Hey everyone, this is Amy, the Saturday Sports Coordinator for ENP. 

I’m here to share a little about an idea we’ve been working on in the Recreational Resilience Department. This semester we’ve piloted a new opportunity to build resilience through kids’ favorite subject. Recess.

That’s right, recess. 

Recess has been a well-loved, though under-utilized time and, sadly, in many of our schools, one that often creates an emotionally – and sometimes physically – unsafe space for both kids and adults alike. As we know, “safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits” (American Academy of Pediatrics). As we began doing research around recess and the opportunities to engage in that space, we came across models for what healthy playgrounds could look like and how SEL and active recreation could work hand in hand to offer greater benefits to the kiddos of Fresno.

We based our ideas for this project on what we saw from the Playworks healthy playgrounds model. Playworks, for those who don’t know, is a recreation-focused nonprofit that started out of Oakland with the express purpose of improving the way schools do recess – providing support to schools to make that space “positive, engaging, and safe.” We’ve used many of the recreation activities and games from their Game Guide in our Saturday Sports programs over the years.

Their model of recess was fairly comprehensive, with paid Playworks staff dedicated to working schoolwide as “Onsite Coaches” to implement a recess program that also doubled as a leadership program with older students being trained as “Junior Coaches”.  

They believe that “dedicated, supported recess staff are critical. An adult at recess whose responsibility it is to establish relationships with students through play will support students’ social and emotional development. More specifically, this adult also can practice inclusion, use positive language, prepare equipment for use, organize games, and ensure students are engaged and conflicts are resolved safely and quickly” (Johnson, 2017 [emphasis added]). This was the model we wanted to follow, to have positive adults there for the sole purpose of supporting kids through play. 

Pilot Program

We organized our pilot program based off of this idea using our Fresno State Recreation Administration intern, Kelsey, as that “Onsite Coach”. She worked with two different elementary schools–Pyle and Heaton–to try a similar model. Our hope for sustainability was to utilize our existing college volunteer Literacy Mentors to support the recess engagements, as they had a semester-long commitment to serve at their school sites.

The working name of this pilot program as of right now is Resilient Recess Mentoring. We want to build resilience in our kids during their recess time through the medium of mentoring–this means positive adults being fully present to engage with kids, to love them and teach them ways to have more fun at recess while being positive, safe, and inclusive of others.

All of this engagement begins with the basics of observation and learning conversations. Once the groundwork is laid, our Rec intern, Kelsey, and other volunteers begin to teach and lead out intentional games for the kiddos at recess. The hope was for the students to eventually be the ones leading these games while the volunteers supervised, connected, and cheered them on. Some of the games they chose come from the Playworks Game Guide, those activities aimed at building SEL and locomotor skills. Others were basic games like Football and Basketball. The hope was to move from these latter games to the more intentional activities, building the kids repertoire of healthy and inclusive games over time.

One fun activity we got out there was dance. Kelsey worked with our Neighborhood Fitness Coordinator, Jennifer, to bring dance to recess time.  The first day Jennifer led and showed Kelsey and her volunteers what to do, and the weeks following our volunteers led it all on their own.

Unfortunately, before we got more than a couple months in, our programming was cut short by the unforeseen circumstance of school closures. Sadly, we were unable to see the pilot program through to the end. 

Our goal moving forward is to evaluate what we were able to do, what were missed opportunities, and to plan for next year with the information we’ve put together.

Thanks for stopping in,

Until next time,

Amy