Don't Digress, Recess!

Slate posted a nice article about the resurgence of recess. Apparently complete dumb asses started cutting recess tears and years ago. The rationale was that kids needed more time to learn and recess was just play. Clearly those dinkleshits didn't apply themselves during recess, cuz here are the 3 things I learned in recess that are pretty darn useful to this day.

1. Subtracting time - the first thing recess taught me was how to figure out how long I had to sit at my desk and pretend to pay attention until recess. At 8:45 I still had 75 mind numbing brutal minutes to go. At 9:25i was half way to salvation and if I asked to go to the bathroom, I could kill 10 more minutes in the hallways leaving only 25 minutes of suffering left. I use this skill almost everyday as I sit in meetings staring out the window daydreaming of playing kickball.

2. The art of diversion and working as a team - when we lost our rubber ball for playing pinners on the roof, we were forced to put aside our playground differences and work as a team. We would all pitch in to create a diversion so 2 kids could sneak down to the local corner store and buy another ball. Diversions ranged from shoving matches to faked injuries and sometimes a few needed to be string together if the shop keeper took the time to count the pennies.

3. Life is a popularity contest - perhaps sad, but true, kids need to learn early that friends pick friends to be on their team. It is just as important to be fun to play (work) with as it is to be good at something...the best is when you can be both.

So if your school is talking about recess, speak up and shut the idea down. There are valuable lessons to be learned on the playground.

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