Increased attendance, better attention in classrooms, stronger friendships, and more engaged citizens – these are not a long wishlist of preferred traits in an elementary school student. They are what some advocates believe are a direct impact from recess.
Recess, long a staple in children’s school days, has been put on the back burner or cut entirely by some districts as the push for more class time, higher academic performance, and increased test scores take center stage.
Recess advocates are pushing back in their efforts to guarantee a playtime each day. They argue adding in more structured play time benefits children’s academic, social and emotional well-being.
“It’s not that we don’t need hard work and concentrated effort, but when you hit a wall, you take a break,” says Catherine Ramstetter, who co-authored a new report for the American Academy of Pediatrics touting the importance of structured play. “That’s where I think, systematically, we’re kind of broken; that we expect little kids to be like little robots.”
The Push for Play
The AAP recently affirmed its 2013 stance that not only is recess important for children’s cognitive, physical and emotional well-being but expanded the recommendations to include middle and high school students too.
“I don’t know many high school teachers that are studying or deep into play,” Ramstetter says, pointing out early childhood teachers typically receive training in structured play. “Also, culturally in older grades, rigor is somehow equated with your nose to the grindstone –- when in reality, when we want to attain rigor, we have to have breaks.”
Similar to a push against screentime – specifically cell phones – in the classroom, grassroots efforts have formed to bring back recess. More than a dozen states, largely led by the nonprofit Yes to Recess Movement, are pushing for 60 minutes of play per day and ensuring it is not used as a bargaining chip for good or bad behavior.
“There has been a lot of evolution of the understanding of the value of recess over 30 years,” says Elizabeth Cushing, CEO of PlayWorks, a nonprofit that helps schools implement evidence-based play tactics.
“What might have been perceived as a ‘break’ is now seen as a critical part of the school day,” she adds. “It’s enabling kids to be in connection with each other in a way that’s fun, with low stakes, to build a community.”
Pushing for state or federal bills have yielded mixed reactions. Each advocate interviewed points out that they have never come with an allocation of funding to help facilitate the implementation, and also had concerns with a lack of other resources, namely helping teachers find time to accommodate the recess breaks. Deborah Rhea, founder of the Let’s inspire innovation ‘N Kids (LiinK) Project, suggests each local district tackles it by deciding what is best for its own schools and students.
“I think we have made more strides than I ever thought possible,” says Rhea, who also serves as a professor of kinesiology at Texas Christian University. “But at the same time, we’re limping along. We’re not being successful with momentum. Doing this propels them forward academically.”
But Ramstetter says introducing those minutes alone is not enough.
“I think policy can help support practice, but to make it quality playtime — something that doesn’t feel like an onerous task on a school — you have to spend some time planning,” she says. “Similar to introducing a new curriculum on English. It’s treating it like the crucial instructional time that it is.”
The Benefits of Play
In addition to benefiting younger students, the boost in social skills like teamwork and inclusion, along with physical benefits can be particularly important as students get older, Cushing says.
“The opportunities and skill building that happens in elementary school around cooperation, teamwork and how to include everyone in a game are easily done at that age,” she says. “They follow into middle and high schools where technology and social pressures require they have those skills already. If we want to develop citizens who work in a team and make friends, we have to start early.”
Experts added that recess can also boost attendance, a particularly important factor given high rates of chronic absenteeism sweeping the nation. Massachusetts-based Bedford High School offered “movement breaks” during lunch and saw chronic absenteeism decrease from 35% to 23% within its first year alone.
“There’s a lot of focus on recess to help with belonging and source of positive, joyful feelings about school,” Cushing says, adding schools with the PlayWorks framework saw lower chronic absenteeism rates than those without it.
Rhea of LiiNK listed multiple benefits she’s seen across the roughly 25,000 students that underwent her programming: cortisol levels (tested by hair samples) went down; academic assessment scores went up; off-task behavior in the classroom dropped 40 percent, and schools found offering the programming could be used as a recruitment tactic.
“The only time I had to convince parents was the first year I started this,” she says. “After that, word of mouth spread.”
There still is the uphill battle of convincing schools to find time in their day. Not every district can afford to roll out a system similar to Rhea’s or Cushing’s, either financially or with spare time.
The Future of Play
However, Cushing pointed out even with little resources, children tend to thrive with simple, structured play.
“Recess is the only time in the school day where children naturally know they have mastery,” she says. “The beauty of recess is that kids will play everywhere. Despite all the complexity there’s a real beauty in the universality of it.”
However, students do need some resources, like a jump rope and designated play areas, otherwise they may not receive the full benefits of recess even if they are outside.
“If you look at a playground where there’s no frame for it, you’ll see a majority of kids standing around the outside of the playground,” Cushing says. “They’re too afraid or shy to jump in and don’t know if it’s going to be fun or not. It’s not that they don’t want to play, they just need the conditions created to do it.”
While cell phones are less common in elementary school settings, experts added a lack of screens could improve play conditions.
Schools have pushed for more tech-free time, specifically with “bell to bell” bans that require cell phones remain untouched for the entirety of the school day, including during lunch, recess and passing periods.
The AAP study did not explicitly mention the use of technology. However, Ramstetter says the implication was “yeah, get it out of the way,” she adds.
“Don’t give them to kids at recess: Encourage them to connect, give them quiet places to sit. to run around, to dig in the dirt,” she says, comparing the ban to other forms of consent. “If I tell you I don’t want to play anymore, I need to mean it. Otherwise it gets muddy.”
She adds sometimes simple is best, pointing toward schools that just have a jump rope, chalk, and Four Square – things that allow children to make their own rules. “Everyone agrees recess is beneficial, but you have to do it well to reap the benefits,” Ramstetter says. “If we all believe it’s beneficial, let’s take a step back to see how can we better tap into some of this time, preparing to do it well.”
