ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the project design for the first playmaking project, On The Shoulders of Giants, conducted in 2009, briefly reviewing the parameters of the project and detailing more fully the dynamics of the site and participants. The areas of analysis in this chapter focus on the effect of the process on the students’ emerging understanding of unequal power dynamics and the role of collective action in fostering social change, the development of community among the class members, its importance to them, its effect on their performance in the class, and the sense of power and agency students reported as a result of participating in the playmaking process and performing their piece. These findings are discussed through the lens of Culturally Relevant/Responsive Teaching and the ways in which contemporary theories of brain development help to clarify why these outcomes occurred.
