Viola Spolin initially trained to be a settlement worker (from 1924 to 1927), studying at Neva Boyd's Group Work School in Chicago. Boyd's innovative teaching in the areas of group leadership, recreation, and social group work strongly influenced Spolin, as did the use of traditional game structures to affect social behavior in inner-city and immigrant children. While serving as drama supervisor for the Chicago branch of the Works Progress Administration's Recreational Project (1939–1941), Spolin perceived a need to create within the WPA drama program an easily grasped system of theater training that could cross the cultural and ethnic barriers of the immigrant children with whom she worked.