The Importance of Recess

This week's article summary is What Recess Looks Like Around the World.

‘Recess’ is the most typical response from kids when asked what their favorite class in school is. The reason for this is recess time is one of the few less structured times during the school day: it’s when kids get to be social, creative, innovative, exploratory, imaginative, and collaborative.

Take a few moments to see the photos of recesses around the world in the link below. The settings are different but the takeaway for me is kids are clearly kids regardless of where they live, what school they attend, and what resources they have.

Similar to last week’s summary about kids wanting calmness, clarity, and compassion from their teachers, this week’s reminds us that kids want teachers at recess to watch over their physical and emotional safety. They want the latitude to work out their squabbles with peers at recess, yet they recognize that sometimes they need teachers to, as the article states, ‘coach them through social conflicts.’

Last week a number of us chaperoned the sixth graders on their fall outdoor education trip--in many ways an extended recess where kids get a lot of free, down time to just be kids and savor a little freedom while also honing their evolving social-emotional skill development, or as Trinity says, shaping their sense of self and sincere care and concern for others. I recently reviewed another school’s website for SAIS accreditation and was struck by how the school combined these two critical aspects of human development: ‘our students learn about self within the context of others.’ While we are all individuals, we all must get along with others.

Helping our students learn about self in the context of others is what the sixth grade teachers did last week and what we all do every day in our classrooms, at school, and at recess!

Joe

 

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Children may play in fundamentally similar ways everywhere but recess unfolds very differently around the globe.

In elementary school classrooms around the world, kids strain to contain their energy until recess. When the bell rings, they burst onto rooftop playgrounds in Tokyo, hopscotch courts in Los Angeles, and concrete yards in the West Bank to race, fight, joke, bounce, sing, tease, and squeal. 

Their experience on the playground — joyful or vicious — will impact their development much as any math or science class. Kids aren’t just returning to school this month; they’re returning to the wilds of recess: spontaneous, unpredictable, and an essential respite from the strictures of in-class learning. 

And out of all that unstructured play comes some of the richest social-emotional learning — provided the recess is well run. That’s harder to do than it sounds.

“There’s a mismatch between what kids and adults expect supervision to look like at recess,” says William Massey, who studies the intersection of play and child development at Oregon State University. “Adults think they should ensure kids don’t get hurt; kids want to be free to jump off high structures and risk physical injury — but they want adults to ensure they don’t get picked on or beat up.” It turns out that, in this case, what kids want is what’s best for them. They need the freedom to take physical risks during activities of their choice, while caring and supportive teachers stand by to coach them through social conflicts.

One of the most compelling studies on recess globally is James Mollison’s photo collection entitled Playgrounds. Mollison’s images of school kids playing during breaks — whether on a mountainside in Bhutan, on train tracks in Mexico City, in a refugee camp in Jordan, or on a schoolyard playground in Massachusetts — contain familiar vignettes: school children cheering in groups, playing ball, sitting alone, tumbling on the ground, or pointing and teasing.

The photos show us that regardless of the backdrop, given the freedom, kids are boundlessly energetic and creative; for thousands of years, they have invented their games using stones, marbles, and drawings in the dirt as well as chants, songs, riddles, and handshakes

The games kids play and songs they sing — from kickball and kick the can to double Dutch— give kids the chance to work through tough feelings when they lose, deal with a cheater, and negotiate rules. They also preserve culture — many have been passed from big kids to little kids for hundreds of years.

Around the world, nations are committed to giving children space to play. The U.N’s Child’s Rights Treaty, which lists play as a right, is one of the most ratified human rights treaties in history. Just three U.N. nations have yet to ratify it: Somalia, South Sudan, and the United States. Here, we offer up an argument for this right through images and tales of play around the world that show play to be both infectious and essential — something we all should advocate for in our children’s schools.

While some of us may take recess for granted in the United States, there are no national guidelines requiring breaks during the school day. Only 10 states have signed laws that require schools to provide recess to elementary school children. Georgia is the latest state to guarantee recess, with a bill signed into law this summer that not only demands recess but prohibits teachers from withholding recess as punishment. “It’s still about time and minutes, not about quality,” says Massey of the new state standards, “but it’s a step forward.” In most states, there are no set requirements, and recess is in constant peril of being cut from the school day wholesale — or cut as punishment. 

As a result, some schools do recess well, and others don’t do it at all.