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The Recess Regimen: District Schools Seek to Bring Order to Play

Your interpretation of this
depends on how you view children's play. At
least these schools still have recess.

By Bill Turque


Brearn Wright Jr. remembers recess during his
first year as principal of Clark Elementary
School in Petworth as "like a MASH unit."

"Recess time was the time the school nurse
dreaded, because she knew she'd have so many
kids waiting in the lobby" to be treated for
injuries from fighting or falling, Wright said.

Traditionally the one period of the school day
when children are free of adult-imposed
structure, recess is increasingly regarded by
educators as a trouble spot. They say that in
the Xbox- and Internet-dominated world of many
students, the culture of healthy group play has
eroded, turning recess into a chaotic and
sometimes violent period where strife from the
schoolyard can spill over into afternoon
classes.

So last year Wright decided to outsource
recess. He hired Sports4Kids, an Oakland,
Calif.-based nonprofit organization that
introduces students to a regimen of traditional
playground games, along with a more closely
supervised version of such team sports as
basketball. The program also stresses conflict
resolution, with disagreements mediated by, of
all things, rock-paper-scissors.

In the past two years, principals at 14
elementary and middle schools in the District
have signed up with the group, joining more
than 160 schools in cities that include
Baltimore, Boston and St. Louis. The group's
reach will soon be expanding dramatically.
Tomorrow, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is
scheduled to announce a five-year, $18.7
million grant that will bring Sports4Kids to as
many as 650 schools in 27 cities, targeting
about 1 million children from low-income
families.

Educators and health experts say recess is an
important -- and underutilized -- opportunity
to promote physical fitness and social
development. A 2007 Johnson Foundation study
found that, for children in first through sixth
grades, recess represents more than 40 percent
of the available time in a given school week
for physical activity, more than PE classes or
after-school programs.

"Recess is one of the best opportunities not
only to help kids become more active, but to
teach the life skills that will help them live
healthier lives," said Robert Wood Johnson
president Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.

It also means that this is not the free-for-all
that recess used to be. At the Brookland at
Bunker Hill Education Campus in Northeast
Washington one afternoon last week, the first
of two recess periods began with 100 or so
fifth- to seventh-graders forming a half-dozen
straight lines in front of Brad Riley, the
young "site manager" who led them in jumping
jacks.

When they dispersed, it was to designated
areas, marked by Riley with small orange pylons
or chalk lines on the asphalt. There was
"snowball alley" (a dialed-back version of
dodge ball), jump rope, three-on-three
basketball and foursquare. Disputes are
resolved by rock-paper-scissors.

"Booyah!" Riley chanted, using an "attention
getter" that the kids repeat as he organizes a
game.

Sports4Kids is the creation of Jill Vialet, a
former Harvard University basketball player who
began the venture 12 years ago at two Berkeley,
Calif., schools. She was operating a children's
museum in Oakland when she encountered four
children sitting outside a school principal's
office, ejected for fighting at recess. As she
started to observe schoolyards, it struck her
that games fell apart quickly and that slights
easily escalated into serious conflicts.

"Knowing how to play in a healthy way is not an
innate skill. It's learned," she said.

Schools pay about $25,000 a year for Vialet's
program; she raises the rest, about $45,000 per
school, from private donors. For their money,
schools get someone such as Riley, who walks
students through the forgotten nuances of
double Dutch and kickball. Teachers also
receive training, so they can assist the site
managers.

Riley, who runs both of the school's recess
periods (the other is for first through fifth
grades), leads snowball alley with a light but
steady hand.

"Let me see everybody in rolling position," he
says to a row of kids poised to roll their
large rubber balls across the grass to another
line of students. Those running between the
lines have to maneuver around the balls.

Riley warns against throwing the balls, but one
boy lofts his into the air, hitting a girl
running the gantlet squarely, although not
seriously, in the neck.

Riley quietly takes the snowball alley scofflaw
aside. "You know you're not supposed to do
that," he said, before letting him back into
the game.

On the other side of the schoolyard, Vialet,
visiting for the day, is observing three-on-
three basketball. "Watch the hand checks!" she
says.

At least half of the students at Brookland at
Bunker Hill and the 13 other D.C. schools that
have hired Sport4Kids are from low-income
families. Vialet said that's where her donors
are interested in spending money. Educators say
that although Sports4Kids would work anywhere,
kids from neighborhoods with a dearth of
organized sports programs and crime that keeps
many of them indoors face special deficits in
learning how to play.

"A lot of our students don't have models for
what meaningful play looks like," said Stephen
Zrike Jr., principal of William Ohrenberger
Elementary in the West Roxbury section of
Boston, where a study by the Harvard Graduate
School of Education reported a reduction in
fights and disciplinary problems after the
introduction of Sports4Kids.

What the kids themselves think is difficult to
know for sure, because interviews for this
report were conducted in the company of an
assistant principal at Brookland at Bunker
Hill. Fifth-grader Bryant Jones, 10, said that
before Sports4Kids, recess was "a little
boring," Jaden Wilson, also 10, said he liked
the organization.

"I like the lines for the games," he said, "so
that people don't say, 'Hey, you pushed me.' "

As for Wright, after Clark Elementary closed in
June, he took Sports4Kids with him to his new
assignment at Truesdell Educational Center, a
school for grades pre-K through 8 in Petworth.

"Our school system has failed historically to
teach our kids how to resolve conflicts,"
Wright said. "In the neighborhood, the one way
to resolve conflict is to put your hands or a
weapon on someone." Sports4Kids won't solve all
of that, he said, but it's a start.

"So they can move beyond rock-paper-scissors."





— Bill Turque
Washington Post
2008-09-17


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