This Rocketship Charter teacher describes what a typical recess is like in the Bay Area School.
For a time, Rocketship was the hottest charter chain in the nation. Richard Whitmire’s wrote a book about it, after have written a biography of Michelle a Rhee.
Would you put your child in a school like this?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Doesn’t sound that much different than my daughter’s public school, except that they only get 15 minutes, minus line-up and transition time. They have recess on a blacktop that has markings for four square and hopscotch, but no basketball hoop, whether milk crate or otherwise. Lunch is also 15 minutes, about 10 of which are spent in the lunch line.
All balls have been banned from recess at my son’s school. The kids tried to make balls out of crumpled paper, and those were confiscated.
I lack words.
Incidentally, I have tried to argue this issue with both my daughter’s principal and the school board/superintendent. The answer from the principal was that it was “contractual”. When pressed for clarification, she said it was “in the teacher’s contract”. You’re kidding me, right? Teachers are actually opposed to more lunch and recess? Well, no, they’re opposed to lengthening the school day. But I wasn’t asking you to lengthen the school day. You seriously can’t find more than 30 minutes for lunch and recess in a six and a half hour school day? Well, no, because … cut to the superintendent … if I’m understanding him correctly, he’s claiming that the State of Illinois mandates so much seat time for academics that that’s all that’s left over for lunch/recess (other than 10 minutes a day for “in-class PE” (whatever that is, which my daughter says they don’t actually get anyway). But somehow affluent Oak Park a stone’s throw away from us manages to find an hour and 15 minutes a day for lunch and recess without extending the school day (in fact, they get out early on Wednesday). Hmmm…. I have the oddest feeling that someone isn’t being entirely honest with me….
Right. Clearly the real reason is so inexcusable and would infuriate you so much that you can’t be allowed to hear it.
“Seat time,” now there’s a metric that “proves” how much “rigor” the kids are being subjected to…
Our society is sick. Adults gone mad.
Who knew we had gulags for children in the U.S.? You could insert this post into Kafka’s “Der Prozess (The Trial)” and no one would notice it was added. And to think, if my former students would jokingly call me a jerk, I would respond, “That’s Mr. Jerk to you buddy.” And somehow they learned. We had fun. Go figure.
I was just getting ready to post that the school sounds like a gulag! This is beyond anything I have heard. I wonder what amount of yard time prisoners get at area prisons? I continue to be thankful for my decades ago childhood. I worry so about my granddaughter.
This is disgusting. Strips kids of every ounce of humanity. I can’t even dignify this with a reasonable response because there is no arguing with idiocy. No words
In the NYC public school I taught in (retired teacher), students often had only 15 minutes or less of recess. All children had to line up in the yard. If anyone on the line was talking or moving around, the entire class was not allowed to play. Sometimes when I came to pick up the class, they told me they had stood in line the whole recess time (2nd grade). The entire class was punished because a few students were not being still or quiet. I argued with the principal about this many times, but nothing changed. Many children were getting hurt during recess time. The school hired a “play coach” which did help a lot. The problem was that children do not know how to play! Most children stay inside at home watching TV and play video games. Also because early childhood has become mostly academic, children do not learn how to take turns and settle arguments on their own.
“The problem was that children do not know how to play! Most children stay inside at home watching TV and play video games. Also because early childhood has become mostly academic, children do not learn how to take turns and settle arguments on their own.”
Sorry, I find this hard to take. When I was a kid, I was outside playing all the time with friends and enemies from all over the area. We broke bones, bloodied lips, and learned how to settle arguments by fist fighting. We have a zero tolerance policy on violence today, which is probably for the best, but we also have a zero tolerance policy on risk, and that policy comes at the cost of freedom, play, exploration, and fun.
Yes, I grew up in a rural area and spent most of my time playing outside…sometimes with my friends or other times with my imagery friends. At school we had at least 30 minutes of recess. We could play on playground equipment, run around, play tag, kickball games, etc.. I lived for recess and gym! It enabled me to get through the school day!
Apparently, given the prohibition on playing with balls during recess, it also comes at the cost of developing hand-eye coordination… But that’s ok, great in fact, because soon our robot slaves will be doing everything for us, right?
In NYC, hand-eye coordination is a perk available only to the children of parents who can afford to purchase for private lessons or organized sports leagues, and to children who are able to wrest precious time on public courts and fields away from the competing hordes of adult sports leagues.
I walk by our local NYC elementary public school often during recess and the kids are out running around and screaming and doing pretty much the same things that kids did in my day. There is sometimes an organized “game” of kickball or whiffle ball.
But if you have 150+ students in a relatively small playground and only a few adults, sometimes rules against balls and other objects is necessary.
The PTA had a lot of conversations about how to deal with recess. There were students who HATED recess because it was a time when they felt alone and ignored and embarrassed and ashamed that no one wanted to play with them. One excellent idea was to have a “quiet” area in a corner — away from the crowded mass of running around children — that had books and board games. It allowed some of the quieter children to find one another.
I also know that when you don’t have balls, there is a lot of imaginary play going on at recess. Especially among the younger students who invent their own games. Not a bad thing at all.
OMG! It is like a scene from Camazotz in Wrinkle in Time! Totally inappropriate and appalling……so where are the parents? Why are they sending their kids here?
Remember the kids on Camazotz had balls! They all bounced them together at the same time just as they were taught. The one little boy who made up his own game with his ball got rushed into the house by his worried mother because that wasn’t allowed!
They also skipped rope exactly like that. The children of Camazotz would have been ideal charter school students! Following the rules. The one child who didn’t play with his ball properly would have been drummed out unless it turned out he could get top scores on state tests, in which case his “infractions” would probably be overlooked.
No custodians? Is that no custodians during the school day or no custodians, period?
I’ll assume that the custodians came after the school day when the kids were gone. When I was teaching we had day and night custodians (they were earning poverty wages) and a full time nurse.
Recess was 30 minutes but we teachers could pad the time at our discretion. On days of inclement weather or when I was feeling a little under the weather or recovering from a cold, we would have indoor recess. If the noise level approached the jet engine decibel level, I would issue warnings which usually worked. Lunch was 30 minutes on paper but it amounted to 20 to 25 minutes for the kids and even less time for me. The lunch room also served as a gymnasium and a stage for plays or edutainers of all sorts. Talking was allowed but when the sound level reached astronomical levels the lunch monitors would have to intervene. When I first started teaching, the teachers would be the lunch monitors on a rotating basis. During your lunch duty time, you would snack on something as you circulated amongst the lunch tables. Talk about agida or acid reflux. Thank goodness the union negotiated for a duty free lunch which meant that the school district had to hire lunch monitors. Also, initially, it was up to the teachers to collect all the lunch money (first item on the agenda in the morning) and record who wanted what and make sure that the money counted came out correctly; thus the district did not have to hire a cashier. With 38 kids it took a huge chunk of precious teaching time to collect the lunch money. Thanks to the union, a lunch cashier was eventually hired.
I’m guessing that the Rocketship honchos are frantically working overtime trying to discover the identity of the Rocketship teacher who is writing this tumblr site from which this post is taken:
https://charterschoolnightmares.tumblr.com/
… and if they find her (I’m also guessing it’s a “her”), they’re going to do a lot worse than just fire her — so as to set an example to the rest of the current and future staff. Her punishment — perhaps a costly civil suit for defamation and for violating the non-disclosure clause in her contract — will be an example so brutal that will dissuade anyone else in Rocketship from airing such dirty laundry themselves.
I mean, really.
Reading this tumblr site is like reading a secret blog from a North Korea concentration camp, as in both North Korea and Rocketship, the identify of any dissident who is disseminating negative, unflattering information must be found out forthwith, and then crushed, both mercilessly and publicly.
Again, you should regularly check and even bookmark this link:
https://charterschoolnightmares.tumblr.com/
“For a time, Rocketship was the hottest charter chain in the nation. Richard Whitmire’s wrote a book about it, after have written a biography of Michelle a Rhee.”
Summit is now the hottest charter chain in the nation, although Success Academy is also a contender- lauding Success Academy is a kind of constant in the “movement” though so Success Academy stays on the “most promoted” list.
Summit is the new Rocketship. Summit supposedly has “partner” public schools, but one never hears a word from the “public school partners”- the only person allowed to speak on Summit Learning Systems is the CEO of Summit. She protects “the brand”.
When we built a new school we put some time and effort and money into planning the play areas. Our public schools were allowing less and less time for recess under the grim ed reform regime and we wanted to consciously reverse that trend.
It worked. Because we built a dedicated, nice play area our kids actually play again at recess. I think you have to make it a priority. Our parents wanted kids to play for a half hour in the middle of the day so we put some effort into making sure they do.
In addition to the veniality in the arrangements described by this teacher, there is a real distinction between recess and physical education.
There are of course “national standards” for physical education. These reflect a concern for healthy living, with diet and exercise part of that. Rampant obesity has contributed to more exercises planned to address that issue. http://www.apens.org/national_standard.html
And there are also national guidelines for recess. https://www.shapeamerica.org/standards/guidelines/strategies_for_recess_in_schools.aspx
Cutbacks in physical activity during the school day and on school property are driven by the mandates to raise test scores in academic subjects and the false belief that more time on test-relevant tasks will ensure better scores.
There are also costs to school districts for accommodations in facilities and activities for special education students. Professionals in physical education know how to make some of these accommodations at low or no cost, but if the school is not making these hires, then obstacles may provide an excuse to cut physical activity, period.
Then there is the liability issue. This feeds into the cuts in time, the imposition of extreme discipline by teachers who are fearful of physical activity, extremely limited options for activities and so on. Excessive discipline during “playtime” can also be driven by fearfulness of kids getting hurt by the unsupervised use of “unsafe” equipment or by asocial and aggressive students.
Apart from all of that, as others have observed, many of our students are so caught up in screen-based sedentary amusements out of schools that they do not learn how to play with others, face to face.
A brief search on Google suggests that the “banning” of some activities in schools, including dodgeball, ramped up in the first decade of this century and arose (in part) from lawsuits. The banning was not limited to the United States.
LOL
I highly recommend that you visit a traditional public elementary school in New York City in 2018, especially during a cold month, and witness firsthand what passes for “recess.”
Not a school like PS 321 or PS 29, mind you, where the huge parent donations (not to mention volunteer labor) allow the principals to shift budgets to hire extra aides and to provide activities and equipment. Pick a school in District 16 or District 5 and let us know what you see.
Are you saying that we should raise taxes on the rich to provide more money so that schools in District 16 and District 5 could afford the same recess aides that should be basic in EVERY public school that has to subsidize the charter schools that take a disproportionate per pupil share of resources?
It’s pretty sad that the only reason some schools have this is parent labor and subsidizing. Meanwhile billionaires subsidize charters wasting their money on PR and marketing and fighting higher taxes that would help ALL students have a proper recess.
I tell students and parents up front that homework assessments are more sparse and less time consuming in my classes than in others, and that they are meant to be for practice with knowledge gained in class rather than for independent learning. Parents mostly nod their heads in agreement and students mostly clap their hands and cheer aloud. Many of my students and their parents have (to my great delight) recently asked me if I knew about education in Finland, and how there’s very little homework assigned there.
Apparently, some videos about homework in Finland have gone viral among the youngest victims of test obsession. Can’t wait until they find out about recess in Finland!
Homework assignments, not homework assessments.
I saw the Michael Moore video in which he visited a Finnish school. The one teacher said that there was no homework, tons of recess and the school day was hours shorter than ours. No crazed standardized testing.
Finland hasn’t joined the race to the bottom. Neither have any other of the countries in Moore’s compelling documentary, Where to Invade Next (although one country kinda forced austerity measures on some other countries a few years ago, but that’s water under the bridge). How did the U.S. wind up trying to raise its flatlining (because of tech) GDP by cutting recess? Pretty dumb.
Good grief … sure seems a whole lot WORSE than BEING in a FEDERAL PENITENTIARY. Maybe that is it: Schools AS Prisons … esp. for those not in the top .01%. After all, they need slaves to do their work. Think about this for a moment
A friend of mine just returned from a year abroad, which she spent living in Spain with her family, including her 10 year old son. I was very excited to hear stories about their year away, and I found the stories about their chil’s school experience to be particularly interesting. The kids have a 30 minute recess in the morning, and an hour and a half in the afternoon to eat and play. There are few recess monitors, and kids are responsible for organizing and running their own activities. If kids argue, they have to work it out on their own- adults leave it to them to work things out. As my friend reflected on her son’s experience, she felt the recess time provided some of the greatest learning opportunities for her child.
OMG if you read down the blog there is a photo of the “Physical Space Non-Negotiables” for the charter.
And it says:
“Eraser dust/pencil shavings should not be present, ever”.
Apparently, eraser dust is now an evil that represents imperfect children who should know how to get the correct answer the first time. And if their pencils aren’t sharp enough, they should have extra pencils handy so that no pencil shavings ever deface the school.