by Dick Hall-Sizemore
In an op-ed piece in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, a graduate student at the William and Mary School of Education advocates a change in the school schedule that I have long favored: more recess! Not physical education class, but pure, unstructured play time.
Legislation enacted in 2018 requires a minimum of 680 hours of instructional time per year in elementary school. The legislation allows, but does not require, that up to 15% of that mandated instructional time can be “unstructured recreational time.”
Shaughn Dugan, the graduate student, makes the case for more recess time better than I could. State standards require that each school day consist of 5.5 hours of instructional time. It works out that the recent legislation would allow for a maximum of 50 minutes of recess to be included in that 5.5 hours. Dugan points out that Richmond schools allow for only 30 minutes.
Back in the dark ages when I was in elementary school, we had two recess periods — a short one in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. I cannot say for sure, but it seems that those two recess periods totaled at least 50 minutes. (In the afternoon recess, the older boys who had brought their bats, gloves, and balls to school would usually have a pick-up game of baseball.)
It is hard for young children to sit still and be attentive for long periods of time. That is probably even more the case after being cooped up for two years due to the pandemic. Allowing them more time to run around outside and release some of that energy will pay dividends in their school work and overall behavior.
