Importance of Recess

This week’s article summary is  More Recess Time, Please 

While most independent schools have daily recess in their schedules, recess has all but disappeared in many public schools. (If it doesn’t directly prepare kids for the high-stakes tests they take—which then are used to measure school success—take it out of the schedule!)

What’s particularly interesting to me is the correlation between high academic achievement and ample recess in countries like Finland, China, Korea, and Japan. 

Obviously there are multiples factors that contribute to the success of a country’s educational system and philosophy. However, most of us in our professional and personal lives understand the importance of periodic breaks and physical movement in optimizing our performance. (Whenever I attend a conference or workshop, I make sure I sit neat the back row because after about 30 minutes or so I need to stand up and move around to maintain my focus and concentration on the presenter.) 

The same obviously holds true for kids.

Joe

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The average amount of recess time in most U.S. schools is 26 minutes a day, including lunch and snack time.

Most Chinese schools have a 10-minute recess for every 40 minutes of instruction, plus an hour of lunch and nap or rest time.

Shanghai’s policy is that each elementary-level class lasts only 35 minutes, and recess takes up almost 40% of the school day. In middle and high schools there’s more instructional time, but recess also increases.

Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have similar policies to China’s.

In Finland, students have 75 minutes of recess a day, which includes a 15-minute break after every lesson.

These countries believe strongly in liberal amounts of recess time, for the following reasons:

It improves learning by promoting intellectual and emotional development, elevating students’ energy, and improving concentration.

It improves classroom management by “resetting” children’s emotional and cognitive timers. Recess may help students avoid cognitive overload and the temptation to create distractions during instruction. Educators in New Zealand noticed a decrease in bullying after adding more recess time.

It fosters social development. In the unstructured space of recess, students have to be able to initiate, negotiate, cooperate, share, and build relationships with one another--skills highly valued in the adult world but that often are quite different from work or play under adult supervision and control.

It promotes physical well-being, including building fitness in ways that aren’t included in structured physical education classes. 

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Dweck's Growth Mindset Revisited

This week’s article summary is Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset’. 

What I liked about this article is how Dweck's work and research has been misunderstood and misapplied resulting in consequences contrary to her recommendations (much like Frankenstein’s monster). 

Fostering a growth mindset in students is perhaps the most influential topic in education over the past 10 years. 

Yet as Dweck points out, many are missing some of the major points of her research.

First, a growth mindset is not just about effort. 

Dweck worries that a focus on effort, rather than on learning, can perpetuate the failed self-esteem movement where everyone is made to feel good about themselves regardless of achievement and progress. When teachers and parents over praise kids for ‘putting in the effort’, kids may conclude that effort is the goal. To Dweck, when effort still does not lead to learning, one needs to try a new strategy and to seek help and support in another manner.

Second, she worries that because a growth mindset has become so popular that many  teachers and parents have jumped on the bandwagon without really thinking about how to develop it in kids. 

Third, Dweck believes that while many of us understand the importance of having a growth mindset, we still often fall prey to a fixed way of thinking. She provides a number of examples that can trigger fixed mindset responses. 

Think of the article as Growth Mindset 2.0.

Joe

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For many years, I secretly worked on my research. I say “secretly” because, once upon a time, researchers simply published their research in professional journals—and there it stayed.

I found that students’ mindsets—how they perceive their abilities—played a key role in their motivation: Students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset).

And when students learned through a structured program that they could “grow their brains” and increase their intellectual abilities, they did better.

Finally, I found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (like hard work or trying new strategies) could foster a growth mindset and its benefits.

Many educators have applied the mindset principles in spectacular ways with tremendously gratifying results. But as I’ve watched the growth mindset become more popular, I’ve become much wiser about how to implement it. This learning—the common pitfalls, the misunderstandings, and what to do about them—is what I’d like to share with you, so that we can maximize the benefits for our students.

A growth mindset isn’t just about effort. 

Perhaps the most common misconception is simply equating the growth mindset with effort. Certainly, effort is key for students’ achievement, but it’s not the only thing. Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they’re stuck. They need this repertoire of approaches—not just sheer effort—to learn and improve.

We also need to remember that effort is a means to an end to the goal of learning and improving. Too often nowadays, praise is given to students who are putting forth effort, but not learning, in order to make them feel good in the moment: “Great effort! You tried your best!”

The growth-mindset approach helps children feel good in the short and long terms, by helping them thrive on challenges and setbacks on their way to learning. When they’re stuck, teachers can appreciate their work so far, but add: “Let’s talk about what you’ve tried, and what you can try next.”

Recently, someone asked what keeps me up at night. It’s the fear that the mindset concepts, which grew up to counter the failed self-esteem movement, will be used to perpetuate that movement. In other words, if you want to make students feel good, even if they’re not learning, just praise their effort! Want to hide learning gaps from them? Just tell them, “Everyone is smart!” The growth mindset was intended to help close achievement gaps, not hide them. It is about telling the truth about a student’s current achievement and then, together, doing something about it, helping him or her become smarter.

Recent research found that there were teachers who endorsed a growth mindset and even said the words “growth mindset” in their classes, but did not follow through in their classroom practices. In these cases, their students tended to endorse more of a fixed mindset about their ability.

I have also found many parents who endorse a growth mindset, but react to their children’s mistakes as though they are problematic or harmful, rather than helpful. In these cases, their children develop more of a fixed mindset about their intelligence.

How can we help educators adopt a deeper, true growth mindset, one that will show in their classroom practices? 

You may be surprised by my answer: Let’s legitimize the fixed mindset. Let’s acknowledge that (1) we’re all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, (2) we will probably always be, and (3) if we want to move closer to a growth mindset in our thoughts and practices, we need to stay in touch with our fixed-mindset thoughts and deeds.

If we “ban” the fixed mindset, we will surely create false growth-mindsets.  But if we watch carefully for our fixed-mindset triggers, we can begin the true journey to a growth mindset.

Watch for a fixed-mindset reaction when you face challenges. Do you feel overly anxious, or does a voice in your head warn you away? Watch for it when you face a setback in your teaching, or when students aren’t listening or learning. Do you feel incompetent or defeated? Do you look for an excuse? Watch to see whether criticism brings out your fixed mindset. Do you become defensive, angry, or crushed instead of interested in learning from the feedback? Watch what happens when you see a colleague who’s better than you at something you value. Do you feel envious and threatened, or do you feel eager to learn? Accept those thoughts and feelings and work with and through them. 

My colleagues and I are taking a growth-mindset stance toward our message to educators. Maybe we originally put too much emphasis on sheer effort. Maybe we made the development of a growth mindset sound too easy. Maybe we talked too much about people having one mindset or the other, rather than portraying people as mixtures. We are on a growth-mindset journey, too.

Student Agency and Empowerment

This week’s article summary is Developing a Sense of Agency and it builds upon what I spoke about at  Wednesday’s faculty meeting. 

As part of our ongoing enhancement of our program and pedagogy (so critical to SAIS accreditation),  we need to continuously revisit how well we are balancing traditional and progressive elements of education to develop the following in our students:

• Foundational knowledge base: Proficiency in basic skills and exposure to wide base on general knowledge
• Solid character base: Strong emotional intelligence (agency and communion)
• Engagement, curiosity, and confidence towards continued learning: Comfort solving and creating by themselves and with other

The article below focuses on how one teacher had dealt with the practical question of whether kids should miss recess as a punishment for not completing school work. I have had many conversations with other teachers about this topic—some were adamant that no matter what, kids needed and deserved recess (the more progressive extreme) while others believed strongly that losing recess was an appropriate consequence for not completing school or homework (a more traditional extreme).

In this particular situation, the teacher found that balance of traditional and progressive through student agency and empowerment in real-life problem-based learning. 

The fair and practical solution developed (and owned by the students) had an extrinsic structure that provided accountability (a more traditional quality) while allowing for the development of intrinsic habits and choice (a more progressive quality). 

Clearly, not all solutions in school can find this 'sweet spot’ balance, yet that needs to remain our goal.

Joe

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An experienced teacher who was new to my school came to me with a dilemma. A parent of one of his students had voiced her very strong feeling that recess was a necessity for all students. This teacher, however, had used recess as leverage for his students completing their work: those who had, earned recess, while those hadn’t, used recess time to complete their assignments.

This practice had “worked” for him for many years, and he was having difficulty imagining how to manage his classroom without it. Although I believed that recess was a necessity and not something to be earned, I refrained from telling him what to do, because I respected his autonomy as a teacher for managing his classroom. I did, however, recommend an approach that had always “worked” for me: Share the problem with the students; work with them on understanding it and developing a solution to it. We discussed some ways to structure the discussion and he said he would give it try.

A week later he came to me with a smile on his face. His students had reached consensus on a solution to his dilemma: All students would get a certain amount of guaranteed recess time, but those who hadn’t finished their work would get 10 minutes less. He was amazed at how the students weighed the pros and cons of each solution and the manner in which they reached consensus on what to do. He also reported that they agreed to try this for two weeks and then meet again to evaluate how it worked.

As the school year progressed he reported that all his students consistently completed their work more than any other class he ever had. For the very few times a student didn’t complete the assigned work, there were no complaints or protests about missing the extra recess time. He also reported that he continued to share all classroom problems with his students and how he no longer felt that he had to control his class the way he had in previous years.

What he discovered and what he had allowed his students to experience was a sense of agency for designing their learning environment.

This result shouldn’t be a surprise; it only reveals something most teachers already know. Students love to help. Most problems are eagerly embraced.

Students’ desire to help and solve meaningful problems is too often an untapped resource hidden by the assumption that the teacher needs to always be in control of the classroom. 

When educators shift the paradigm from controlling to empowering, students experience the type of learning needed for success beyond school and throughout their lives; they will develop a strong sense of agency.

Although it is important for students to feel that they can meet their goals and solve their problems, agency extends the concept beyond individual needs to the world itself.

Students, who experience what it is like to change their classroom and their school, will be the people who will believe that world is not a given and will begin to change it for the better.

Conversely, education that is not guided by developing a sense of agency in students remains stuck in a perpetual tug of war where learning is dependent upon teaching and teaching is dependent upon controlling students.

Education, therefore, should be the process for instilling a sense of agency in every student and helping them gain the confidence for doing whatever it takes to improve their life, their community and ultimately the world.

Although this concept of student agency should radically change the vision and mission of education, it can begin to grow in every student in any classroom, without new programs or curricula. It can start with the simple act of a teacher turning to students and saying: “Here is a problem we are having and I need your help with it.”

Educators who ask instead of tell, invite instead of direct, involve instead of instruct, are really flipping the switch of teaching and learning toward agency. Students are waiting to be asked and given these opportunities even though they don’t know that they are.