Our Kids Need More Play Not More Worksheets
How increased school playtime will lead to safer schools and better learning
Kids of all ages need more time for unstructured play during school. I've heard plenty of people say the schools need to spend more time on math, or reading, or science, or social studies. The problem is that there's only so much time in a day. But hear me out on why I think playtime is in a different category than these more traditional subjects, and why getting serious about playtime in school can help students across all academic disciplines.
The current generation do not have the same opportunities for unstructured play as did previous generations. There are many reasons for this, including growing helicopter parenting, growing screen time, and even growing inequality. But whatever the reasons, the fact remains: kids aren't getting enough playtime. As just one measure of this, The Alliance for Childhood recently reported that kids aged 10-16 today average only 12.6 minutes a day of vigorous physical activity...and average 10.4 hours a day relatively motionless. Should we be surprised then that kids have trouble staying focused, or paying attention during math and language lessons, or act out against both teachers and fellow students?
The School Benefits of Play
Increasing unstructured play has worked elsewhere. Kevin Stinehart, a 4th grade teacher in South Carolina, spearheaded a program to introduce more unstructured play for students in all grades at his school. They started free before- and after-school programs for play, as well as introducing a second recess each day to the school schedule. The result? After only a single year, behavioral problems in the school dropped dramatically. Serious incidents of kicking, pushing, and hitting went down more than 50%; behavior problems on the buses dropped even more; student attendance increased; and serious physical threats in the school went from 9 to 0. Perhaps even more surprisingly, academic performance went up too: those kids who participated in more unstructured playtime did significantly better on standardized math and reading tests than those who didn't.
This is the experience of just a single school, but it isn't the only success story. For example, it is consistent with numerous studies that show play-based kindergarten programs lead to better academic success, even years later, than kindergarten programs that focus on academic training (see here for an overview).
Increasing unstructured play at school can thus accomplish a number of things we all want. It can reduce disciplinary problems and disruptions in school. It can improve student success in traditional subjects like math and reading (and likely others). It can do these things in a way that kids will love. Best of all, it doesn't require carving out more time in the school day to pile on additional instruction. Win, win, win, and win.
There are a couple of reasons these findings about unstructured play are of particular relevance to East Penn right now:
#1: Full Day Kindergarten
Our district spent years developing a full-day kindergarten program built around "purposive play," which it began offering in all elementary schools in 2018. The district promised a "living classroom" model in which school subjects would be introduced through playtime activities. Yet the kindergarten teachers I've spoken to over the last several years say playtime is now just one among many time blocks included in the daily schedule, not an overarching approach to the kindergarten curriculum. What's worse, purposive play is scheduled-- in at least some of our schools-- for only the last twenty minutes of each day, so that much of it is eaten up putting the days things away and preparing to get on buses. It's now been six years since all-day kindergarten centered on purposive play was rolled out. Perhaps it is time to take stock of what is working and what needs to be improved in our not-so-new-anymore kindergarten program?
#2 Behavioral Problems
There is a focus in East Penn on growing behavioral problems and safety concerns in the schools. In response, the school board approved spending an additional $440,000 on new security measures this year. Unstructured play offers the real possibility of improving school safety far more -- and for far less money -- than simply piling on more cameras, police, and security guards. Of the behavioral infractions in East Penn serious enough that they are reported to the state, more than 20% are among elementary school students. If East Penn could implement unstructured playtime that had even a fraction of the impact it did at Kevin Stinehart's school, our schools would be much better off.
#3 Social and Emotional Learning
Social-emotional learning (or SEL for short) has been another priority in East Penn for a number of years now. It is a fancy term for learning to be self-aware, manage emotions, and maintain healthy relationships with others. The schools have been focusing more and more on SEL as they witness more and more kids with serious deficits in their social and emotional learning. Alas, much of this focus has come in the form of adding traditional lessons on the topic, in the same way teachers give lessons on subjects like science and social studies. But kids develop their social and emotional well-being best through play. Indeed, the loss of unstructured playtime is almost certainly one of the factors that has made SEL a problem in the first place. Play is the way kids have learned social and emotional skills since...well, since forever! So introducing more playtime in the school day will offer SEL lessons that are more natural, and learned more deeply, than any direct classroom instruction can provide.
The punchline here is that school playtime versus more learning in traditional subjects is a false choice. More playtime improves student attitudes and behavior in school, leading to better performance on traditional subjects. Unstructured play is an investment in kids that pays dividends in many areas, both now and in the long run. So what benefits -- and pitfalls -- do YOU see to introducing more play during the regular school day? And how can we, as parents and community members, help make more playtime for East Penn kids a reality?
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