same schooling system that taught students to distrust play. Once we've done that, the move isn't to override resistance or surrender to it. It's to create enough safety that the student is willing to try the thing, and to name it out loud: "Yeah, it might feel a little goofy. That's okay. Are you willing to try it anyway?"
Your Turn
Have you encountered resistance to playful learning — from students, parents, administrators, or your own inner voice? How do you hold the line? I'd love to hear what you've learned about bringing play back into serious learning environments. Drop it in the comments.