Support Recess for Rhode Island

The Museum is proud to be a founding collaborator of Recess for Rhode Island, a coalition of organizations and individuals advocating for a statewide recess policy that:

• Recognizes that children’s self-directed free play is essential to their cognitive, physical, social and emotional health and well-being.
• Provides at least 20 minutes of recess – optimally 30-40 minutes – every day for all elementary school students (active outdoor play as often as possible).
• Allows children to freely engage with each other and determine their own play, within reasonable boundaries, during well-supervised recess.
• Stipulates that physical education class and mandated participation in adult-led sports and games, while also beneficial, shall not replace recess.
• Prohibits denying recess to an individual student or a class as a disciplinary measure. 
• Requires accommodations during recess for children with mental and physical disabilities.
• Recognizes that for some children a supervised school setting is the only safe place self-directed play is available.

Visit www.RecessRI.org to sign on to support a statewide recess policy that promotes time for play, and find resources and research about the importance of recess.

Also follow Recess for Rhode Island on Facebook for the latest recess news and updates.

Rallying Around Recess

Last Tuesday evening, an audience of more than 50 people gathered for the second event in the Speaking of Play series – a provocative conversation about the important benefits of recess. Moderated by Museum director Janice O’Donnell, panelists shared stories of their recess struggles and sparked an enthusiastic and passionate audience exchange about joining together as a community to stand up for recess.

The Panelists
Psychologist Lauren Greve (a parent at Providence's Vartan Gregorian Elementary School) noted some of the arguments against recess – that it takes away from valuable instructional time and bullying happens – and cited research that debunks them. Children’s attention to school tasks decreases if they’re deprived of a break, and the benefits of recess on school performance are immediate.  Bullying is low with appropriate adult supervision. Recess time helps kids develop social/emotional skills – better focus, memory, creativity, cooperation, conflict resolution, self discipline, respect for rules, and can decrease aggression.

As an elementary art teacher in Franklin, MA, Alicia Bell loves having regular recess duty. And there’s not a day they haven’t had recess – kids are encouraged to bring boots and snow pants and play outside. But when she realized that recess is not a regular part of her second grade daughter’s day at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Providence, she spoke to the teacher, shared concerns with other parents, and began documenting what happened each day. While she’s noticed some changes and more attention to recess, it still sometimes gets taken away from whole classes because of the behavior of a few kids and they don’t always get indoor recess on days they can’t go outside.

URI lecturer Phyllis Penhallow is on the third year of a successful recess crusade in the Chariho district and noted several issues that brought recess to her attention. Outdoor recess was limited by weather at the principal’s discretion and kids watched movies during indoor recess. The school playspace and equipment was inadequate. Waiting for kids to line up quietly cut into their 20 minutes of recess. A core group of parents took up the cause and stirred things up by getting a newspaper reporter to do a story, got articles and research about the importance of play before the school committee, and prepared a presentation and report for the Board of Regents. Among their successes, they’ve strengthened relationships with the principal and superintendent, are helping rewrite the school wellness policy so that recess can’t be withheld, and are part of strategic planning for the district, advocating for physical activity and free unstructured time.

Credit Susan Sancomb

The Conversation

“If the value of recess was recognized, it wouldn’t be taken away.”  – Janice O'Donnell, Museum director

On recess withheld as a punitive measure: What alternatives can teachers, schools and districts use to respond to behavior issues instead of withholding recess entirely from a child – or a whole class? Are there other things that can be taken away? Alicia advocated the model from Franklin, MA: children lose just a minute of recess, though not for a first offense, and it’s effective – it gives them time to reflect and they don’t see the same kids losing recess time repeatedly.

A child psychiatrist shared several thoughts: he sees children deprived of recess because they haven’t finished their work, often due to attention problems and learning disabilities. It’s normal for people to talk, abnormal to stand in quiet lines: “There’s a culture that gets perpetrated – generation to generation – in schools that’s completely alien to what happens outside of school. We need to advocate for rules that are reasonable to the situation but also reasonable to the child.”

On rethinking classroom time: Play has been taken out of kindergarten classrooms and children are expected to sit and listen quietly – “people forget what’s developmentally appropriate for young children,” noted a first grade teacher. Plus many kids are kinesthetic learners who don’t sit well and need movement to be successful. Teachers can incorporate more movement and play in the classroom at all levels.

What Can WE Do?

• Be prepared, be persistent. In Providence, success has come only from getting in front of the school board with data and following up again and again.
• Get the word out. Write letters, engage the media.
• Enlist allies. Get pediatricians and child psychologists/psychiatrists to speak on behalf of recess. A clever suggestion from Dr. Bill Hollinshead, former president of the RI chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics: “In the spirit of guerilla activity, ask your pediatrician to write a [prescription] for recess. ”
• Build community and a bigger movement. Help schools in other parts of the city or state that might not have resources with advice, templates, research.
• Plan for play. If involved in planning a school, advocate for the lunch area to be near the play area, so there’s less transition time and standing in lines.
• Question testing. As parents and a community, we have to question the notion that testing is important and that play isn’t – “we’re in the position of power to shift those norms.”

Download Take a Stand for Recess, a sheet with practical resources and guides plus articles and research that will help make the case for recess. What can and will YOU do?

And join the final conversation in the Speaking of Play series – Play and Risk: How Safe is Too Safe? – on Tuesday, May 7 from 7:00 - 8:30 PM at the Providence Athenaeum!

Play and Back to School

Back-to-school time often means leaving behind the carefree, active, unstructured play that kids enjoy during the summer months. How can we ensure kids have plenty of imaginative, self-directed playtime during the school year? Here are some ideas from Museum staff and friends:

• A great list of resources that the Museum's educators put together for Kidoinfo. There are some good blogs to read but also inspiration for fun activities for kids to do on their own or with their families.

• See the play resources page on our website. The ones listed are websites and online articles but you can also download our Play Power resource sheet, which includes books and films.

• From our friends at KaBOOM!, 5 reasons children need to play in school. Also take their Pledge to Save Play in Our Schools! 

• Join us on Tuesday, October 4 from 6:30 - 8:00 PM for Kids, Play and Risk: a community conversation, about the importance of children's unstructured, self-directed play and the benefits of risk-taking to their healthy development.

• And if we don't encourage unstructured play now, what might the future hold? Here's an idea.

Happy Playing!

Stand Up for Recess

By Janice O’Donnell, Executive Director, Providence Children’s Museum

Elementary schools seem to be having an awful lot of trouble with recess lately. There are complaints that recess is a fertile ground for bullying, leads to misbehavior and injuries, is difficult to supervise, and takes away from class time needed for reading and math. As a result, school recess is being reduced in many schools, especially in urban schools with high poverty and high minority rates. A 2005 US Department of Education survey revealed an alarming recess gap: first graders in 18 percent of elementary schools with an extremely high poverty rate do not have recess, compared to 4 percent in schools with low poverty rates. Since 2001 and the advent of No Child Left Behind, 20 percent of the nation’s school districts have reduced recess time in favor of math and language arts (Center on Education Policy).

At the same time, research proves how valuable – indeed necessary – recess is for optimum learning and development. An American Academy of Pediatrics study of 11,000 third graders showed that those with more recess time had better classroom success. In a nationwide Gallup poll commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, more than 80 percent of elementary school principals reported that recess has a positive impact on academic achievement and two-thirds noted that students listen better after recess and are more focused in class.

Photo by Susan Sancomb

Hardly a surprise. Who doesn’t need to stretch one’s body and mind after sustained time on a task? Today’s coffee break might take the form of five-minute-yoga, but we still recognize that adults need breaks from work during the day. Kids need them more. It is physically more difficult – takes more energy – for a six-year-old to sit in one place for an hour than to run around the schoolyard. And leading kids in calisthenics is no substitute for recess. Kids need to play. They need free, self-directed play where they make up their own rules, set their own challenges, solve their own problems. Recess gives them time during the school day to move their bodies, interact with friends, daydream, pretend, invent – all necessary for developing imagination, creativity, social skills and resiliency, as well as strong bodies.

So we need to stand up for recess. I urge parents to tell their children’s principal, their school committee and superintendent that they expect elementary school children to have at the very least 20 minutes of recess every day and much more free play time for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

And, for those fighting that good fight, I offer some perspective. Over a year’s time, children only spend 20 percent of their waking hours in school. It’s true, try the math: 6 hours x 180 days. I know that for weeks it seems kids are spending all their time getting ready for school, being at school and doing homework. But parents and caregivers are in charge of much more of their children’s time than schools are and we can make sure that they have plenty of time for free play. We can turn off the TV and computer. We can be careful about enrolling them in too many or overly consuming extracurricular activities. We can send them outside to play and trust that they’ll be just fine. Better than fine – they’ll be doing exactly what they need to do to grow their minds and bodies and spirits.

Other resources:

• Don’t Let Recess Die! Six Ways to Save Recess at Your Child’s School by Darell Hammond, CEO of KaBOOM!, in The Huffington Post
• The 3 R’s? A Fourth is Crucial, Too: Recess by Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times
• Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School by the Alliance for Childhood

This article was originally posted on Kidoinfo.com.