- Consider recess students’ free time. Resist over-structuring the time or withholding recess for academic or punitive reasons.
- Schedule breaks of sufficient length for students to mentally decompress and be ready to re-engage.
- Treat recess as a complement to physical education, not an alternative or replacement.
- Provide adequate supervision during recess, but avoid unnecessary structuring of activities.
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What Priority Should We Give to Recess?
The pressure to put students back on track academically and raise test scores has led many schools to reduce the frequency and duration of unstructured recess time. Meanwhile, the challenge of dealing with increasing incidents of misbehavior have led some educators and administrators to withhold recess as a consequence for off-task and unacceptable behaviors. In fact, in a recent survey more that 80% of educators reported reducing or withholding recess as punishment for misbehavior or academic performance.
Among the underlying assumptions driving these decisions is that recess, while useful to help students drain off some excess energy and connect with friends, is not important enough to be a priority over academics and behavior management. The thought is that academically focused time is likely to pay better dividends than allowing students to run and play with friends and classmates. And the threat of missing recess will be enough to influence behavior choices.
Yet, giving students breaks from learning and time to refocus on activities that are not planned and structured by adults offer some surprising learning and life benefits. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes several important outcomes associated with what we have traditionally called recess.
First, children and even adolescents are best able to focus on learning when they have periodic mental breaks to focus on non-academic topics and activities. Other countries and cultures have long embraced schedules with intense focus followed by mental and physical breaks. For example, young students in Japanese schools are typically given ten-to-fifteen-minute breaks each hour.
Second, while shifting focus from one academic activity to another can offer some advantages, the most significant benefits appear to come from breaks that allow students to choose and are free from tight structure. Following breaks, students are typically better ready to re-engage and focus on additional academic learning. Even though recess is not typically a part of school schedules for adolescents, they still need mental and physical breaks. The same is true for adults.
Third, unstructured, but safe and supervised recess provides students with opportunities to develop important interpersonal skills such as resolving conflicts, negotiating priorities, forming relationships, developing perseverance, and sharing resources. These skills are important building blocks for social success that often can be by-passed when adults are immediately available to enforce rules, render judgments and direct behavior.
A recent study by professors at the University of Colorado and University of Denver further reinforces the benefits of less-structured and unstructured activities in another aspect of student development. Researchers found that students who spent more time in free play appeared to develop greater executive functioning: the ability to plan, make decisions, use information with purpose, successfully switch between tasks, and manage thoughts and feelings. Obviously, there is a connection between strong executive functioning and academic success. Students with well-developed executive functioning capacity tend to be less dependent on adults to manage their behavior and focus on important tasks.
Of course, time spent during recess running, chasing, and in active play also contributes to the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day. As a result, recess time can help to combat obesity and sedentary life styles that contribute to health problems later in life. It can also take the edge off of energy that leads some students to fidget, squirm, and engage in other off-task behaviors.
Importantly, recess should not be confused with or seen as interchangeable with physical education. Physical education is intended to be a formal learning environment in which students learn skills and activities that can help them make good life choices, engage in formal physical activities, and develop a healthy, active life style. Physical education is an important part of the education of young people. It can also contribute to the total minutes of activity in which students engage daily, but recess and physical education have different purposes and need to play separate roles in learning.
The American Academy of Pediatrics offers several recommendations regarding recess including:
In Your Corner, Leadership and Change Management
Six Lenses for Making Sense of the Past Year
By any measure, the past year has been distraction-filled, challenging, and bewildering for most of us. Yet, it has offered experiences to reflect upon, lessons to be learned, and opportunities to grow. Of course, many of the experiences were stressful, some of the lessons were hard, and the opportunities were not always obvious.
Still, as we approach the end of the year, it’s worth our time to reflect on what the year has brought, what it has meant, and what we should take from it. It might be tempting to try to forget the journey and put it behind us, but doing so also risks losing any value it offered and ignoring how we have grown and what we can take forward to be better prepared for what lies ahead.
Of course, we need to decide where to start and how to frame our reflection. Here are six “lenses” we can use to focus our reflection and capture what may be most relevant from the year-long journey we will soon complete.
The first lens invites us to reflect on what we chose to lift up during the past year. What values did we defend? What principles did our actions reflect? What ideas did we discover, develop, and deploy? Whose lives did we make better? Who did we mentor? Who did we reassure and support? Among the most important roles we play is lifting up the lives, experiences, and aspirations of those around us.
The second lens asks who we let in. What relationships did we form? What relationships grew stronger through the experiences we shared? Whose counsel did we seek? How did we contribute to, tap, and build our network of support? During times of challenge and stress, the support system we have built and on which we rely can be the difference between barely surviving and powering through the experience healthy and whole.
The third lens offers the opportunity to reflect on what we let go over the past year. Times of stress and conflict can leave us with myriad conflicting emotions, many of which are not useful and do not contribute to our well-being. What worry did we release, realizing that we did not control the factors that would determine the outcome? What guilt did we let go of because it served no purpose and held us back from being our best selves? What relationships did we step away from because they were not healthy or helpful to our well-being? These decisions can be difficult, but they are often necessary if we are to move forward and grow.
The fourth lens asks what we chose to learn. What learning was necessary to navigate the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities we encountered? What learning did we choose to grow our knowledge and expand our skills? What learning was unplanned, but necessary? How did what we learned change the way we see our work and how we engage in it? How might we use what we have learned to be better prepared and more successful in the future? Learning is what determines whether an experience has value or is simply something we endured.
The fifth lens invites us to consider how we chose to leverage our expertise and influence to make a difference. Each of us holds a position of potential influence with those around us. We also possess expertise that can shift the nature, direction, and momentum of issues, conflicts, and initiatives. How did we use our influence to guide discussions in productive directions? Where did our influence make the lives of those around us better? How did we employ our expertise to help solve a problem, find a solution, or move a dialogue in a positive direction? We often possess more power to influence what is happening around us than we realize. What we choose to do with our influence and expertise is what matters most.
The sixth lens asks how often we found occasions to laugh during the past year. We might find this question curious as that past year may not have offered many situations where laughter would be a natural response. Yet, an effective strategy for navigating tragedy and grief can be laughter. Where did we encounter absurdity so great that it made us want to laugh? When did we step back and appreciate the irony of situations we encountered? What did we do to stimulate laughter in those around us? What did we do for pleasure despite the challenges we faced? How did we strike a balance between tragedy and comedy in our lives?
We can’t know what the next year will bring, but as we look ahead, we can put our reflections on the past year to good use. We can use what we learned, let in, and let go to prepare us for what lies ahead. We can commit to use our influence and expertise to make a difference in our work and lift the lives of those around us. We can also promise ourselves to find reasons to laugh, find balance, and seek healthy pleasure despite what the future may hold.
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As much as we sometimes want to take control and tell students what they should do when they face a difficult challenge, it usually is best to position ourselves as coaches, reflectors, and supportive advocates.
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