Neva Leona Boyd (1876–1963) founded the Recreational Training School at the Hull House in Chicago. The school taught a one-year educational program in group games, gymnastics, dancing, dramatic arts, play theory, and social problems. She was on the faculty of Northwestern University as a sociologist from 1927 to 1941.
Born in 1876 in Iowa, Boyd moved to Chicago after high school. She enrolled in the Chicago Kindergarten Institute and eventually arrived at Hull House. She taught kindergarten in Buffalo, New York, before returning in 1908 to attend the University of Chicago.
The Chicago park commission hired Boyd as a social worker, specifically to organize social clubs, direct dramatics, supervise social dances and play activities. In 1927, Boyd accepted Northwestern University’s invitation to move The Chicago Training School for Playground Workers from Hull House to its own Department of Sociology.
During the Great Depression, Boyd worked with the Recreational Project in the WPA.
Boyd also worked in military convalescent homes. The Red Cross, which established these convalescent houses, ensured that all wounded veterans engaged in playful games to prepare them for leaving the hospital. By the 1940s, Boyd’s methods found their ways into every military hospital in the country.
Viola Spolin[1] and Colonel William C. Menninger were two of her students.
Books Published
- Social group work: A definition with a methodological note by Neva Leona Boyd, Published 1971, by Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
- Handbook of Recreational Games by Neva Boyd, Published 1975, by Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0486232042
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