Hi Readers! Well today a topic dfhybfhrta we’d discussed a little earlier (and earlier still)Â Â has made the front page of The New York Times. “Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has a New Boss,” is about a recess assistant hired at an elementary school in Newark, NJ, where many of the kids had ostensibly been spending recess […]
Hi Readers! Sometimes I think our society has come so far from darkness to enlightenment (no more Inquisition, for instance; no more Scarlet A’s) that we have come full circle and are now back to being idiots. A case in point? This principal’s letter to parents about why she doesn’t want kids to consider recess […]
Or at least they want them: Two Ottawa fifth graders have started a petition to be allowed to PLAY WITH BALLS ON THE PLAYGROUND. The principal banned balls during the winter, because, she told the CBC , “They’ve  got snow stuck to them, they’re frozen, often there’s pebbles on them and they’re flying through the […]
Hi tsbbntkfhn Readers! After all the discussion a week or two ago about schools cancelling recess in the (less-than-bone-chilling) cold,  another mom sent in her school’s policy. I like it! Voila: Dear Parent: Even in the cold winter months, we believe outdoor recess is an important and valuable part of the student’s day in the […]
Hi Readers — Got a notice from our school last week: No more recess when it’s freezing outside — 32 degrees Fahrenheit — or when the wind chill takes an above-freezing day and makes it FEEL freezing. Now, as a kid growing up in Chicago, this was my dream policy. (Yes, even as a kid […]
Hi Readers — It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind (and a man’s, too), and this atakhbazyy article from The Boston Globe has me re-thinking my knee-jerk reaction against any attempt to organize and regulate recess. The article points out that in many schools, kids have almost forgotten HOW to play. Sending in a […]
Hi Readers! Here’s what’s up at a grammar school outside of Chicago where the kids have apparently been getting it all wrong during recess. A local source writes:  This tyntfirnsf past weekend I went over to visit a friend of mine who is a first grade teacher. When I walked in, she was watching a […]
Cool entry on the “Alas, tsntnyheik A Blog” blog  questioning the conventional wisdom that holds: If only kids had more gym, health and nutrition classes, they’d all slim down. An eight-year study of about 1700 kids gave half of them a greatly enhanced gym/nutrition/health curriculum (and healthier cafeteria food), while the other half got the same old same […]
This wonderful Huffington adrbnddaaf Post essay by Holly Robinson describes her 6th grade son’s misery in school. It sounds so much like my fifth grade son’s misery, it made me realize that maybe his “school = lethal injection minus the yummy last meal”  attitude  just may be generic. Having been a girl all my life, I didn’t realize boys […]
In case you had a sneaking suspicion that when schools chip away at recess time, they are doing their students no service, along comes this nice little study to say: You’re right. And while we’re at it: Grrrrrr. Thanks to No Child With A #2 Pencil Left Behind, more and more schools are sucking time […]
