By Lisa Nuss (originally published in the OregonPEN, Aug. 02, 2015)

Salem-Keizer School District elementary teachers regularly withhold recess as punishment – sometimes only for the offender; sometimes for the whole class.

When the American Academy of Pediatrics stresses the vital role of recess – why are our teachers taking it away?

Recess is crucial to a child’s development

A recent report in Pediatrics, the official journal of the Pediatrics Academy, states that “…recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.”

Not only is play essential for children’s development and learning, but we know that children need physical activity. A report in the Journal of School Health makes the same finding. In the article titled, “Withholding recess from elementary school students: policies matter,” (J Sch Health. 2013 Aug;83(8):533-41. doi: 10.1111/josh.12062) the authors emphasize:

“Recess is a key aspect of a healthy elementary school environment and helps to keep students physically active during the school day. Although national organizations recommend that students not be withheld from recess, this practice occurs in schools.”

Schools can’t withhold recess and claim to promote healthy children

Oregon PEN will work on ascertaining how widespread this punishment is in Oregon schools. This practice of withholding recess is especially concerning when our state, along with many others, professes a goal to encourage healthy children.

A website maintained by the Oregon Public Health Division outlines a “Healthy Kids Learn Better” partnership among three state agencies. The website says they are adopting “A Coordinated School Health Approach.” And its vision is “All youth in Oregon are healthy and successful learners who contribute positively to their communities.”

The website further states:

“Healthy Kids Learn Better is a partnership led by specialists from the Oregon Department of Education and the Oregon Department of Human Services – Health Services, in collaboration with other health and education organizations. Together we are reducing barriers to learning in many ways, including:

• ….
• Providing assistance on building and selecting comprehensive health, physical education and counseling programs that work.

Many of the concerns listed on the website as barriers to health are attributed to the child’s families, yet unhealthy practices in our own schools don’t appear on the agenda.

Other states ban withholding recess as punishment

Other states have made this connection. In fact, the National Association of School Boards has explicitly made this connection. It maintains a “State School Health Policy Database” at http://www.nasbe.org/healthy_schools/hs/bytopics.php?topicid=3120

The database lists policies on physical activity and recess when measuring the health of children at school. Michigan, for example, adopts this model policy: “[P]hysical activity, including recess, may not be denied or used for disciplinary reasons.”

Oregon is listed as having no policy.

 

In its article, the Pediatrics academy stressed that formal, organized PE is different from the vital role in child development provided by free-play recess. And yet, at Morningside Public Grade School in Salem, recess is regularly withheld from Kindergarteners, First and Second Graders. In Kindergarten, sometimes it is the offending child alone who is banned from recess; sometimes if one five year-old doesn’t finish the assignment, recess is withheld from the entire Kindergarten class.

My five year-old came home from Kindergarten about once a week, saying “We didn’t get recess again because Austin didn’t finish his work.” His teacher had told the class that unless everyone finished the assignment, no one could go to recess. Austin had obvious learning problems which, by the way, were not solved by shaming Austin or by punishing the rest of the class.

 

When I asked the principal of the school, Bonnie Dietrich, whether she approved of teachers withholding recess from the whole class if one child didn’t finish their work, Ms. Dietrich said she had no way of knowing what went on in her classrooms, and “It isn’t my job to supervise the teachers.” As she dismissed me, she added, “It doesn’t matter anyway if recess was withheld because the Kindergarteners have PE once a week.”

If an Oregon elementary principal seems not to be aware of these basic needs of children – what can be done about it?? I called the Salem-Keizer School District next. This principal’s supervisor at the Salem-Keizer School District, Meera Kreitzer, who worked under then-Asst. Superintendent Salam Noor, assured me that the principal, Ms. Dietrich, is “One of our most outstanding principals.” Ms. Kreitzer assured me that I was just a new parent. “You remind me of myself,” Kreitzer said, “when I was a new parent and didn’t understand how schools worked.”

So if one of the most outstanding Salem-Keizer School District elementary principals doesn’t understand the essential importance of free play recess to a child, and neither apparently do Salem-Keizer District Officials, what is a parent to do?

When I called the Oregon Department of Education in the Spring of 2014 to inquire whether the State of Oregon approves of public schools withholding recess from children – either from those who don’t finish their assignments, or from the rest of the class when one misbehaves, the State Department of Ed said local control leaves the policy in the hands of the school district.

An elementary teacher at Auburn Elementary told me that in Oregon, public school teachers are free to use recess as a discipline tool and to withhold it from children when they want to.

The Pediatrics article stressed: “Just as physical education and physical fitness have well-recognized benefits for personal and academic performance, recess offers its own, unique benefits:

• Recess represents an essential, planned respite from rigorous cognitive tasks.
• It affords a time to rest, play, imagine, think, move, and socialize.
• After recess, for children or after a corresponding break time for adolescents, students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively.
• In addition, recess helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not acquired in the more structured classroom environment.”

All of these points pinged in my head as I listened to my son’s highly-paid principal tell me she sees no difference between structured PE and recess and has no concern with recess being taken away from five year-olds.

The Pediatrics article goes on to say,

“In this sense, then, pediatricians’ support of recess is an extension of the American Association of Pediatricians’ policy statement supporting free play as a fundamental component of a child’s normal growth and development.”

Excerpts from the article in Pediatrics appear below. Parents and school boards are encouraged to compare these recommendations against the practices in Oregon schools, and start asking their districts to justify denying a young child’s essential need for free play.

Banning recess symptom of mismanaged schools and lack of funding

At my son’s school (Morningside Elementary in Salem), this last year, recess was withheld daily from children in First and Second Grade. In his First Grade class, Mrs. Baez withheld recess for children who did their art “wrong” and who didn’t understand their assignments or couldn’t finish them before lunchtime. Given that the new rigid Common Core requirements had obviously challenged this experienced teacher’s ability to teach more complicated math, and given that she posted a funding plea on the Internet for more computer tablets since many of her First Graders that came out of Morningside’s Kindergarten were reading at pre-school levels, then it seems that the problem was that Mrs. Baez needed support in her class —  the problem was not six year-olds who needed to be punished from recess.  If an otherwise dedicated teacher thinks her only option is to ban kids from playing with each other during their sole 15 minutes of free play and socialization in six hours, then our school district has a serious and systemic problem.

These are six and seven –year-olds who, to a child, will tell you that recess is their favorite part of the day. The children are told not to talk to each other during class, and punished if they talk to each other in the halls or in the lunch line or during lunch. So the only time they have to play or talk with each other is during their 15 minutes of recess, yet Salem-Keizer teachers constantly held the threat of withholding recess over their heads.

During lunch, the children are ordered to stop eating and listen to the long list of kids’ names that are announced who are being punished and can’t go to recess that day. Their names are read out loud to the entire cafeteria of over 100 1^st-2^nd graders. What a sad and shameful school district these kids attend.

Add this to the fact that on rainy days, the First and Second Graders are given the choice of sitting and watching a movie or sitting and playing board games (they are not allowed to play outside on rainy days because they “are not allowed to get wet”). I went to this exact grade school lo’ many decades ago, and we played outside rain or shine. What’s different now?

So on days when there is no P.E. and it rains, First Graders sit from 9 to 3 with no PE, no recess and no movement other than to get up from their chairs and go sit in other chairs. I took my son out of this unhealthy culture last April, but he worries about his friends whose parents can’t afford private schooling and are stuck there. When he plays this summer with his friends from Morningside, they act out their teachers’ favorite threats: “If you don’t obey me, I will BAN YOU FROM RECESS!”

Recess is a child’s right – it helps their health and helps them learn. Why do Oregonian’s allow their public school teachers to withhold this precious need from our children?

# # #

Lisa Nuss is editor of the OregonPEN. Her opinions have been published in the London Guardian, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has been used as curriculum in university courses, and at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was named the Gerlinger Cup winner at the University of Oregon as an undergrad, and earned a J.D. and M.P.A. from the University of Washington. Contact her at http://author-analyst.weebly.com/

Pediatrics COUNCIL ON SCHOOL HEALTH POLICY STATEMENT:

The Crucial Role of Recess in School

Abstract

Recess is at the heart of a vigorous debate over the role of schools in promoting the optimal development of the whole child. A growing trend toward reallocating time in school to accentuate the more academic subjects has put this important facet of a child’s school day at risk. Recess serves as a necessary break from the rigors of concentrated, academic challenges in the classroom. But equally important is the fact that safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits that may not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it. Recess is unique from, and a complement to, physical education—not a substitute for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.

Reprinted from: Pediatrics: The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012; 2013;131:183–188.

UPDATE – From Seattle public radio station KUOW, Apr. 21, 2016:

Withholding recess is banned in 10 states. But it’s common in Seattle

https://www.kuow.org/stories/withholding-recess-banned-10-states-its-common-seattle