Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Elementary Schools Hiring ‘Recess Consultants’ to Supervise Playgrounds
For modern parents, every summer is a scramble. Beginning in March (or late April, for slackers like me), moms and dads worry how to keep their kids occupied while school is out. For our family, it’s a Gantt chart of swimming lessons, art classes, summer school, vacation Bible school, and a week with the grandparents. Once we’ve logged all of that into our iPhone calendars, we try to find a single week still open so we can shoehorn in a family vacation. (Keep in mind, we live in the Arizona desert and often work from home, so we need at least a few hours of air-conditioned fun so our kids don’t lose their minds and we don’t get fired from our jobs.)
My mom had a far superior method of ensuring my siblings and I got proper exercise, mental stimulation, and social integration over those long, hot summer months. She yelled, “go outside, you’re driving me nuts!” We’d dutifully scatter on our bikes, my brother to the local library, my sister to one of her giggling friends’ homes, and me into the deserts ringing Phoenix where I would jump ditches with my Mongoose BMX bike, build forts, and get into epic dirt-clod fights with my fellow prepubescent ne’er-do-wells.
Not surprisingly, I was the kid who needed a trip to the ER every summer, but that jerk Bobby Kelly needed to know he wasn’t the only one stupid enough to jump his bike over Mr. Prather’s prickly pear cactus. (I almost made it, too!)
Thankfully, parenting has evolved from the dark days of kids entertaining themselves. Now children are blessed with tightly supervised activities, scheduled playdates, and structured fun. This not only extends to summer activities, but even recess is being taken over by adults with Day-Timers. To ensure children blow off steam in a conflict-free, developmentally appropriate way, two Edina, MN elementary schools have hired a recess consultant.
Some parents have welcomed the arrival of the firm Playworks, which says recess can be more inclusive and beneficial to children if it’s more structured and if phrases like, “Hey, you’re out!” are replaced with “good job” or “nice try.”
But some of the kids at Concord and Normandale Elementary say they are confused, or that the consultants are ruining their play time.
“The philosophy of Playworks does not fit Concord,” said Kathy Sandven, a parent of twin boys who attend the school. “It is a structured philosophy — an intervention philosophy — not allowing kids for free play.”
The two schools have joined a growing number of districts that have hired consultants to remake the playground experience into more structured and inclusive play time. The games and activities, like four square and jumping rope, are overseen by adults and designed to reduce disciplinary problems while ensuring that no children are left out.
The Playworks “recess initiative” cost the school district about $30K and it is spreading. The firm has programs in 20 states and the District of Columbia, and is now “the leading national nonprofit leveraging the power of play to transform children’s social and emotional health.”
Maybe the best way to leverage the power of play is to let kids ride a seesaw for 15 minutes, free of clipboard-wielding busybodies lecturing them about positive body image and trans-inclusivity. My question to former kids: Has “structured play” gone too far and what can we do to reverse the trend?
Published in Culture, Education
Being left out is a part of life. I wouldn’t trade being left out, being thrown into dumpsters, even getting beat up on from time to time for what it did to develop my personality. Some of my best friends are ones who picked on me when we were kids, and we joke about it now. That’s all a part of growing up in the real world, and it is a good thing.
My 3 y/o came home one day and told me that “Johanna” had told him he wasn’t the fastest. I asked if she was faster than him. I told him that he’s probably not the fastest, and that he will likely never be the best at everything he does, but that it is motivation to practice and to try hard. I told him that if he doesn’t like what kids are saying, he can play with other kids. That’s how we develop our senses of judgment, being able to recognize a jerk when we see one, being able to recognize when we’re the jerks.
To me, what you’re saying is essentially this: A structured childhood means no childhood at all. Kids don’t grow up, they merely get older. I guess the new playground is the workplace, where the stakes are much higher and the lessons much harder.
This is so utterly wrong-headed that it’s almost unbelievable. If one can’t learn how to cope with being ‘out’ in the trivial circumstances of school ground play, how will anyone ever learn to cope with being ‘out’ in the real world?
I’m having to force myself to occasionally beat (at games!) my 3 y/o; he loves to race when it comes to literally everything, and he always wins. But that can’t be an expectation. A few days ago, he was racing to get his pants/shoes/underwear off to get into the tub (brother, who is 18 months, is much slower and aided by dad) and he got his feet caught in his pants. He was struggling to get them off and started fussing and then full-on crying. I stopped him and we had a conversation about what to do when things are difficult or when we can’t figure something out. I asked “did crying make it better?” Of course not. Did crying help your pants? No, why can you not get your feet out? Because they’re all bunched up down here and your shoe is still on. Ok, so what do we do? Think about it for a minute. Yeah… pull off the shoe and extend your leg so it’s easier to slip off. Great! See how easy that was? Thinking about it did so much more good than that ridiculous crying you started to do.
He gets that at home, but I don’t mind one bit if at school when he starts to fuss one of his friends calls him a baby and decides to play with someone else. That’s how we figure out how to not be idiots in public…
1%er back in the day.
Wow. Perhaps they should hire a teaching consultant to handle the classrooms?
With you there, Ryan M: Each person has a right to be free, as much as is compatible with proper family and community life, at each stage of his life. Children have a right to free play, and free life, under the supervision of their parents.
From a pragmatic, and therefore secondary yet still essential, point of view, each person ought as the ideal to have, as a child, free play, to grow properly. That means to undertake self-education in many things, such as self-awareness, awareness of the world and of causality, skills personal and interpersonal, and the knowledge that self-direction is possible and leads to joy in life. Who would oppose this, and to what purpose?
Why does recess need more structure? We already have a form of structured play it is called Gym Class.
Do kids even get to be kids anymore? What happens if you just want to go and play on the jungle gym by yourself rather than partake of the mandated fun activities your planners have devised for you? Also how will children ever learn to self organize. I recall that organizing large games of kickball with fair teams was a common pass-time when I still had recess. We did it ourselves and it worked just fine. I don’t recall excluding anyone, even the kids who weren’t that good at it. Then again I also remember that at one point all the boys decided that we would play a rather rough and tumble game of keep away, and activity that excluded the girls, because it was both violent (and we know you can’t tackle girls) and because it was in retrospect kind of stupid (and the girls clearly were more mature). What if what you want to do at recess is play with action figures with maybe just one friend? What if you just want to play video games on you Nintendo 3DS?
Darn it this kind of reports make me mad. I recall as a child chafing under the yolk of the Concerned Mothers of America trying to take away my toy guns and swords.
I wonder if he had mags? Probably. And a double goose neck.
I disagree with the “under the supervision of their parents.” part. Small children yes, but even they can be trusted for a short while in their back yard sandbox. I lived in Los Angeles until my daughters were 8 and 12, then moved to a high mountain in the Sierra Nevadas. Until we moved every minute of their lives were structured and under supervision. Once we were established in our little mountain cabin, they vanished, into the woods! And ponds. Streams. Small Lakes. There was so much to explore, to discover, to find. I made 3 stipulations, to tell me when they left and and to be home well before dark, and to stay together. My daughters, with grandchildren of their own, now tell me that first year of freedom from the structures of city life was the making of them. The biggest adjustment was mine. Not having my children under my thumb every minute, knowing exactly where they were and what they were doing. They thrived.
You know it. Only the finest for this 12-year-old.
I find it fascinating that the classrooms are devoted to discovery and collaborative learning, where the teacher is to stand back and watch the magical process of learning occur, but on the playground, we have consultants with directions to prevent kids from discovering what it feels like to be left out or not chosen to collaborate.
I think they have it backwards.
Hi Valiuth, what happens is that you are branded an “anti-social element.”
Do you recall Concerned Mothers of America impinging on your consciousness as a child? That is fascinating – horrible but fascinating. I’d love to hear more from you on that.
No doubt.
The bike I jump ditches with I got on Christmas; an old, used Huffy or something that Mom picked up at a garage sale.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I rode it to school and learned it used to belong to a girl in My class! Thanks, Santa.
I may have enjoyed the banana seat, but Mom could have at least taken the tassels off the handlebars.
Yes, yes, my dear, by “supervision” I here mean to say that the parents teach the morals and establish the ground rules. This would include designation of authority to schoolteachers who worked for them, not the other way about.
By “supervision” I do not at all mean to indicate hovering – all that constant hovering that we see our friends carrying on with sometimes. Kid can’t focus on a Lego thing without a parent lumbering along and hunkering down at his elbow, every single time.
Thank you for pointing up the distinction.
Coulda taken ’em off yourself, no?
BMX envy. I did not know such a thing existed.
I think that hiring a consultant firm is overkill, but I understand the problem.
It’s not that kids are going outside and experiencing the natural positive and negative interactions with their peers that will prepare them for life. It’s not just the normal “you can’t play with us” stuff that goes on. Recess time can be a real rough spot in a school’s functioning. Students come back inside and can’t get back to work–instruction is interrupted because a whole group of students got into trouble outside and are now with the principal, or one (emotionally fragile) student is so agitated by whatever took place out there that he causes a major disruption. Certain students get written up every time they go outside for hitting, etc. and eventually have to be kept indoors at recess.
A number of kids in each class come from backgrounds so chaotic that they don’t know how to interact with others. There is little guidance from Mom and Dad at home to talk them through social challenges or even small frustrations, and when these kids are displeased, they can lose it, sometimes in alarming ways. So even with supervision from aides and clear expectations for use of the equipment, recess can be somewhat of a jungle.
(Cont.)
I’ve seen a school 1.) eliminate the lining up outside that was the source of so many issues and just send students straight back to class; and 2.) apply clearly outlined schoolwide efforts to encourage positive interactions and a culture that would lead to more “fun” outdoor recesses. These efforts have been helpful.
The school has had to act in the place of under performing parents. That’s just reality now.
If you were in school leadership, and recess was the source of all kinds of problems that hindered instruction and learning, what would you do?
Maybe the National Baseball League needs to adopt that phrase “nice try….you struck out but….good job” – somehow it won’t work in the adult world…
My husband was just telling me a story the other day where he and his buddies camped out in the woods at 8 and 9 years old..hiked thru the pitch dark woods by the moon’s light and some old flashlights to buy slurpies at the 7 Eleven, smoked “cigars and cigarettes” – I asked they sold you cigars?! No he said – I “think” we stole them – at one point the woods caught fire- there were consequences….
We had to be home when streetlights came on, and get homework done before bed, got into fights at school, rode bikes at lightening speed down hill, when I was in grade school my aunt told me not to slide down the huge wooden slide because my dresses got dirty so I just stuffed it into my leotards and went down anyway. We made mud pies, survived snow ball fights, and somehow managed to go back to class and learn something. It was a jungle and it was great.
We’re building zombies. I keep thinking ‘these kids are going to be unable to deal with conflict as adults,’ but then I realize all their peers will also be droids. The true zombie apocalypse.
We’re getting there. Remember; incrementalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1qEsTXVj57M
Wow. Just wow. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years. Recess is supposed to be fun–free and fun. You’re supposed to go out there and figure out things for yourself. There are some rules: no hitting, no cursing. But I can’t imagine having recess taken over by consultants.
Sawatdeeka, I do understand there are some children who have no problem solving skills. But there are adults on the playground, and they are there to deal with the occasions when children ignore those rules. But, it would be really, really sad to have someone come in and manipulate the students in the way it was described. Just leave them alone and let them deal with it.
PS: My oldest son was in his twenties before he finally told me about riding his bike in the Great Basin desert with our neighbor, and jumping over dirt piles, and almost landing on a rattlesnake. But…no one got bit, so no harm/no foul. (But he knew I didn’t want to know that story when he was still 12.)
Sawatdeeka- well if I was in school leadership I would advocate to destroy the unions and the entire government school system and endorse a more market based educational system, that allows parents to choose how they want to educate their children. But that’s just me…. But that is the problem these schools are trying to work within a broken system and are afraid to tell the parents when their kids are total jerks, because the school might be sued. Also you can’t ex spell any of these problem kids and in some school districts they’ve eliminated detention. I get the necessity of “recess consultants” but they really are just the crazy glue trying to hold together this system that keeps cracking and falling apart.
I went to a Catholic grade school, and recess was a free-for-all as one or two others described above. “Kill the guy with the ball” was a standard game – dude with the football runs away from the crowd until he’s tackled/knocked down. In a gravel-covered schoolyard. I still have an upside-down scar on my knee where I was once the lucky fella with the ball, fell into some bushes, got jumped on, and when I was able to stand up realized I had crunched a beer bottle with my knee. Looked like a tongue was hanging out of my knee, but it was a tongue-sized lump of skin.
So no, I don’t think you need recess supervisors. What you need are kneepads out there. 30K buys a lot of ’em.
The sissification of America continues apace. I remain massively unshocked.
I did say that hiring consultants for the problem is overkill–I believe that’s way over the top. There are ways schools address the problem that I guarantee don’t cost $30,000.
I wouldn’t be disgusted by this matter if one sized fits all educational models weren’t forced on families. If there was true school choice, where dollars followed the kid, and parents chose, I wouldn’t care if some parents wanted to choose a school with “playground consultants” – I believe in pluralism and Liberty- but kids and parents get stuck with no choice.
It would appear that there were too many micro-aggressions on the playground. The playground is not a safe space for all the kids. The cisnormative heteronormative play described by some of the previous commenters on this thread show that there is a great need for recess consultants. I plan to become one.
During recess time there usually was a teacher present and attempted to insure we did not injure ourselves too badly while engaged in “Play”. Sometimes we did and learned valuable lessons.
The Principal used to divide all the students into two groups and oversee snowball wars. Imagine that today.
Oh, and do recall dirt clod fights well. Is that a felony now ?
I grew up in Tucson, and did pretty much the same thing that John Gabriel did, being a tomboy with only other boys to play with. Of course being a desert rat is a very different experience than kids growing up in a neighborhood I think. It’s a bit freer since there were really no cars to deal with.
I work in public schools, as the school secretary at an elementary. While I agree whole heartedly with the article, but I have to tell you, a lot of these children come to school virtually feral. Parents just give in to every whine and complaint of their little darlings or the kids are pretty much ignored. Melt downs and defiance are just a part of the day. pareents want ACTION when they believe that their child has been bullied, and every child is always bullied, if you were to believe them. They don’t teach/let the kids learn to navigate their world.
Of course, I think we interfere too much. (if I hear the phrase “use your words” one more time I will use some words, and they will not be CoC compliant). I’ve had it. This is my last year in public schools, I am looking for a job in the adult world (no, not THAT adult). Youngest graduates high school this spring, and I am free.