Where did recess go?
In many school districts, recess has been sacrificed for make-up time to reach federal No Child Left Behind requirements. Worse, many schools are being built without playgrounds. In 2000, the federal Centers for Disease Control documented that nearly 30 percent of our nation’s youngest children did not enjoy regular recess. Often, it is exchanged for 10-minute, single-class, weather-dependent teacher-led breaks. It’s hard to tell what the recess policy is in Guilford County Schools; I couldn’t find one on the system’s Web site, and 30 minutes of clicking individual school sites yielded no recess-policy results. A 20-minute recess break where I spent my public education days witnessed students from various grade levels rushing onto the playground where we broke into small groups (and often rearranged them), watched the boys play baseball (and rooted for our boys while booing those from other classes), jumped rope (I learned how to Double Dutch), ate our post-cafeteria snack and simply w
