Your Favorite School Pastime Is In Jeopardy. Can Recess Be Saved?

When schools shut their doors in March 2020 for what was initially thought to be a brief interlude, the shock and the novelty of the pandemic situation quickly wore off. Kids settled into the unbearable grind of sitting and staring at screens, wishing more than anything that they could be back at school among their peers. Math problems and reading assignments could be “delivered” to some extent virtually, but the social interactions and the fun were gone.

After two decades of heavy focus on test scores ushered in by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, the coronavirus pandemic forced us all to reflect on what school is actually for and why time there has value. With standardized tests suddenly out of the picture — at least temporarily — the new buzzword was “social-emotional learning,” which essentially covers all the non-academic things that children learn at school: How to make friends, how to negotiate conflict, how to recognize and talk about feelings.

Some lessons in social-emotional learning happen in the classroom or even via Zoom, but the great arena where kids practice these skills is the playground.

Recess is most kids’ favorite part of the school day, and increasingly politicians are taking action to make sure that all children get their daily dose of free time.

Fifteen states already have laws in place that require schools to provide children with recess, usually only at the elementary school level and most commonly for 20 minutes. A proposed bill in the New York Senate would mandate 30 minutes of recess daily for elementary students. The bill is currently in committee.

Most of these laws predate the pandemic and were designed to fulfill the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that children ages 6 to 17 get 60 minutes of physical activity each day. They were also sometimes conceived in reaction to the practice of taking recess away from kids for behavioral or academic reasons.

Legislating kids’ right to recess requires schools, and parents, to classify it as essential to their well-being, just like books to read or food to eat at lunch. Advocates of these measures say that it absolutely is and that the unstructured play opportunities are vital to children’s physical, social and emotional development.

Recess In Jeopardy

In 1998, Benjamin O. Canada, then superintendent of Atlanta’s schools, explained his city’s lack of recess and playgrounds to The New York Times: “We are intent on improving academic performance …. You don’t do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars.”

Canada wasn’t the only school leader who trumpeted such reasoning, and his logic appeared sound to many educators and parents. If kids aren’t reading at grade level, then they should be spending more time reading — at the expense of other activities. Recess, along with gym, art and music, was often the first thing on the chopping block.

Atlanta wasn’t alone. Other cities allowed schools to ax recess, too, and in urban areas like New York City, it’s not at all uncommon for an elementary school to have no playground or outdoor space at all. Some schools may offer nothing more than a flat blacktop, ill-suited to the seasons.

“I’ve seen children and adults huddled in a sliver of shade on one side of a treeless cement yard to escape the beating sun,” said Abbe Futterman, a retired New York City principal and current director of Leadership Programs at Bank Street Graduate School of Education.

Administrators also face staffing issues when it comes to recess.

Futterman explained that recess is often scheduled during the teacher lunch period at elementary schools, meaning administrators and school aides must supervise all of the students.

“The ratio of students to adults is generally much higher than during other parts of the school day. When conflicts or injuries occur, the number of staff is often inadequate,” she said.

There is also the issue of using recess to manage student behavior, a practice that some of the laws address. In a 2010 Gallup survey of principals, more than 75% reported that students in their schools lose recess as a form of punishment in spite of evidence that recess prevents such behavior problems in the first place.

Canceling Recess Is An American Phenomenon

Minimizing the importance of recess was right in line with the NCLB era’s focus on academics, but it’s not representative of the way other countries’ schools operate.

Finland, for example, which boasts some of the world’s highest-performing schools (and its happiest people), takes a very different approach to recess.

Finnish students “receive recess every hour,” said Brad Johnson, an education leader, author and speaker. “Most schedules there have [a] 45-minute session and then a 15-minute break.”

While the Finns’ academic achievements can be attributed to multiple factors, “giving students time to be children is no small piece of that success,” Johnson added.

In a 2019 position paper, “A Research-Based Case for Recess,” the U.S. Play Coalition mentions similar practices in other nations. Turkish students get breaks similar to Finns, as do Japanese students, who get 10-to-20-minute breaks after every 45 minutes of instruction, or 5-minute breaks followed by a longer lunch. In Britain, children get breaks in both the morning and afternoon, in addition to a longer break for lunch. Children in Uganda get 30 minutes in the morning, an hour for lunch and play, and then 90 minutes of “free choice playtime” in the afternoon.

The amount of time that elementary school students in the U.S. spend playing in an unstructured way outdoors is far less than children elsewhere, and we rank near the bottom when our test scores are compared with those of other countries.

Recess Benefits Academic Performance

While, as Johnson noted, we can’t quantify the relationship between minutes spent playing and points on standardized tests, we know that there is some positive academic effect from recess time — and this is in addition to other social and emotional benefits.

“What principals fail to realize is less is more,” Michael J. Hynes, superintendent of schools in Port Washington, New York, told HuffPost. “More time in the classroom does not equal higher test scores or more learning.”

Johnson told HuffPost: “The research is clear that when students have [recess] incorporated into their day, they are more focused, on task and actually better able to regulate their emotions.”

In other words, kids get more benefit from the minutes they do spend on academic tasks when recess is part of their day.

“Recess helps all students increase their level of physical activity; improves their memory, attention and concentration; helps them stay on-task in the classroom; reduces disruptive behavior in the classroom; and improves their social and emotional development,” Francesca Zavacky, a physical education specialist who helped write the CDC’s 2017 recess recommendations, told HuffPost.

Recess’s Virtues Extend Beyond Academics

The social learning kids do at recess isn’t the same as the academic learning they do at their desks, but it, too, has value.

It’s not accurate to portray recess as a break from learning, Johnson said, as “students learn through play. This is the time where the building blocks of relationships happen. This is a place where children learn how to socialize with others that are around them.”

He added, “Research studies have shown that children who actively take part in recess have better self-esteem …. They begin to understand
which behaviors result in approval or disapproval from their peers.”

Though most of the laws mandating recess that have passed in U.S., including the one proposed in New York, are limited to the elementary school level, middle and high school students also need breaks and time outside.

“All ages, including adults, need a break to refocus and recharge,” Johnson said.

Recess of some kind “should be available to all students, grades kindergarten through 12,” Zavacky said.

On top of the social and emotional learning that happens during recess, it provides kids with a necessary release. “Physical activity has tremendous emotional benefits, as well. As children run, jump and rest, emotions are released, and the ability to self-regulate is recharged,” Futterman said.

That’s also why withholding recess as a form of discipline often backfires. If a child misbehaves, Zavacky said, “that same child still needs the mental and physical break that recess provides, since there is evidence that recess improves behavior.”

Note, however, that it’s easy to criticize teachers who implement these punishments as overly strict or even cruel, but they are often alone in a room with 20 or more children to keep on task, and the consequences they’re able to implement in real time may be few. It can feel like the recess card is the only one left in their hand.

A bulletin from the Center for Science in the Public Interest suggests the following as alternative punishments: after-school detention, cleanup of any mess made in the classroom, writing a letter of apology, a phone call home to parents, community service or missing a school event or class trip.

Is There An Ideal Recess Length To Reap These Benefits?

The proposed New York bill specifies that lunchtime cannot be counted as recess. A 30-minute period to both eat and play would not fulfill the required 30 minutes of recess.

Zavacky and other experts explain that it is best practice to schedule recess before lunch (i.e., 30 minutes on the playground followed by 20 minutes in the cafeteria).

Futterman believes that 30 minutes of recess a day is a reasonable minimum. “Lineup, transitions in and out of the play area should not subtract from that time,” she added. Her former school offered two recess periods each day for their pre-kindergarten through second-grade students.

“We observed that children were more focused and comfortable in their bodies after exercise, so time back in the classroom was more productive,” she said.

Hynes advocates for schools fulfilling the entire CDC recommendation of 60 minutes, reasoning that “federal prisoners are able to receive one hour each day; why can’t children?”

Noting the myriad challenges facing today’s kids, many of whom are struggling with their mental health, Hynes said, “I don’t believe in quick fixes… but if there is one quick fix that comes at no cost to a school district, mandating extra recess is a no-brainer and in the best interest of all children.”