As the recess controversy continuers to pit advocates of recess against “reformers” who would like to cut it out of the school curriculum, the focus has widened to examining what actually happens on the playground during our children’s “time out.”
A great deal is coming to light about those wild, wonderful – and sometimes dreaded – slices of “real time” where recess adventures are daily enacted. These discoveries are spurring a debate about how much teachers should try to influence peer interactions during this time.
Some educators insist that recess should be wholly unstructured; teachers should step back and allow children the widest possible latitude to organize their own games, to pick the teams, set the rules, negotiate conflicts and learn how to win and lose graciously.
Others reject the “hands-off” doctrine. They cite studies that maintain that teachers have a significant role to play in what educators call “manipulating the environment” from behind the scenes.
A wise teacher, they say, will find ways to frame a recess activity so that all children are included. He will encourage popular children to “buddy up” with socially awkward children at recess. Sensitive, creative teachers will make the most of every opportunity to highlight the talent of students who are weak academically but skilled on the playground or in other areas.
Alert teachers will catch warning signs of peer rejection, or bullying, shaming or teasing that flourish when no authority is present.
The following true account of the recess dynamics in one school – and how one principal tried to deal with it – captures some of the significant recess-related issues coming under scrutiny in some of our leading yeshivas and day schools.
Teacher-Supervision: Honored In the Breach?
A week before the beginning of the new school year, *Rabbi Abrams, principal of *Hillel Academy, called a staff meeting of all his English teachers. Bracing himself for a torrent of protest, he delivered the bad news.
As of the first day of school, he advised his teachers, afternoon recess would be eliminated from the school curriculum. Lunch recess and the morning recess break would continue as usual.
Staff members stared at him and at one another in shock.
“It’ll be an adjustment, but I’m confident that with good will and cooperation, the changes will be rewarding,” Rabbi Abrams assured them. “First, each of you will be able to accomplish far more in your respective classrooms with a good twenty minutes of extra teaching time a day. Even more important, cutting down recess will eliminate a host of problems such as playground and classroom injuries, and the teasing and bullying that tend to go on during recess.”
He paused, knowing full well his surprise announcement would find a chilly reception. In Hillel Academy, the faculty savored the afternoon recess break as much as the students. Making a beeline for the teachers’ room as soon as the bell rang, teachers sipped coffee while trading stories, teaching tips, recipes and jokes. The room echoed with their laughter and camaraderie.
The problem was that the fifteen-minute recess break invariably stretched into twenty minutes and more. Each day, Rabbi Abrams went about herding the stragglers back to their classrooms, taking note of the crescendo of noise coming from rooms where children awaited their teacher’s return.
The standing rule that no class was permitted to be left unattended was often ignored at Hillel Academy. He had tried at various times to institute penalties for lack of compliance, but his authority was compromised by his newness to the job. Some of the teachers were in the school for as long as twenty years. They were hostile to change and took umbrage at being told what to do.
Cutting out recess was radical “medicine” but he believed it was the only way to go – at least for the present. He tried to move on to the next topic but angry objections flew at him from all sides.
“Look, we know that there’s a major move in lots of schools to banish recess,” one teacher said in exasperation. “But like all fads, it won’t last. Why should we turn things upside down in our school just to climb on someone else’s bandwagon?”
The babble of voices quieted as Rabbi Abrams held up his hand. “A lot of thought has gone into making these changes. I’d like to tell you about a recent incident that was the final impetus.”
Shunning
He went on to describe the saga of 12-year-old *Leah Shelnitz who had moved with her family to the east coast from Australia and enrolled in Hillel Academy. Leah was shy and somewhat awkward around new people. Still, she started out with high hopes, eager to make friends.
“Despite her friendly overtures, she couldn’t break the ice. She was never invited to anyone’s home to play or do homework together. Finally, a girl in the class confided to her that the reason she was being snubbed was that there was a secret club in the class – called the “IHLS Society” –” started by two ringleaders who said Leah Shelnitz was “contagious.”
The club met at recess and lunchtime and whispered and giggled together. The girl who divulged this information had backed out of the club when she realized what it was all about, especially the meaning of the club’s initials.
“What do they mean?” Leah asked innocently.
“The girl hesitated. Finally, she told her. ‘They mean I Hate Leah Shelnitz.’”
“Shocked and brokenhearted, Leah left the school. Her parents were furious that no teacher had come to Leah’s aid to stop the shunning. The pain – and perhaps emotional scarring – this young girl suffered is something we can only guess at.”
Rabbi Abrams paused. “What we do know is that this harassment would not have happened – could not have happened – had a teacher been present, and had the children not had the opportunity, day after day, to indulge in this destructive behavior.
“Rabbi Abrams, wouldn’t a more normal solution be to have better supervision during recess?” someone asked.
The question triggered a noisy free-for-all praising the merits of this proposal. As Rabbi Abrams tried to regain the floor, he realized the majority of the staff had decided that his “no-recess” policy was merely a gimmick to force their cooperation in supervising their classes. This is not at all what he had intended – he knew such a ‘solution’ would be short-lived. He thumped on the table for silence so he could make that very clear.
Let us draw the curtain for now on this confrontation as we explore some of the issues uncovered here that touched on concerns shared by teachers and principals in many of our best yeshivas.
Unattended Classrooms – How Common?
The problem of classrooms left unattended at recess time is less uncommon than we would like to think. In the past few years, two schools in the Brooklyn area were threatened with lawsuits by parents whose children were injured during recess, and who charged the school with negligence.
A case came to court in the summer concerning a child who tripped and fell while chasing a classmate inside the classroom. At a preliminary hearing, the first question the judge had after hearing a description of the accident was, ‘Where was the teacher at the time of the accident?’
In this case, no teacher was present. The private school in which the incident took place is looking at an out-of-court settlement that will cost over fifty thousand dollars, in addition to very damaging publicity.
“An unattended classroom or playground without sufficient monitors is a laboratory for disaster,” says Dr. Anthony Pelligrini in an article about why recess is being phased out in America’s public schools. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.”
Racketeering?
One principal related to me an incident concerning a fourth-grader who was caught running “auctions” in school during recess. The boy would bring items from home and auction them off to his classmates for small amounts of money. The operation had been going on surreptitiously for weeks.
The lid was blown off by a distraught parent who caught her son stealing money from her purse. The child broke down and admitted he had promised a certain sum of money to *“Dovi” for a magnifying glass he had won at an “auction.”
An investigation by the rebbe and the principal revealed that several other boys in the class had been pressured or intimidated by Dovi into buying things from him.
“This child was running an extortion ring right under the rebbe’s nose,” the principal exclaimed. “How is it possible the rebbe didn’t detect anything? Where was he?”
Friendship Crisis
Another by-product of the unattended classroom is the friendship crisis a great many children suffer. While most children eagerly await recess and lunchtime as cherished opportunities for fun with playmates, there are some children who experience loneliness and rejection during these unstructured periods.
These unpopular children are seldom picked for games. No one chooses them as companions with whom to eat lunch, play ball or do homework with after school. These children hang around the periphery of a social circle, sad and neglected, longing to be invited in. Like Leah Shelnitz, they are sometimes the butt of ridicule, ostracizing or shaming.
Often these are the children who lack a sense of timing and smoothness in social interactions. They have trouble picking up social cues and grasping the hidden rules of social communication.
Teachers: Manipulate The Environment
Experts stress the urgent need for teachers to step in and break the cycle of peer rejection whenever they catch signs of it. Child psychologist Dr. Rita Richardson emphasizes that “adults should intervene, manipulate the environment, and directly teach social skills to promote friendships and avoid social rejection of children with differences or disabilities.”
She recommends rewarding students who take the initiative to include unpopular children, by privately singling them out for recognition and appreciation. Students who bully or ostracize others should be harshly disciplined. She also urges teachers to forbid the forming of clubs at recess, unless every single child in the class is welcome to join.
“The sole activity of these clubs is often to exclude others,” she said. “A club tends to be used as a tool for shunning and starting fights.”
Catch It Early
The newest studies suggest that if addressed early enough by parents and teachers, social skills training can make a profound difference in the lives of children.
“Just like reading, disabled children can be taught reading skills, socially disabled kids can be taught social skills,” attests noted educational expert and lecturer Dr. Richard Lavoie.
These skills can be broken down into manageable parts that will ultimately transform the child’s social experience, he maintains. Lavoie and other social skills coaches run programs for children that focus on building ”friendship skills” like taking turns, cooperating, joining a group, managing anger and resolving conflicts.
A significant goal in these programs is to teach children how to identify emotions – their own as well as others’ – and how to control these emotions.
Children with learning and/or social deficits often cannot tell the difference between:
- a friendly smile and a forced smile
- an angry glare and an annoyed glance
- a provocative stare and ordinary eye contact
They may also have difficulty discerning the difference between:
- an angry voice and a commanding voice
- a cheerful voice and an ordinary voice
- a teasing or sarcastic voice and a sober, serious voice
“Learning to recognize their own emotions and distinguish between facial and vocal cues helps kids learn emotional self-control,” said Dr. Mark Greenwood, a psychologist at the university of Washington quoted in a recent New York Times article. ”It’s a basic part of social competency that socially awkward children have to learn from scratch.
In a new book It’s So Much Work To Be Your Friend, Dr. Lavoie stresses the importance of beginning this work while children are young enough to accept coaching. Older children feel humiliated by having their social deficits pointed out to them and reject a teacher’s or parent’s efforts to help them.
“Try teaching a 16-year-old not to wolf down his food in public, talk with his mouth full or eat with his fingers. Try teaching him not to stand right up against the person he’s talking to; harp endlessly on a topic no one is interested in; intrude on others’ personal space or laugh uproariously at his own unfunny jokes.
“It’s a losing battle at this stage,” says Lavoie. “Social skills coaching has to start much, much earlier.”
He and other experts underscore the importance of teachers zoning in on the “teachable moments” in the classroom and on the playground, and skillfully intervening to help socially awkward children break the ice with their peers.
True, it does require sacrifice on the part of a teacher who may have to forgo his or her own much-needed break. But a priceless opportunity to turn those lonely recess periods into oases of fun and sharing awaits the caring teacher or rebbe. With their wise intervention, children can be helped to overcome peer neglect and rejection to enjoy healthy interactions and budding friendships.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
