Rethinking Recess

Even without a classroom right now, kids still inspire my thinking the most.  Recently, a second grader shared with me that he was bored and frustrated at recess.  He passionately lamented that after “almost three years on the same playground” he had sufficiently experienced every slide, swing, monkey bar, and dandelion the playground offered.  “Recess is kind of boring,” the thoughtful little guy said.  Can you imagine?

At first I couldn’t, but as I thought deeper on his predicament, I realized indeed a person can only slide or swing so many times before yearning for something more.  So I asked the boy, “What if you thought of recess not as a place, but as a time?  What if recess wasn’t just the playground full of equipment you’ve done, but an escape for you to focus on something you just don’t get enough time for during class, or at home?”  We both sat quiet for a few minutes and wondered, what if?

In my wondering, I questioned if such a paradigm shift was too philosophical or theoretical for a seven-year old to fathom.  As I thought I realized, it’s just this sort of cognitive shift we should all consider as learners.  I thought of my frustration at the controlling role standardized test scores take in public education, valuating our kids and evaluating teachers.  But what if I considered them as one piece of a picture, or another person’s perspective on an issue to which I may be too personally invested.  Some of my best learning comes from different viewpoints.

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Then I thought about my classrooms of kids.  What if I didn’t consider the abundance of topics and content to cover as a suffocating checklist from outside, but as a game?  To be sure, there are still rules to follow, still goals to accomplish, but games are fun.  The reason we play them is the challenge of strategy and the interdependent relationships they require.  Sometimes we compete, sometimes we cooperative, sometimes we must do both; with ourselves, each other, and our students.

After our silence, my second-grade pal spoke up.  “I could talk to some friends from another class…we could plan some of our DI stuff,” he said.  This kid made me realize that the thought we were exploring wasn’t so much about the problems we face, but how we face our problems. I suppose seven isn’t too young to shift your paradigm a little.