When American teacher Tim Walker got a job as a teacher in Finland, he learned a lot about its successful schools. For one thing, students get a recess every hour for 15 minutes. They spend 45 minutes in class, then run out to the playground for a 15-minute break.
At first, he bought this was unnecessary so he gave two consecutive classes. He had some very grumpy students who did not understand why they lost their customary recess. Now he realizes that the frequent breaks make his students better focused.
Meanwhile, American policymakers want longer school days, and they don’t mind eliminating recess altogether. Curious contrast.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not just recess. I’ve watched time between classes (high school level) go from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. In some schools the students do not get lunch during the day but are dismissed for “lunch” at the end of the next to last period. Imagine students attending 7 classes every day with only a 3 minute break between classes and having to navigate crowded hallways to reach the next class. Wonder why some have a hard time concentrating on schoolwork?
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“Imagine students attending 7 classes every day with only a 3 minute break between classes and having to navigate crowded hallways to reach the next class.”
And then sit for the next 50 minutes on hard plastic, wood and metal chairs. How many adult workers would tolerate that???
And, yes, our high school is dropping the passing period from 5 to 4 minutes next year.
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We dropped our passing period from 5 to 4 minutes in our high school.
The result: more tardies, stressed out students who shoulder weighted book bags throughout the school day. Oh, but they do get a 22-minute lunch, for which we’re all supposed to be grateful for
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Yes, and ours also get 22 minutes which includes the coming and going.
I gave the administration a schedule that would have accomplished what they wanted within the time frames and allowing for 5 minute passing and 25 minute lunch with a passing period outside the 25 minutes but it never left the principals desk as far as I know. (It would have required a longer lunch time frame split up over two periods and would have taken something like an hour longer-too expensive to pay the lunch folks I guess.)
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I figured out a schedule that allowed for all classes in each grade level to have close time slits for specials and back to back lunches with recess at appropriate times. I spent many hours doing it and gave it to the principal. She used it for the time she was there, but then Atilla from the North came. She wouldn’t even look at it, because she didn’t think of it. I had done it for common planning time, etc. She really didn’t want us to be able to collaborate too much. It even provided 90 minute language arts periods for everyone. And it gave 1st and 2nd graders their language arts times in the morning.
It is amazing what a lousy administrator can do to upend everything that was working in the name of making it “her school”. We finally got rid of her by reporting her abuses. It took 10 years to get enough teachers to be brave enough. No one wanted to face the consequences if she didn’t get fired. But she is GONE now!!!
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And in the United States white children in more affluent areas are more likely to have recess than poor and minority children. Just one more way that we ingrain inequality in our system. Children need recess. I expand on why here:
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2014/04/who-gets-recess-congress-but-not.html
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As usual, spot on, Russ!
A disturbingly sad fact at that!
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In the US, there is this strange assumption that forced “time on task” equals better learning and more productivity. And, we all know rhat teachers must be accountable for every second of their day. Students must be spending their allotted time reading, etc and not doing frivolous things like building projects or doing experiments. There is no time to relax. Work, work, work, and then we die.
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Alfie Kohn would call this “BGUTI” – better get used to it. Spending every minute of every day mindlessly focusing on “productive” tasks is what they will be expected to do as adults, so the sooner we program them as children, the better.
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That should bode well for stress related deaths. That will take care if the need for health care, medicare, and social security. Work us to death. Or if we don’t die, we will wish we had.
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I always “marvel” at the stupidity of policy makers. As adults, how many of us LOVE to go to a professional development and “learn” on end without any breaks? How many of us cannot wait for a stretching break or for a brief non related chat with friends at the PD? When returning are we not a lot more refreshed (assuming the PD is a good one when commenting here)? It is quite against logic to think we can take away recess and cram more “learning” in by making students give up exercise and breaks. Stupidity really! It would be like strength training at a gym and being told to lift weights on end with each daily visit with the not on that more is better. Rest is a part of muscle growth. No rest but non stop work out will be damaging. I guess our policy makers are able to reflect and to do higher order thinking. Either that or there is more “profit to be made” with THEIR APPROACH (and to heck with students and learning).
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Profits for the “stakeholders” .. Nothing is more important.
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Deb, I absolutely despise that word “stakeholders”. It seems to me it came about several years back in eduspeak about the time things began going South. The only stakeholder I want to be is the one who drives the stake through the hearts of the undead deformers.
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I was being snarky.
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I knew that, so was I;^) I snarked your snark! I suppose that makes it exponentially snarky – even better.
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Ha!
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Where is the evidence that policy makers are doing higher order thinking?
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I was being tongue and cheek! Couldn’t agree with you more NJ teacher!
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@ NJ… and obviously not very clearly a good job at communication “tongue and cheek” at that! Also meant to type “notion” not “no on”
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“. . . assuming the PD is a good one. . . ”
That’s a mighty big assumption!
I always thought being professionally developed was to reinforce the ability to tolerate absolute bullshit.
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Reblogged this on peakmemory and commented:
In Finland “students get a recess every hour for 15 minutes. They spend 45 minutes in class, then run out to the playground for a 15-minute break.”
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A good article worth reading:
“Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today” by Valerie Strauss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/08/why-so-many-kids-cant-sit-still-in-school-today/?tid=pm_local_pop
And another Maria Montessori Quote:
“The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.”
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Teaching in a high school, I can tell you that students need some down time in order to start fresh and concentrate thoroughly in each subject area. After 3 minutes of passing time in the hallways students have zero prep time to get their thoughts and self together in order to prepare mentally for the next class and assignments which will be asked of them. The children with IEP’s have the most trouble due to the fact that many of them need extra time or extra down time in order to maintain learning to their potential. We as teachers need time as well as adults so I can imagine how much time children need.
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Interesting that Finland is not even on the radar in the reform debate (at least not coming from the “find/fire bad teachers and close bad schools side). It would be helpful to confront reformers with their continual denial/avoidance of models that are developmentally more appropriate and show consistently better results. It would be a good way to shine a spotlight on what results and priorities are truly involved when bad proven bad policy and unproven practice is sworn to, stuck to and forced upon us by the same people unwilling to really listen to and promote the input of practitioners.
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In a country as vast as the US with so many ideas as to the definition of freedom and the interpretation of the first amendment, not to mention varieties of religious correctness, we are unable to come to any “meeting of the minds”. It seems that all we do is argue -locally, statewide, nationwide. Yet somehow we are pretending to come together to form a specific common core and test students on one viewpoint as to what answers are correct. This is a joke.
We argue as to whether the CCSS is appropriate. Maybe for some, a few, in some localities. But for all, no.
We need an agreed upon list of things like the citizenship test and other agreed upon pieces of info to succeed in life, but it can’t be a prescribed dose at a particular age or grade level.
So, I think we need a CC list of recommendations. Maybe all districts should be expected to use 75% of those or create their version of each. But they should not bevyied to one (or two ) tests.
The conversation needs to focus on what kids need, not what a bunch of business think they need.
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When I taught fifth grade, I was the teacher who was always out first for recess, and last in from recess. We took breaks between subject matter (I had my students all day). My students EOY test scores were always strong. They’re kids, for crying out loud!
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Frequent recess is not only the common-sense, humane thing to do, it’s also been proven to boost academic achievement.
But wait, what’s the this from the Atlantic piece? “Usually, teachers in Finland take turns—two at a time—supervising the playground during these 15-minute stints.”
There goes that idea, at least in NYC DOE schools. Work rules.
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This is a great post! We should be doing what works best for our kids. Thanks for sharing!
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Here is an article written by a pediatric occupational therapist who has observed the rise in testing children for ADHD along with the decline in recess.
http://washintonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/08/why-can't-children-sit-still-in-school-today/
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I made an error and didn’t catch it; here’s that link again
http://washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/08/why-so-many-kids-can't-sit-still-in-school-today/
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Well, now they say that the page is unavailable…I can still pull it up from the link I gave a few days ago in the post about What Are We Doing To Our Children if you want to read it.
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I hardly ever used recess as a reward. I told kids every day to get out there and run and play and yell to the point of happiness and to it out there.
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Frequently I will give my students “homework” over the weekend to run and jump and play in the sun. They are in high school in the inner city, so many of them won’t do it without being told. They prefer that to an academic assignment!
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I have worked in corporations where break time is sacred. I have seen the long boring meetings with coffee and food etc. I seriously doubt if the billionaire reformers go without a break for hours at a time. It flies in the face of healthy living. Isn’t it google that has pods where they can actually take naps, and pools to swim in and bikes to ride and free lunch. What the heck are we doing to our kjds? If in such a school teach for 40 minutes and have a 10 minute exercise program or game time. Give them a break or they will break.
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If school is preparation for work, then how can we expect the economy and job outlook to improve? You are exactly right, Julie.
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What works in Finland will not necessarily work here. Finland is unique in many ways, but the most overarching paradigm to their culture is that it is extremely genetically homogenous. In a very culturally diverse environment, I think we often see a situation where some are inclined to reduce public provisions to the lowest common denominator; the test or the task. In a monoculture, rules can be very finely tuned and broadly expanded to suit as necessary.
To anyone interested in the burgeoning science on how shared genetic backgrounds contribute to culture and how one culture’s apparatuses may be ill-suited to another’s, please check out A Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade.
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Brad,
Are you saying that Finland can have recess, but we can’t? I grew up in Texas, and we had frequent recesses.
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Diane, who supervised your recesses? Your classroom teacher?
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In the 1990s we had parents who supervised recess and lunchroom. Eventually teachers had to take turns doing both. Then a lunch attendant was hired to watch 8 classes at a time. State laws required teachers to supervise recess and our principal banned parent assistants/volunteers. She tried to can parties but the PTO stopped her. She found other ways to step on them.
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Diane, of course I am not saying that we cannot have recess. What I am saying, is that for some schools in America there can be other concerns that are more primary and frequent recesses could become very disorderly and lead to a very disjointed day with little continuity of thought due to the overwhelming drama and even emotional and physical altercations in frequent short recesses for an overly aggressive and combative student population.
As others have noted up thread, for some schools where the population might resemble something more like Finland than the world featherweight public tryouts, frequent recesses are already the case.
If you go to Nigeria and their government run schools, you will see the intense focus on rote and discipline. I doubt this is due to any bias, but more of an acknowledgment of what works.
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Also, please Diane, describe what you remember as the greater than 90% share of the shared genetic heritage of the school you attended.
Consult a yearbook if you don’t remember or are wont to don PC brand glasses when referencing your own situations.
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland
Any American school with the same demographics would do just as well, minus about a 5% surcharge for baloney bureaucracy and ill-applied ‘gap’ concessions.
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If only they could adopt the Finnish model
http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=Q3cHSRiLKng
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Shorter Brad: “Finns are Finno-ugaritic and able to engage in wholesome recreation, while Nigerians are like machines who must be drilled till they drop.”
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Hi Brad:
I appreciate your logical excuse of culture. However, Public Education is for children regardless of their background of culture, pure race, mixed race, parental academe, and economic class. Recess is just a short break from any long immobile sitting for human beings regardless of age.
According to a recent research, many forms of sickness are caused from immobility. Therefore, please do not use an excuse of culture in order to ignore the critical issue of promoting frequent recess in learning environment.
Please do not compare learning environment in different ideological country, between Nigeria (dictatorship-poor) and United States of America (democracy-rich). Have you ever experienced or seen or coached students in any sport club, or on the field trip? If you do, can you notice the difference in their joy of learning and their exhaustion in listening to lectures or doing tests without a break?
I cannot imagine that you prefer to work without vacation or a lunch break? Don’t you ask yourself a question why do human beings need to move around regardless of age? Yes, without movement, our body’s joints are stiffened, and our mind is dull. Back2basic.
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They are always asking us to differentiate and to tailor our plans to every single individual, but in this case you seem to be saying one size fits all, I don’t get it.
I’m sorry but I could not find a rich democracy in Africa. I guess they were not given enough recess in schools. Maybe their new colonial masters, the Chinese, will provide them more recess.
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According the article, Brad:
“In East Asia—where most primary schools give their students a 10-minute break after 40 minutes or so of classroom instruction—Pellegrini observed the same phenomenon that I had witnessed at my Finnish school. After these shorter recesses, students appeared to be more attentive in the classroom.”
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Translation: no recess for the poors — they don’t deserve it like we do.
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I’m ging to start doing a version of this with my fourth graders. More music, more movement, more art, more books to enjoy. I want them to love learning.
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I am pleased to report in my school one can often observe our students taking a break from the academics for a physical activity break. This is usually done within the confinements of the classrooms- even at a student’s desk- and last for approximately 5-7 minutes. It could be something as simple as the students doing ten jumping jacks or jogging in place or can be more involved routine of calisthenics. It does not have to be an elaborate drawn out activity- just something quick to give the kids a break and to get them up and moving. It helps the children focus and serves as a means to increase their physical activity.
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You had me at “Finland.”
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Just think, if we applied our “big data” bean counters and count the minutes used for recess in Finland just think how many months, yea, years, of schooling they must miss, during which they could be drilled into unquestioning obedience and their minds and spirits killed. That’s the American ed “reform” way.
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