The kids should be coming out to ‘play’ soon
At Broadway Elementary School here, there is no more sitting around after lunch. No more goofing off with friends. No more doing nothing.
Instead there is Brandi Parker, a $14-an-hour recess coach with a whistle around her neck, corralling children behind bright orange cones to play organized games. There she was the other day, breaking up a renegade game of hopscotch and overruling stragglers’ lame excuses.
They were bored. They had tired feet. They were no good at running.
“I don’t like to play,” protested Esmeilyn Almendarez, 11.
“Why do I have to go through this every day with you?” replied Ms. Parker, waving her back in line. “There’s no choice.”
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Playworks, a California-based nonprofit organization that hired Ms. Parker to run the recess program at Broadway Elementary, began a major expansion in 2008 with an $18 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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Dr. Romina M. Barros, an assistant clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx who was an author of a widely cited study on the benefits of recess, published last year in the journal Pediatrics, says that children still benefit most from recess when they are let alone to daydream, solve problems, use their imagination to invent their own games and “be free to do what they choose to do.”Structured recess, Dr. Barros said, simply transplants the rules of the classroom to the playground.
“You still have to pay attention,” she said. “You still have to follow rules. You don’t have that time for your brain to relax.”
You will obey, slave!
FSM forbid kids exercise!
If anything I would figure active supervision will prevent a lot of kids from getting beat up / things stolen from them.
Funny how all these stories seem to come from the most liberal/PC states.
You reap what you sow.
Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!
This recess sponsored by “The Pharmacutical Industry”
Uncle Dave,
What are you doing hanging out at elementary school playgrounds?
Renamed to Cheney Elementary School.
Recess was never that fun when I was a kid — too many bullies, rules, hyper-competitive kids, forced socialisation, etc. And, yes, jerky adults.
My best memories where after-school play with the friends of my own choosing, with no rules and no adults in sight.
>> Mac Guy said, on March 16th, 2010 at 5:00 am
>> Funny how all these stories seem to come from the most liberal/PC states.
You think of strict schools as liberal?
I think of this effort to standardise education as conservative.
I’ve done some research into the standardised “educational reform” movement for a paper I wrote and since about 1980, it’s been a conservative effort.
Long prior to that, it was a liberal effort but their main impulse was towards free-form play and education.
Thought this was something new until I saw its in Calif…
I went to a Catholic grade school. No. Fun. Allowed. They set my feet upon the path of atheism. Thank you, you humorless authoritarians!
The recess teachers job should be to make sure kids are following the rules and that kids are not being bullied. The kids should be able to play whatever games they want: tag, cops and robbers, use the swings or merry-go-round, ect.
I don’t think a few isolated cases deem CA unworthy. Just hope the report gets out and something is done about it. In the meantime, let the kids have their fun.
You survived, I survived, their kids…let them be kids lol. You guys are actually no better than those nanny recess workers imo.
# – Greg Allen — Word play seems to be the radical republican/conservative game. During the Bush Jr. administration, the game was very popular.
If liberal now means restrictions and rules, then conservative must mean open and diverse. Does this mean the new conservative is for gay marriages? Sometimes it is draining to figure out what is what.
#7 – Yep, Liberal. The world has gotten so damn PC, they’re afraid to let kids be kids. Don’t want to damage little Johnny’s self-esteem if he’s picked last for kickball.
Guess what. I used to get picked last for kickball when I was a little kid. Know what that made me do? Try harder. And guess what? I got better! Wow, what a concept. True story, and I’m not ashamed to tell it.
#12 – FTR, I am a conservative Republican who’s FOR gay marriage. I simply want gubment out of everyone’s hair, and gays should have the same rights that I enjoy as a married, straight male.
I don’t know what’s cooler in that picture:
(a) a school that looks like a castle or
(b) that sweet Ruger Mini Ranch rifle?
@Mr.Show #14 — I hope you’re being sarcasting… you realize that picture is a random picture, meant to be humorous, and has nothing to do with the actual school or playground… right?
Hard to tell from the little information provided on the story, but from what I know of kids nowadays, they might not even know what to do during recess (other than iPods & PS3s)… you know, the same way kids don’t “go out and play” anymore. So someone to actually lead them on sounds like it could be a good idea.
Talked about this to my GF who’s a high-school teacher and she liked the idea.
#15: Actually, it’s Joliet prison. Where Jake from the Blues Brothers resided for a stretch.
#16 Yes. I was being sarcastic about everything except the Ruger. That is a sweet rifle! The picture may be random but there’s nothing random about my love for my Stainless Steel Mini-14.
OK, this school is in Newark, and from the article it looks like kind of a rough neighborhood. Maybe there was too much violence, drug dealing, whatever, so they had to keep an eye on them. Maybe these kids don’t get much structure at home so they have to impose it at school.
You can see from the article that in other places, parents protested it:
In Wyckoff, N.J., an upper-middle-class township in Bergen County with a population of 17,000, hundreds of people signed a petition in protest after the district replaced recess in 2007 with a “midday fitness” program.
@#8 Greg Allen: It is not “strict schools” that are liberal. It is liberal schools which want control of every aspect of the child life. Example: I’d bet that this particular school has much more recess time than average; that teachers do not use red ink to grade “not to upset ‘childrens’ “; that any bizarre life style possible has its special day to be celebrated; that child who draws a picture instead of solving math problem is praised;…
(On the opposite side I’d bet that this school controls what type of food children have available for lunch beyond sane levels…)