William Bartholomew, staff reporter
People like to relax, especially busy students and teachers. Guyer doesn’t have an official “recess” or “break time”, and some argue that it needs to change. People need time to relax and unwind during the school day so that they can focus more on learning or teaching.
If we get an intermission, students will be much happier as they will have more time to shut off their brains. Teachers will also be impacted positively because they’ll have more time to prepare lessons and relax.
To begin, one big perk of having a “recess” is that kids will go outside, enhancing their mood and energy for a more positive environment in the school. Vitamin D is also greatly beneficial to students’ behavior, as studies show that vitamin D increases general mood.
Dylan McCormack, a Sophomore at Guyer, said, “Recess could replace PE, and act similarly to lunch to maximize fun time.”
Students also get exercise, which tends to make people more productive and motivated. Raising healthier, happier students would also give people a better impression of the school, helping staff as well.
Ccaeducate, a website doing extensive research on the topic, says, “Twenty-five minutes. That’s the average amount of time that children have for recess in a typical school day. That’s considerably less than children in Finland, who get about 75 minutes of recess a day. In Japan, children get breaks of 10 or 15 minutes every hour — and that’s in addition to regular recess.”
Staff even get benefits as they get more time to prepare lessons, attend meetings, and even take a quick break after a long day of teaching students. It’ll leave teachers happier and motivated to teach at the end of the day.
This addition to our schedule would also make students more sociable in this increasingly antisocial world. Students would have more time to freely communicate and engage with each other, therefore making students happier and more connected.
McCormack said, “I would like a recess, I would play a game with my friends or most likely just hang out with my friends.”
However, issues do arise when addressing this topic. Issues such as break scheduling and student unruliness, the next part of this aims to discuss and try to come up with solutions to said issues.
To continue, scheduling breaks into our schedule would be very difficult, considering the very packed schedule everyone already has. Some students think it’d be a worthy sacrifice, shortening classes just a little to make room for a 30-minute break near the end of the day. This way, it feels more like a refreshing midway point.
Staff could also be against this idea due to students’ reactions during break time. Students tend to cause trouble, and this would give them an excuse to cause said trouble. However, if there are staff carefully monitoring the students while outside, issues could be prevented.
The pros of giving students a recess seem to outweigh the cons. It would be a good addition that would help connect students, increase productivity, and so much more.
