Recess at West Seattle Elementary

[marco]

Listening to this report on KUOW

http://kuow.org/post/recess-shrinks-seattle-schools-poor-schools-fare-worst

I found this WS Elementary approach very short-sighted: Sure, if the kids don’t get to interact freely during recess there will be less fights, but that also means that they will likely be less attentive during class and don’t learn the conflict resolution skills kids are building during unstructured time.

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[skeeter]

I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the teachers. Personally I would think some recess time helps to keep students focused in the classroom. But if the teachers are finding that recess time causes students to be less focused in the classroom I would defer to their judgment.

Personally I think the only answer is forced economic integration. Every school should have some rich kids, some middle class kids, and some poor kids. As long as we have all the rich kids in one school and all the poor kids in another school I don’t see the poor kids getting a good education.

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[wakeflood]

Why skeets, you ol’ social engineer. ;-)

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[add]

If kids (or adults for that matter) don’t move around, learning is impeded. Educators should know this. Besides the obvious “burning off energy” idea, there is brain-science research to back it up. There’s a lot out there, but this sums it up pretty nicely.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104013/chapters/Movement-and-Learning.aspx

I don’t think it’s a bad idea for the “recess” time to be at the teachers’ discretion as is reported in the article about WS Elementary, in fact it is probably better for their own classroom flow, as long as it is consistently administered across the school. And I agree that 20 minutes/day is not enough! A lot of attention is given to elementary school-aged kids but the same problem of limited movement during the school day exists for middle- and high-school kids as well.

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