Recess Has Some New Competition
One of SchoolBook’s prolific commenters is Vicki Zunich, who is passionate about the need for young children to have more play and unstructured time during the school day.
Wednesday’s New York Times offers plenty of fodder for discussion in an article by Kyle Spencer that looks at how recess and lunch time are being turned into structured club and enrichment time for children at some of the city’s highest performing schools.
At Public School 188 Kingsbury in Bayside, Queens, for instance, fourth-graders can be found finishing a poster for a school play; music students are practicing “Hear Those Bells” on their recorders; cheerleaders are working on a victory chant, and a Suzuki violin class is working on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” all during midday recess.
At P.S. 6 Lillie D. Blake on the Upper East Side, the article says, “students can design video games, build