Recess. You gotta love it. For teachers not on yard duty, it means that we get to go to the bathroom; an auspicious accomplishment only we teachers can appreciate. If we’re really lucky, we might have time to run (literally) to the staff room, or make copies of the one important thing we forgot to photocopy, or possibly check phone messages. The experienced teacher tries to do a combination of the above, with limited success.
Those fortunate teachers who are not on duty get to gloat while the rest of us head out for the recess yard. In the warm weather, we relish those fleeting moments to soak in some Vitamin D. In the howling winds of winter, however, each second is poison. Fifteen minutes seems like a lifetime. Our watches don’t work fast enough. On those days outside, all bundled up, we stare at the school windows thinking of our lucky colleagues indoors sipping coffee (we forget that all they're really trying to do is to get to the bathroom or the photocopy machine) or else we simply dream of hot chocolate to pass the time. But, enough about me. What is recess about to a child? I’ll bet you think it’s a simple question with a simple answer, but it’s not.
Let’s be honest. For a child, recess is a break from the teacher’s droning. Even in the classroom where the teacher doesn’t drone, recess is a break from the teacher’s droning. The children have been cooped up in a classroom for hours, and they need a change of scenery. Recess provides that opportunity. Recess allows the child to roam around freely, get a drink and go to the washroom. And, oh yes, recess affords the child a chance to play.
One might think that play would have been at the top of my list. Well, it used to be, but I’ve noticed that increasingly, children are losing what I always thought was their instinctive ability to know how to play. It’s not as natural as it used to be, and that saddens and worries me.
Oh, sure, I hear ‘Wanna play?’ chanted repeatedly in the playground. I see groups of children playing tag or going off and shooting baskets or playing ‘four square’ or hopscotch. To the outsider, the untrained eye, everything appears normal, but the truth is that children are actually being taught how to play during school time (often in gym class). Without instruction, some children would feel lost in a playground. While it's wonderful that we can give children the tools to play, I wonder what has happened to cause children to need instruction altogether. I wonder if children are begininning to lose their ability to independently grab a friend and come up with a game to play.
And while I'm ranting, I'll mention another thing that strikes me as odd (and I admit to being old now as I write). Why is it that when a few children huddle over a screen of a ‘system’ game, they consider that as playing ‘together’? How are they playing together when they never look at each other? As I watch all of this unfold on the playground, I worry. If play doesn’t come naturally to children now, what will happen when they get older?
I don’t know what I would do if I weren’t able to play.
One of the reasons I became a teacher was so that I could ‘play’ with my students. ‘Play’ doesn’t necessarily mean getting down on the floor and building masterpieces out of Lego, although that’s perfectly fine and even desirable in my books. Playing means allowing the child in a person to emerge from time to time, in a positive, healthy way.
Every once in a while, when a child is skipping rope or playing with a ‘Skip-it’ (or whatever they call it these days) on the playground, I’ll ask if I can join in. I guess because I’m older, they always oblige. The kids don’t know what to make of it. I think they wonder how someone so old could possibly skip. I think that they think my request makes me a freak of nature. What they don’t realize that grownups need to play (indeed, maybe not Skip-it, although one shouldn't knock it--it's lots of fun). In fact, I believe that we need play desperately in our lives. The problem arises when we put off playing for a long period of time in order to perform our daily duties. We get so mired in our errands (often necessarily), that we forget how much we need to play. Sometimes, we even forget how.
As I deal with my obligations in life, I try to turn the mundane into play. As Mary Poppins so eloquently points out, "In every job that must be done, There is an element of fun, You find the job and snap! The job's a game". So here's some news: I'm not Mary Poppins, and I don't love doing all my chores. However, I often consider cooking as play. If I have all the ingredients and have time on my side, cooking is a combination of being at the play kitchen and the playdough centre. It’s creative and fun, and you get to eat at the end. And with any luck, someone else considers cleaning up as play. Now, that’s striking gold!
Sometimes, I will 'embarrass' my children in public by doing such criminal acts as singing a song out loud in the car with the windows down (with the children cringing inside), spontaneously dancing to the beat of a street player or volunteering for a busker show, to name just a few (I'm sure they could cite long lists of horrors the likes of the above mentioned). After being their mother for so many years, my children are almost used to my behaviour. They know that their mother is a bit 'off the wall'. What they haven't twigged into yet is that all I'm doing is playing.
It's easy to understand how play can quickly become a chore for children. When the recess bell rings and they run outside to an empty yard, children have to quickly assess who is around, ask someone to play and organize an activity. That takes work and skill. But they need it to survive. They need to laugh. It's good for their health. It's good for their soul.
Play needs to be fostered and encouraged. It needs to be practised, like addition or subtraction drills, until it becomes second nature. We need play. It's therapeutic. It breaks up the monotony in the day. At least for me, my sanity depends upon it.
I think the recess bell is about to ring. So go ahead! Go grab your friend and say, "Wanna play?"
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