When Katie Bernstein was a preschool teacher, the most difficult part of her day was the long walk down the hallway to the playground. Staying quiet past all the classrooms and the front office was simply too much for a group of excited 3-year-olds eager to get outside. The daily transition often became stressful for everyone involved.
Then one day, a veteran teacher transformed the situation entirely.
“Shhhh,” she whispered dramatically to the children. “Do you know about the tigers?”
The children froze.
“You’re in the jungle,” she continued. “There’s a mama tiger and her babies sleeping nearby. We have to tiptoe quietly so we don’t wake them.”
Suddenly, the hallway changed. Smiles spread across the children’s faces as they pantomimed “shhhhh” to one another. In exaggerated tiptoes, children moved silently, carefully, and joyfully down the hall. What had moments earlier required correction and control now emerged naturally through imagination and shared play. The children were no longer simply “behaving.” They were engaged. Focused. Regulated. Connected to a shared experience and common goal.
Pretending together transformed a stressful transition into a joyful moment. And joy expanded what the children were capable of doing.
As educators, artists, researchers, and parents, we have become increasingly interested in these moments of joy—not as extras or rewards attached to learning, but as conditions that help make learning possible in the first place.
When Stress Shuts Down Learning (and Joy Reignites It)
When humans experience intense negative emotions or a stressful regulation challenge (like walking quietly down the hall for a preschooler), the prefrontal cortex—the part of our brains responsible for reasoning—goes offline. Instead, our amygdalas take charge, readying us for survival through fight or flight. This is one reason why tasks that are too challenging do not promote learning: When children are challenged to the point of frustration and confusion, they are not ready for creativity or innovation. Instead, they are likely to disengage, and disengagement means poorer learning outcomes.
The opposite is true for positive emotions. Positive emotions, such as joy, create favorable conditions for exploration, flexible thinking, and learning. Instead of narrowing our attention toward an immediate threat, positive emotions broaden our sense of what is possible. Joy invites us to play, experiment, and try new ways of acting.
The Broaden-and-Build Power of Positive Emotions
These ideas are central to Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory, which explains how positive emotions influence learning through a two-step process. First, positive emotions broaden our immediate thoughts and actions. For Katie’s students, the joy of pretending to walk through the jungle drew them into a shared imaginary world. Their desire not to wake the mama tiger and her babies motivated them to pay close attention, walk with control and purpose, and keep their voices quiet.
Second, these actions build lasting cognitive, social, physical, and emotional resources. By joyfully practicing how to manage their voices, bodies, and attention towards a shared goal, Katie’s students developed skills they could use beyond the game itself. Each day, as the class made its way outside, they recalled the imaginary jungle and recreated those same purposeful actions. The joyful experience did more than motivate the children in the moment; it gave them a shared experience they could draw on to regulate their behavior and work toward a collective goal in the future: learning how to walk quietly down the hall to play outside.
Rantala and Määttä wrote in their “Ten Theses of the Joy of Learning at Primary Schools” that “a school is not a desert of emotion.” We can’t separate how we think, how we perceive the world, and how we are motivated from our emotions.
Making the Connection Visible Through the Arts
The arts make this relationship especially visible. Art is designed to evoke emotion, giving educators a powerful way to create emotional experiences that capture attention, foster connection, and allow children to make and share meaning with others.
Anyone who has worked with children has seen this play out in real time. At Mozart for Munchkins concerts, children often respond to music before adults even realize they are participating. A toddler begins conducting before they fully understand what a conductor is. A shy child slowly inches closer to a cello, mesmerized by the vibration of the strings. Entire families begin swaying together unconsciously to the same pulse. In these moments, music organizes attention and emotion socially, physically, and neurologically all at once.
Play Essential Reads
Joy is therefore not something added after learning. From Mozart for Munchkins to the hallway-turned-jungle in Katie’s preschool, joy is what draws children into the experience and makes learning possible. So how can we create joy… at home, in the classroom, and when we don’t realize we even need it?
- Notice moments of wonder.
- Leave space for imagination. A hallway might become a jungle, the piano might turn into the sound of waves, and rhythm can become a story.
- Add rhythm and movement to learning. Clapping, swaying, tapping, or conducting along to music can help organize focus and engagement.
- Sing together, even if it’s imperfect and messy.
- Return to familiar songs and stories. Repetition often deepens comfort, confidence, and connection.
- Remember that joy does not always look loud. Sometimes it looks like concentration, stillness, pride, or a child who suddenly wants to clap.
- Follow the children's lead when you can. They are showing you what creates joy for them; you just need to pay attention.
Whether we are guiding a line of excited preschoolers down a long hallway or navigating our own stressful daily routines, joy isn't a distraction from our goals—it is the shared vehicle that helps us reach them, turning everyday resistance into connection.
In this series, we’re collaborating with Jenny Millinger, Associate Artistic Director at Childsplay Theatre Company in Tempe, Arizona, and Lauren van Huisstede and Katie Bernstein, researchers from Arizona State University (ASU), to explore the role of the arts and joy in learning and well-being. This intersection of joy, learning, and the arts is at the heart of their work at Literacy@Play, a research-practice partnership between ASU and Childsplay. We explore what science tells us about joy, why the arts are uniquely positioned to spark it, and how intentionally cultivating joyful experiences can transform the way we learn, work, and live.