Interview and Field Observation Report

The Psychology of Recess

When walking into a first grade classroom at the esteemed Charles Hay World School, I

expected the room to be bustling with exploration, conversation, and excitement. But on this day

I entered a classroom with students sitting on a carpet, quiet and focused on the teacher in front

of them. The students only briefly looked at me, before they were redirected to the task that their

teacher, Jennifer Smith, was explaining. For almost twenty minutes the students stayed seated on

the carpet. Most seemed to be paying attention to the book that was being read to them, but upon

further examination there was a lot more going on in this "controlled classroom" than what may

be gathered upon first impression. In the small mass of students, many wriggled and bounced

around their designated sitting spot. A little girl stands and wanders around, flailing her limbs

and jumping around before she is reprimanded by Ms. Smith and told to sit back down. As I look

around the brightly decorated room, I notice all of the signs that are hung up. Many are

expectations and rules for the classroom that remind the students of their role in the classroom

here at Charles Hay. I inspect them further and find that many of them say "Be quiet when

asked", "Work during worktime", "Stay focused on your tasks". Although I didn't think I would

see the disparities so quickly, it is almost too easy to notice that something vital is missing from

Ms. Smith's classroom: play.

For Ms. Smith's class and other schools around the country, play has become a rarity in

the average school day. In the place of playtime, the push for academic success has taken over,

leaving a gaping deficit in a student's need for exploration and curiosity. Ever since the passing

of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, the U.S. public school system has had its sights set on

being the best at academics which caused 20% of schools in America to cut recess time down by

fifty minutes per week (Center on Education Policy 2008). With the push to perform at much

higher standards, increasingly younger students are being expected to do more in school without

the time for breaks or playtime in between. Because academics are taking precedence, play has

been devalued in early childhood education practices and in teacher training as well. When

speaking to the Assistant Director of the Fisher Early Learning Center, Hema Visweswaraiah, I

asked if play was still valued in the early educational field. She almost immediately replied: "No,

I don't think that's going on...I think that it's because it's not as quite understood when we use the

word like 'play', people immediately go to the idea of 'work' and say well it's the opposite...so it

can't be valuable." This mindset that play cannot be meaningful for students compared to

academic success is incredibly detrimental, especially when play is so closely linked to a child's

development.

These developmental links are no secret to the psychological and educational worlds

either. For decades, play and its influence on a child's development has been closely studied by

developmental psychologists. From the moment that a child is born, they use exploration and

play to fuel connections through the new dendrites that are forming every day in their brains. The

first seven years of a child's development is a critical period for physical, cognitive, language,

and socio-emotional development. The brain is overproducing neurons, which in turn enables the

child to start "forming language, identifying cultural and social norms, and learning to

distinguish between right and wrong" (Rushton, Juola-Rushton, and Larkin). If the child's brain

is not fully stimulated during these critical years, they will lack these very basic skills like

speaking and understanding morality. Other developmental components are also affected by not

being engaged through play in the early years. A developmental psychologist at the University of

Denver, Janette Benson, outlined the aspects of development that could be at risk when a student

is not involved in meaningful play in their critical years:

Physical play is important for fitness, skill acquisition, self-esteem through mastery,

cooperation and collaboration in team sports. With respect to cognitive development,

children use play to experiment with different roles (e.g., playing house or fantasy play),

to learn strategy, and to expand their imagination. With respect to socio-emotional

development, children learn cooperation, collaboration, role-playing and self-efficacy,

among other characteristics.

All of these aspects are crucial in developing a student who can think critically and can complete

abstract tasks. Even if playtime did not have these astounding developmental benefits, "the brain

does poorly at continuous, high-level attention, capable of no more than 10 minutes of constant

and high-level focus...", meaning the focus-demanding nature of the school day is not compatible

with the brain functions of young minds (Waite-Stupainsky and Findlay 2008). Yet, despite the

overwhelming evidence proving playtime has benefits to children's development and well-being,

play and recess are still at a low in public education.

Where some public schools seem to fall flat, many private early childhood education

centers are advancing in their use of play-based education. Ms. Visweswaraiah from the Fisher

Early Learning Center prides her school in being completely play-based and focusing on the

child's development rather than their test scores. Contrary to many beliefs, play has structure and

meaning to the child's education of the world that they live in. At the Fisher Early Learning

Center, they have "a curriculum, again a research-based curriculum, that spans from infants all

the way to kindergarten and it's called creative curriculum...", says Ms. Visweswaraiah. This

curriculum allows students to explore their surroundings in a way that is meaningful to their lives

as well as things that allow the teachers to guide their learning in a positive direction. Along with

this "creative curriculum", there are also other types of play that can be beneficial to a young

student's academic growth. A study conducted in 2014 tested the links between different types of

play that children use and their cognitive and cooperative skills. In the results, he researchers

found that the data suggested a positive correlation between abstract social pretend play and

higher cognitive functioning skills. This means that children who are able to engage in more

complex forms of play are more likely to have better cognitive skills as well as better social

skills, all of which are vital to learning processes (Li, Hestenes, and Wang).

Considering the substantial collections of evidence that pushes playtime in early

childhood education, why is play still being cut out of the picture in schools? While conducting

my various interviews and my observation, a lot of the disappearance has begun to fall into the

hands of teacher training. Nowadays, teachers are being forced to "teach to the test", rather than

create curriculum that is meaningful to their students and to their jobs. In a way, many teachers

just simply have their hands tied. Ms. Smith of the Charles Hay first grade class stated that if she

had the ability and power to do so, her students would definitely be allowed more exploration

time, but the high stakes standards and testing make it impossible to do so. Ms. Visweswaraiah

also expressed similar concerns and that "it's hard for folks who don't have a lot of knowledge

and experience" with play-based education to fully be able to implement it in the classroom. To

fully keep play sacred in the classroom, it is going to take a lot of effort and training on teachers'

parts to understand and use play in a positive way. Hopefully, with the help of psychological

research and the increasing popularity of play-based schools, play will make a comeback in the

future years and will continue to foster the growth of healthy, young minds.

Works Cited Jarrett, Olga, and Sandra Waite-Stupiansky. "Recess-it's Indispensable!" YC Young Children, vol. 64, no. 5, 2009, pp. 66-69. Web. Accessed 24 January 2017. Li, Jiayao, Linda L. Hestenes, and Yudan C. Wang. "Links Between Preschool Children’s Social Skills and Observed Pretend Play in Outdoor Childcare Environments." Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 44, no. 1, 2016, pp. 61-68. Web. Accessed 25 January 2017. Rushton, Stephen, Anne Juola-Rushton, and Elizabeth Larkin. "Neuroscience, Play and Early Childhood Education: Connections, Implications and Assessment." Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 37, no. 5, 2010, pp. 351-361. Web. Accessed 27 January 2017. Smith, Jennifer. Personal Interview. 9 February 2017. Visweswaraiah, Hema. Personal Interview. 9 February 2017. Benson, Janette. E-mail interview. 10 February 2017.

Field Observation: 1st Grade Classroom at Charles Hay World School

o Teacher: Jennifer Smith o As I walk in, the kids are all sitting on the carpet while Ms. Smith is giving instructions o They are all watching a student give a presentation about their family and Ms. Smith

helps them tell about their family members o Once she finishes, Ms. Smith has them ask questions about their family o As I watch the presentations, I notice a lot of the kids are wriggling, bouncing, and

moving around o It seems as though this is a very high energy class o Ms. Smith is not too pleased with the kids moving and standing and jumping around o The room is filled with posters and signs about classroom expectations, many of them

include: sitting still, be quiet, do your work o They get to stand and stretch for a few seconds before they move onto their reading

portion of their lesson o The kids all go and find reading spots and begin their task of writing things they learned

on sticky notes o It takes the students a while to settle down and find a spot, but eventually they figure it

out o This is the point where I get to ask Ms. Smith a couple of questions

Interview #1: Jennifer Smith*

Background: Ms. Smith is a first grade teacher at the Charles Hay World School and has been teaching for thirteen years. What is Charles Hay's recess policy for your first graders? The students get a recess before lunchtime around eleven and then a fifteen-minute recess at two. Have you noticed any behavior changes in the students before versus after recess? Yes, they tend to be very fidgety before recess, you can tell that their bodies need the time outside. After recess they sometimes have a hard time transitioning back to learning as well. But yes, they definitely show signs of needing recess and time off. Do your students get any playtime throughout the day, structured on unstructured? They do not get to have free play time, but during math they are allowed to have "exploration" time where they can play structured games and have some time to do what they choose. If you could add more play time into your day with the students, would you? No, I would not add more time. In Kindergarten they get to have a lot more time to play and whatnot, but now with all the standards and lack of time to teach all of it, there's just no way. In an ideal world, I would love to have them do more fun things, but it's just not possible. *All answers are paraphrased, but I have aimed for utmost accuracy

Interview #2: Hema Visweswaraiah

Background: Ms. Visweswaraiah is the Assistant Director at the Fisher Early Learning Center What is your school's mission statement? "Our mission is providing high quality education that includes the care piece...as well as the learning piece. The learning that we do is that we access that learning through play-based activities and high-quality being a huge operational part of that definition. We try to do work that is research-based and evidence-based, it's not just 'oh we think this is fun so we should do this'. We do it because it's been proven to work and support play-based education...especially in early childhood education. Another part of that is that access to high quality childhood education for children of all abilities, so again the inclusive piece of it...and then the third piece is that early childhood education is accessible to people of all different socioeconomic backgrounds... that's probably the most challenging one to come by, to be quite honest, because we are tuition based programs and a non-profit..." Can you provide some examples of some of the play-based activities that you do for the students here at Fisher? "We use a curriculum, again a research-based curriculum, that spans from infants all the way to kindergarten and it's called creative curriculum. We use the foundations so that everyone kind of starts on the same foot, so creative curriculum has a specific set of objectives and philosophies... and all of their objectives span across the domains, so physical development, language development, communication, social studies, arts, socio-emotional development... and that just provides a foundation, so what we have on top of that, particularly for older classrooms, we have things that address phonics, literacy, handwriting, and science...however, this is within a larger structure where we have interest areas. This is where different activities are set up around the room and they are pursuing these activities based on their own interests, based on what's available to them in the classroom, and we have a large amount of outdoor exploration time. It's not a free-for-all, but it's not so structured where the kids have to do the same thing in a specific order...they do things in a way that's meaningful to them... and the teachers observe the children and see: 'what are they really interested in?'..." In your opinion, do you think that in the educational world values play in early childhood education? "From what I have read and seen and heard, no, I don't think that's going on. My experience obviously present is here [at Fisher], so in that sense I really do hold onto play. But form other instances from what I've seen and heard, I don't think that it's valued as much as research has shown that it should be. I think that it's because it's not as quite understood when we use the word like 'play', people immediately go to the idea of 'work' and say well it's the opposite of play, so it can't be valuable. However, there's a way to do it that it is structures, that it does provide a lot of benefit...and while we do call it semi-structured, our teachers are doing a lot of work around that. I think that's hard for folks who don't have a lot of knowledge and experience with it."

Interview #3: Janette Benson *conducted by e-mail

What role do you think play has in a child's physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development? Research shows that play has an important role in all domains of development at all points in the

lifespan. Physical play is important for fitness, skill acquisition, self-esteem through mastery, cooperation and collaboration in team sports. With respect to cognitive development, children use play to experiment with different roles (e.g., playing house or fantasy play), to learn strategy, and to expand their imagination. With respect to socio-emotional development, children learn cooperation, collaboration, role-playing and self-efficacy, among other characteristics. From your view as a developmental psychologist, are there any negative effects to having little playtime as a young child? If so, what are these effects? Typically, playtime is reduced or limited because children are "over-scheduled" which means that parents choose to have their children is more structured activities and events, rather than giving children the freedom to determine their own play activities. Children who have fewer opportunities for free play may have limited imaginations, fewer friends and be less socially skilled, may be overweight because they do not engage in physical games, and have fewer opportunities to have fun and be happy. In your professional opinion, is play time important to a child's education? Why or why not? Yes, I do believe that play is important to children's education as well as their development. Often children learn during play and are more motivated to learn if learning opportunities are viewed as play and fun. Different types of play are found across several species and restricting playtime diminishes children's opportunity to experiment with new ideas, to interact with others, to try new roles, to master new skills and to be fit. If yes to the previous question, what are some ways that educators can improve/increase play and activity time in the classroom? (If no, disregard this question please) Skilled teachers are good at presenting educational materials in ways that capitalize on children's play and their desire to have fun -- children learn to spell using spelling bees and similar competitions that challenge and incentivize them to learn. Most important is that good educators make sure to provide opportunities for children to use their natural inclination to play across all domains of development.

EP-2 Contact Record

DATE PERSON STATUS

FEB 3RD Janette Benson Interview by e-mail only

FEB 5TH Gloria Miller Not Available

FEB 5TH Jennifer Grady Available! - Observation

FEB 6TH Pamela Miller Not Available

FEB 6TH Janee McConnell No Response

FEB 6TH Hema Viswaswaraiah Available! - Interview