Should Teachers Ever Take Away Recess?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses when taking away recess is inappropriate, and when an occasional logical consequence may still make sense.
Key Takeaways
- Protect Recess - Recess should not be taken away regularly for academic catch-up or as an everyday punishment.
- Use Logical Consequences - Missing recess can make sense occasionally when it's directly related to student behavior, such as a fight at recess.
- Avoid Academic Punishment - Keeping students in from recess to catch up on work reflects an outdated approach that should go away.
- Consider the Tradeoff - Sometimes handling an issue during recess is more practical than pulling students and teachers from class time.
- Don't Remove What Kids Need Most - Taking away recess for fidgeting, talkativeness, or excess energy is counterproductive because recess helps address those needs.
Full Transcript
Should teachers ever take away recess? The American Academy of Pediatrics has updated their guidance from 2013, reaffirming that students should not lose their recess for academic or punitive reasons. And I think they make a good point here, that, like, kids need recess every day, probably multiple recesses a day.
But I don't think kids need recess like they need oxygen or food or water. And I think sometimes, not on a consistent basis, but sometimes, it makes more sense for a kid to miss recess than to miss class time. For example, if you have a kid who gets in a fight at the beginning of recess, would you say, oh, I'm sorry, sir, please finish your recess
and then we'll deal with this fight, uh, you know, when it's time to go back to class?
No, like, you would probably handle that during recess because that makes the most sense. I think there is this old school attitude that if you are behind academically, then that is a good time to catch up academically during recess. And I think that old school attitude needs to go.
I think it's not okay to keep kids in consistently in order to catch them up, to use it as a tutoring time, or to use it as kind of an everyday consequence if it is happening every day. I think it's okay as an occasional consequence,
and especially if it's a logical consequence. If you got in a fight yesterday at recess, I'm not sure you were ready to go back out to recess today.
And I think we need to be reasonable about things like that, and not, you know, pass laws and policies Right? If the alternative is, hey, you have to miss class time, the teacher has to miss class time, that makes everybody suffer for basically no reason if we have recess available to deal with it. Now, having said that...
I do think kids should get their recess, right? We should not be taking away recess day after day. And the thing about behavior in academics is they tend to be the same kids over and over again. The kid who is behind on spelling, the kid who is acting up, you know, that's going to be the same kid in a lot of cases, or at least it's going to be the same kid from day to day.
And we don't want to be in the ironic situation of taking away recess because of issues that recess is designed to mitigate, right? You don't want to take away recess for being fidgety, for being squirrely, for needing some exercise, for being talkative, right?
Those are things that kids are supposed to do, At recess. So, I think the, you know, the impulse here to preserve recess that is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, I think that's a good impulse, but I don't think we should be too extreme about it
and say that educators should never, ever take away recess, not even once, because it's not air, it's not water, the kid is not going to die if they don't get recess today, but it is a generally good thing. Let me know what you think.