Dr. Michael Hynes, the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford schools on Long Island in New York, wrote a letter to the New York Board of Regents asking them to mandate 40 minutes a day for recess.
In Finland, the highest performing nation in Europe, students have a recess after every class. Educators believe children need to run around and play and move for 10-15 minutes between classes, mostly out of doors. Finland has no standardized tests for students in elementary schools or in the middle grades. Finnish schools value creativity and physical activity. They must be doing something right. It is working.
And our educators must plead for only 40 minutes a day of physical activity!
Here is his video about the importance of recess.
And here is his letter to the State Superintendent and the Board of Regents:
Dear Commissioner Elia and members of the New York State Board of Regents:
On behalf of “whole child” educators and parents across the state of New York, I write to you to strongly consider and discuss a mandate that will benefit ALL children: a declaration that requires all Kindergarten-5th grade students to physically, emotionally, academically and socially benefit from 40 minutes of self-directed recess every day they are in our care at school.
I can certainly cite the multiple benefits about recess but I think this statement from the CDC best sums up why this is a worthy proposition:
Recess is at the heart of a vigorous debate over the role of schools in promoting the optimal development of the whole child. A growing trend toward reallocating time in school to accentuate the more academic subjects has put this important facet of a child’s school day at risk. Recess serves as a necessary break from the rigors of concentrated, academic challenges in the classroom. But equally important is the fact that safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits that may not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it. Recess is unique from, and a complement to, physical education—not a substitute for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.
Moreover, I have seen firsthand in my school district what regularly scheduled periods within the school day for unstructured physical activity and play has done for our elementary age students, staff and parents. I have never seen so many happy and well-adjusted children in my twenty years as an educator. I respectfully request that NYSED consider this discussion item and would be honored to speak about the rationale and benefits in person if requested to do so.
If the New York State Education Department truly wants to become a leader and advocate for what ALL children need and deserve, I believe this is an essential first step. I thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and look forward to your response.
Very truly yours,
Michael J. Hynes, Ed.D.
Patchogue-Medford Superintendent of Schools
Why 40? why not a full hour?
Oh please, this is America. Don’t be pie-in-the-sky. Tinker around the edges. Never dare to dream big. You’ll take the crumbs you get and you’ll like ’em!
I would be surprised if Elia and the Board of Regents mandate even that 40 minutes.
After all, those minutes of recess take time away from testing and preparing for the tests. Can’t have that! 😦
I’m European. I’m not pie-in-the-sky. It’s humanistic to want an hour for play.
I would like to advocate for indoor play, as well. It’s well documented and researched that young children learn BEST from playful experiences that are facilitated by adults. So many kindergartens are now experiencing “No play” kindergarten, due to a misuse or misunderstanding of the Standards. Please – this is such an important issue. It needs serious analysis. So many five year olds aren’t ready to sit still passively, listen, and learn. We are dooming them to a sense of academic failure if we remove play as a primary tool of learning from school.
Beth Forrester
Retired first grade teacher
Early Childhood Professor
Grandparent of young children.
Yep….I’ve got 2 of them. They were all day Kindergarten and NO play (20 min recess 1Xper day). Admin tried telling parents that getting up every 15-20 minutes to change learning stations was all the exercise they needed. NOPE! All it has created is discipline problems in elementary school but boy is it a nightmare in middle school with these kids. Sorry to say that my MS son has become somewhat of a problem in MS….especially last year when they only gave him PE for half of the school year (it was interesting that the 1/2 yr that he DID have PE, he had no discipline problems at all). I am really surprised that the AAP hasn’t taken a stronger stance on this…especially as these kids are being labeled ADD or ADHD and it’s the pediatricians who are being tasked with writing Rx’s for the medication.
Bill and I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Michael J. Hynes! Thank you Diane Ravitch for posting this. We will be writing to our Board of Regents and political representatives today! We also would appreciate “purposeful play” being put back into our elementary schools! Let kids be kids! This is not the Dark Ages!
Young students need gross motor movement, especially boys. The time spent giving them “free play” is time well spent. When students return after play, they are more productive and focused than if we try to force them to pay attention where students reach a point of diminishing return on learning. Any teacher of young students knows this.
Please watch and see it in action:
Be expecting another book soon, Michael.
I hope you enjoyed and learned from the last one!
Yeah, thanks. Diane’s link started the video only at 3 minutes.
Please see it in action with this video…my apologies for first one:
Thank you, Dr. Hynes. You are spot on!
They are losing more and more children because of the testing and test prep taking so much more of the school day, and it has migrated down even to kindergarten. Kindergarten!
Kids need to be able to get up, preferably go outside, and exercise and play.
And we wonder why so many kids are diagnosed as ADHD and the schools press the parents to put these kids on drugs.
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly kids with ADHD (my son is one of them) but many of the kids so diagnosed are not truly ADHD, they just need to get up, play, and move around frequently. Not sit on their rear ends for six hours a day.
Dr. Hynes is a hero for children. The research supporting free play, the benefit of gross motor activity and recess is undeniable. It is how young children build the foundation for learning! Teaching children otherwise is educational malpractice.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104013/chapters/Movement-and-Learning.aspx
NO, he’s not a hero. Is he a little bold, yes, hero no!
Thank you. Being a hero requires risk and, possibly, sacrifice. The word is far too overused. In fact, the few actual heroes I know vehemently refuse the title.
I mean no disrespect to Michael. You have expressed what I mean. Gracias!
The really tragic part of this report is that it is NEWS. But better to have some sense about education than more of the nonstop daily grind that has been the hallmark of all those reformers who pretent to be “passionate” about raising scores on test after test after test.
This needs to include no recess detention for forgetting to get a test with a perfect score signed within 12 hours. It’s OK for. teachers not to score a test for 2 weeks, but a student who doesn’t get a quiz signed in 12 hours is penalize with a 0 and lunch detention.
There should never be recess detention. If the problem is behavioral, recess will help that. If the problem is academic, punishing a kid by taking away recess is just cruel. And if the problem is parental, it’s even more cruel to hold the kid responsible for that. There are far better ways of dealing with problems (most of which don’t involve punishment at all).
Totally agree, dienne.
Yeah, give kids extra recess but without extending the school day. Make classes 45 minutes long instead of 50, and add the extra 6 times 5 min to recess and let the kids go 5 min early with the 7th extra 5 min.
Some people want to make classes longer
As districts across the country implement Common Core, educators – such as these in Elverson, Pennsylvania, Calistoga, California, and Wilmington, Delaware – are calling for a restructuring of the school day so that students spend more time in each class. Instead of the typical class period of about 45 minutes, schools are lengthening classes to upwards of 90 minutes to cover all the material and allow teachers to change the way they teach to meet the new requirements.
http://hechingerreport.org/american-class-periods-short-common-core/
We need more educators like Superintendent Michael Hynes who can speak up for students in kindergarten.
Overall, people at all ages need certain suitable physical exercises, but specifically at kindergarten age, children need to express their emotion though different activities in order to sharpen their motor skills as well as to develop their logical mindset.
If educators cannot sustain their tenure rights and cannot reserve their proper teaching rights, then how educators can speak up for their students or can cultivate civilization and humanity to all learners.
Peace or war depends on where and when civilization and humanity are cultivated in young learners – at home or at school or both. Back2basic
Strongly agree w/Dienne @7:13 AM about recess detention. This further restriction of movement (& don’t we all need breaks? What is that about “sitting is the new smoking” insofar as health problems?) does & would cause even more behavior problems in the classroom. I’d seen it as an active teacher many a time (as a resource teacher).
There’s much to be said for “letting it all hang out!” (Not just a ’60s catchphrase!)