May 2011

Take This Class Year 'Round: Playtime
By: Dee Dolan
Whether based at home, in a public institution, or private academy, the word “schooling” generally congers images of the classroom. The overriding desire to see that our children master the art and adapt to the rigor of scholarly pursuits only reinforces our focus in that direction.

This may explain why we miss things, including educational opportunities residing in what may seem to be the antithesis of academic endeavor: play.

Close your eyes. Think about it.

Chances are, pictures burst through the door of your imagination. Likely, they come from childhood and bring a smile.

The work of professor and researcher Victoria Stevens, Ph.D., quantifies such responses and points to the educational value of playtime experiences. Stevens’ research studies the development and inhibition of creativity in adults and children, emphasizing the relationship between creative thinking, the brain and cognition. She sees “the development of imaginative play as developing a sense of personal agency, the experience of joy in creatively interacting with others and the development of empathy and perspective-taking.”

Because Stevens’ findings relate to the capacity for imaginative play with ideas, they beg the attendant question: What about the educational value of regular/real “playtime”?

Studies are beginning to address this. Among them is a February 2010 report published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “The State of Play: A Gallup Survey of Principals on School Recess,” is the first nationwide scientific poll of elementary school principals on the subject of the once ubiquitous school day interlude called “recess”. Overall, it finds “the most unexpected opportunity to boost learning lies, outside the classroom: on the playground at recess.”

Weigh this in light of the 2009 Alliance for Childhood study that affirms playtime in kindergarten classrooms is shrinking, if not disappearing; and another that reveals nearly 40 percent of U.S. school districts have reduced or eliminated recess, “in order to free up more time for core academics,” while one in four elementary schools no longer provides recess to all grades.

There’s more.

The journal of Pediatrics published a January 2009 study of 11,000 third-graders comparing those who had little or no daily recess with those who had more than 15 minutes daily. The findings aver that children who have more recess time behave better in the classroom and are likelier to learn more.

This outcome is echoed by “The State Of Play” findings that more than 8 in 10 principals report recess has a positive impact on academic achievement and two-thirds say students not only listen better after recess, but also are more focused in class.
Along with the imaginative play of ideas and the traditional play of recess, there is the free-form interaction in the world we also call “play”. It caters to the a priori instinct with which we all come to the table that prompts our amusement, entices our curiosity, unbuttons our imagination, and, as studies now show, strongly influences how and what we learn.

As adults, we’ve had our playtime.

Now, as parents, it is important to make sure our children have theirs.

Dee Dolan is a freelance writer and artist who volunteers with Maryland Shakespeare Festival and offers brilliant, creative class suggestions to Leslie Ruby (at FCC) for the Kids on Campus and Home-School enrichment programs. For a Kids on Campus summer schedule go to www.frederick.edu/kidsoncampus.

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