Playtime at School: A Parent's Perspective

The two lead sentences tell the story: "Teachers and parents are frequently warned that students in the United States are lacking the academic skills they need for the 21^st century. But a growing contingent of educators, psychologists, and other professionals are voicing worries that today's children are also growing up without the chance to play."

Those of us who went to elementary school in the 1960s know that "recess" was everyone's favorite subject. Going outside to play was a key part of surviving every day. Letting off steam and playing games made coming back inside to study possible. And we all know that lessons about life learned on the playground are some of the most valuable experiences for childhood.

I was a distracted student. Not ADD or ADHD by any means. I did well on subjects that I liked. At a young age I realized that a creative learning environment was important to my ability to assimilate information. My young brain fought back against stuffy teaching methods. There was no consistency in my preferences, of course. I hated reading as a rote act, but loved when math taught as a straightforward discipline. I tended to succeed with teachers who understood this pattern and struggled mightily under those who didn't.

This tug and pull against my natural learning capacities was compounded to some degree by my family environment. We had a loving home, but our father tended to be critical. Life was therefore a daily dichotomy, a yin and yang of success and perceived failure.

I don't think we were different or more pronounced in our challenges than many other families in the 1960s. But that's the point. Nearly all kids come to the classroom with issues. We just didn't recognize them in the 1960s. Corporal punishment was common in the elementary and middle schools I attended in Pennsylvania. Fear of the paddle was supposed to motivate us into better behavior and thus, better grades. Yet I remember feeling anxious around teachers who disbursed the punishments. Once there was even a paddling with my pants pulled down.

Thankfully some things have changed. How we deal with children who have behavioral problems is changing as well. I'm sure there are moments when teachers wish they could just paddle a student and be done with it. In some cases it probably worked back in the good old days. But in many cases it probably didn't.

What schools in the 1960s had right was a commitment to regular recess periods, where kids could run outside and play. Recognizing and affirming that children need playtime is an important first step in a healthy child.

The first thing recess did for me was restore my sense of self esteem. I was fortunate enough to be a talented athlete at a young age. So for me recess was a chance to go out and excel. For others recess might be an environment where they get to act out fantasies, gather with friends or get away from people altogether. This is not to say in any respect that recess was any sort of Nirvana for me or anyone else. I also got into fights on the playground, got injured frequently in playground accidents and sometimes found myself stressed by the realization that returning to class meant facing the fact that I had not done homework the night before. Life is what happens to you while you're out playing at recess.

But the benefits of play far exceeded the practical, grinding approach some teachers took to measuring our progress. My 3^rd grade teacher pulled me aside before recess one morning and told me, "You have a choice. You can go outside and play or you can stay inside and help us with the class play. Which would you rather do?" I thought for a moment and said, "I want to go out and play."

"You made the wrong choice, " she told me. "There's more to life than going out to play. Now you're going to stay inside and not get to do either." And that's what she made me do. Sit inside and read. As a punishment.

If that teacher had asked me why I wanted to go outside and play so badly, she might have learned that I was a competitive, goal-oriented young student with a reputation to protect. Our daily playground game of kickball was my favorite sport during winter months. On the day she asked me to stay inside and work on the school play, I was tied with another boy (who happened to be my best friend) for the number of home runs in kickball. Homers occurred in two ways: You could kick the ball far enough to run all the way around the bases, or you could get an "automatic" homer if you kicked the ball over the swingset in left-center field. Both of us got pretty good at knowing which sort of "roll" let us kick the ball over the swingset. There was quite a bit of playground prestige to being the home run leader. My friend and I were even ahead of boys older than us. II finished the year with exactly 100 homers. The satisfaction that accomplishment gave me matched anything I'd done in the classroom, for sure.

Helping students translate and objectify their play experience into beneficial life experience may in fact be the most important role parents and teachers play in developing young lives. We are all prone to magnifying our response to denial by engaging in even more attention-getting behavior. A few simple words at an important stage of life can go a long way toward preventing the need to engage in unnecessary attention-getting behavior. Had that teacher or my parents been able to identify and affirm my playground goals in some way, they might have been able to help me appreciate that my self esteem should not be based on kickball alone. This does not need to be done dismissively by saying, "Oh, kickball doesn't matter. You should focus on your schoolwork and this play." But it might have helped if that teacher had said, "It's interesting that there is a contest on the playground to see who gets the most home runs. Tell me more about it." On hearing my response and learning how motivated I was to be the best at something, that teacher might have found some way to translate my kickball goals into something equally tangible, like taking a lead role in the class play, where she knew I also had talent.

My own son made that decision for himself years later. Having participated in soccer and track his freshman year, my son tried out for a school musical and won a decent part. Later that year he told me, "Dad, when I'm doing sports I'm 25% happy. When I'm doing plays, I'm 100% happy."

Such are the decisions upon which life's course can change. During an interview on Public Radio's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman speculated that acting and sports were "essentially the same thing." He had been injured in wrestling during his freshman year in high school, so he tried out for the school play and found a place for his prodigious creative talents. His mother encouraged him. Now Hoffman is one of the most talented, active actors in the trade.

How do these experiences translate to more effective learning in the classroom? Teachers and parents that recognize and affirm the active mental life and corresponding "playtime" of students outside the classroom are going to be better able to find ways to encourage and affirm students in subjects like reading, math and science. Knowing the "whole child" and giving them time to play and express themselves ultimately serves as a tool to reach and motivate those children to better learning.

Playtime (and art, and music I might add) constitute the most important elements of growing up. These are not frivolous uses of time. Instead, they are important tools in helping children find themselves through process of play. Playtime may be the most important part of any student's day.