\n<\/p>\n
Rebecca London spends a lot of time observing school play yards. While doing so, the community-engaged researcher and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has seen students engaged in the best of what recess can offer\u2014cooperation, healthy competition, and negotiation\u2014and the worst, like bullying and boredom. <\/p>\n
London, an ardent advocate for ensuring all children have access to positive recess experiences, launched the Global Recess Alliance in 2020 in concert with colleagues from around the world. The alliance advocates for dedicated and sufficient recess, seeing it as essential for all children through their school years.<\/p>\n
London recently spoke to Education Week about the role of recess. She addressed both best practices for recess\u2014like how to structure it and when to schedule it\u2014as well as the big-picture ramifications: Recess, she said, has the potential to elevate the school experience for all students, and teach them lifelong skills they can use long after they\u2019ve left playgrounds behind. <\/p>\n
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
My Ph.D. is in human development and social policy, so studying recess is sort of a natural fit into the way I was taught to think about the world. To me, it\u2019s super interesting to think about how to embed this whole-child opportunity in the middle of the school day, which is really just focused mostly on academics.<\/p>\n
I think the goals of recess should be to support children\u2019s development. And by development, I mean academic, social, emotional, and physical.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think even close to half of all states have any kind of [recess] requirement. And of those that do, the majority require 20 minutes of recess out of the whole school day. That\u2019s not that much time. Think about your lunch break as an adult; it\u2019s probably longer than 20 minutes. And these are small children, and play is how they learn.<\/p>\n
Well, even among states that have mandates, there\u2019s no mechanism for supporting the training of adults in how to create and maintain and engage students in healthy play. You can\u2019t just throw 400 kids out on a play yard for 20 minutes with a couple of balls and expect it to go well. <\/p>\n
But no state has put out any kind of guidelines or requirements or funding in support of that work. There\u2019s also no accountability. The laws are important, but I also think they\u2019re really just like a baby step.<\/p>\n
It allows students a break from the school day, where they can have their needs met, whatever those needs are. For some kids, their needs are to run. But for other kids, their needs are to have some quiet time, to be able to play a game, or to pick bugs out of the grass\u2014to do something that\u2019s a little bit less intense than school work, because that\u2019s how they reset.<\/p>\n
Not everyone\u2019s recess needs to look the same. I think there needs to be local control and decisionmaking, ideally involving the young people themselves to create the space that\u2019s going to engage them the most.<\/p>\n
The primary distinction is between structured and unstructured recess. Structured recess, in the literature, looks like a gym class. There\u2019s an adult who is saying, \u201cToday we\u2019re playing soccer, today we\u2019re playing basketball.\u201d <\/p>\n
An unstructured recess would go something like this: \u201cWe\u2019ve got \u2018found objects\u2019 on our recess yard. There\u2019s tires, there\u2019s pieces of wood, there\u2019s big blocks of whatever, and you\u2019re on your own kids, figure it out.\u201d Australia is really big on that approach.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been to schools where, if you put found objects like pieces of wood on the playground, kids are going to start hitting each other with them. So that is not an approach that would work everywhere.<\/p>\n
What many recess advocates recommend, and what I\u2019ve adopted in my own work, is facilitated recess. It\u2019s not structured. There\u2019s free choice. There\u2019s lots of opportunities. There\u2019s different games and specific zones that kids can play in. Everybody knows what\u2019s out there for the offering. There\u2019s appropriate equipment. You can go from one game to the other. You don\u2019t have to pick one for the day; you can hop around. <\/p>\n
Or you could do nothing. There are safe places where kids can sit and talk. Some schools have a \u201cwalk and talk\u201d track, where students can just walk and talk if they want. That\u2019s an especially good strategy for middle schoolers. Sometimes the counselors or the assistant principal will also walk the track, and then they can be available to interact with students if they\u2019re open to that.<\/p>\n
Adults shouldn\u2019t be just standing by on their phones, or wearing a yellow vest and yelling at kids when they run across the blacktop. They should be engaged in supporting youth, for instance, by initiating or maintaining games.<\/p>\n
You can’t just throw 400 kids out on a play yard for 20 minutes with a couple of balls and expect it to go well.<\/p>\n
Rebecca London<\/span><\/p>\n We know that it\u2019s important for teachers to model good social and emotional skills. And there are a lot of SEL programs in schools designed to do this, but they\u2019re usually in classrooms where there\u2019s a lot of structure and rules. Recess is that time when kids can go out and practice those [SEL] skills in a setting that\u2019s not as regulated. <\/p>\n Adults can help with scaffolding, helping to create healthy patterns in terms of things like social engagement with other students and conflict resolution. For instance, if you lose a game, you don\u2019t have to break down or storm off, but rather just accept that you\u2019ve lost and keep going.<\/p>\n There are systems and routines that schools can put into place, but I haven\u2019t seen any guidance from any state that does that. That type of guidance is coming from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is about to release a new statement in support of recess. The Global Recess Alliance, of which I\u2019m a founding member, is also about to release a statement in support of healthy recess.<\/p>\n What I\u2019ve discovered working internationally with the Global Recess Alliance is that their recess programs are grounded in the United Nations\u2019 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. never ratified. It\u2019s very hard to build something into legislation, into policy, if there\u2019s no precedent for it. In these [196] other countries, there\u2019s just a strong precedent for recess, and they use it as a way of justifying the time for it during the school day.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t. But I would love to, and if I were going to pick one country to visit, I would go to Finland, where they have 15 minutes of recess for every hour of instruction. I would love to see that. I would love to see what the kids are doing there.<\/p>\n By the middle of the day, kids want to get out and see their friends. And I think that\u2019s fine. There\u2019s a lot of discussion, especially in the nutrition world about, do you eat first or play first? How do we get kids to actually eat their lunches when it\u2019s paired with recess, and kids want to play? <\/p>\n From the nutrition perspective, it\u2019s play first, then eat, because the kids would then be more likely to actually eat their food.<\/p>\n It really depends on the school population. For those whose kids come to school well-fed, or they have a snack program or a breakfast program, that\u2019s great. The science really does show that when children engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity, it can improve their ability to concentrate and their ability to sit still and to learn. But morning recess might not work if you have a population of students who are hungry. So it depends on the school context.<\/p>\n We at Global Recess Alliance advocate for more than one recess a day. We think kids need a couple of different breaks: minimum of two, three is better\u2014one in the morning, one at lunch, one in the afternoon. <\/p>\n They don\u2019t all have to be half-hour breaks each time, but just a brief opportunity for students to reset.<\/p>\n What we know from the science is that having a break, especially one that involves connection and physical activity in a positive environment, helps students to behave better when they come back into the classroom. It helps them to concentrate better on their schoolwork. <\/p>\n We did one big study with the nonprofit Playworks, where we found that when a well-implemented recess was put into place, teachers actually gained an entire day of instruction back into their school year because they were spending so much less time after recess helping students work through their hurt feelings, or their anger or resentment\u2014all the things that happened at recess.<\/p>\n When recess was well-designed, those things didn\u2019t happen as frequently, and so teachers didn\u2019t spend as much time on the back end, trying to help their students re-adjust after recess. Rather than taking away from learning, recess can augment learning for students.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an opportunity for kids to practice their social and emotional skills in new ways outside the classroom. Students who have built these skills early on can deploy them the rest of their lives. They know how to resolve conflicts. They don\u2019t have to blow up at a meeting. <\/p>\n There are examples in our current world where you wonder: Did those folks learn what they needed to learn in elementary school, because they don\u2019t seem able to deploy those good habits later in life?<\/p>\n Yes. I\u2019ve seen this happen in several different ways. A whole class doesn\u2019t get recess because some people aren\u2019t behaving properly, and so nobody gets recess that day. I\u2019ve seen it happen as a punishment for misbehavior: \u201cYou can\u2019t sit still. You\u2019re not behaving. No recess for you today.\u201d And I\u2019ve seen it used a lot as a threat: \u201cIf you don\u2019t do this, you\u2019re not going to get recess today.\u201d <\/p>\n There are no studies demonstrating the efficacy of that approach. Zero.<\/p>\n Black students, especially Black boys, and Native American students, especially boys, are disciplined more heavily. I have likened this to the first steps in the school-to-prison pipeline, because it\u2019s often the case that it\u2019s the same kids over and over who have recess withheld. They\u2019re taught: \u201cYou don\u2019t belong. You don\u2019t belong at recess, you don\u2019t belong in a play environment, you don\u2019t deserve to play.\u201d And then they start to believe it over time.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t go outside and hit other kids or take out your anger on them, and there are children in schools who have very severe behavioral problems that need to be addressed. But punishing them so they\u2019re not able to learn how to interact with other kids is counterintuitive. When you have a child who has trouble interacting, you want to scaffold them to interact better. If you just remove them continually from the environment, they don\u2019t actually learn how to do it better.<\/p>\n I think we need a radical shift in how we think about the role of education, and what it means to be an educated person. You can graduate from the top schools and not know how to interact with other people. <\/p>\n If we value children who know how to regulate their emotions, who can interact and resolve conflicts, who can collaborate, who can communicate\u2014not in an artificial way but in an authentic way\u2014I feel like that\u2019s where we need to reorient ourselves as a society. And if we do that, I think the rest will follow. <\/p>\n Recess is really about providing this space. Play is healing, connection is healing. It\u2019s really about providing this space for everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rebecca London spends a lot of time observing school play yards. While doing so, the community-engaged researcher and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has seen students engaged in the best of what recess can offer\u2014cooperation, healthy competition, and negotiation\u2014and the worst, like bullying and boredom. London, an ardent advocate for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3762,775,2228],"class_list":{"0":"post-22240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-practices","9":"tag-researcher","10":"tag-shares"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where can schools get guidance on recess best practices?<\/h2>\n
Have you had the opportunity to observe recess in other countries?<\/h2>\n
Without the luxury of multiple recesses, what time of the day do you recommend for recess?<\/h2>\n
What about morning recess?<\/h2>\n
What do you consider the ideal number of recesses per day?<\/h2>\n
What\u2019s your response to critics of multiple recess breaks who balk at lost instructional time?<\/h2>\n
Can you elaborate on how recess can boost learning?<\/h2>\n
Still, isn\u2019t recess sometimes withheld as a form of punishment?<\/h2>\n
Are some students more likely to have recess withheld?<\/h2>\n
Any final thoughts on the role of recess in education?<\/h2>\n