“What do the kids do out here during recess?”
It was an honest question, asked of a first-grade teacher giving us a tour of her school’s playground. One of my students posed it; I teach a first-year biological engineering design course in which Louisiana State University engineering students work with the community to design and build playgrounds at public schools in the area. One of the first things that my L.S.U. students learn is that kids are the true experts at play. We are simply facilitators of the kids’ visions and creativity.
The first-grade teacher gazed out at the grassy area enclosed by chain-link fence and said, “So the kids have nothing but this empty space, but my students are so imaginative that they don’t mind. They play imaginary football. Sometimes one child will take off a shoe and they’ll use the shoe for the football. Other times they’ll play imaginary kickball. They make up their own games, too. There’s ‘Let’s Dig Up George Washington,’ where they dig as deep into the ground as they can with their hands. Once they made peanut butter out of the acorns that fell from that tree over there, although I had to explain to them the difference between peanut butter and acorn butter. They play ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’ My students have amazing imaginations!”
My students posed the same question to a third-grade teacher at the same school, whose students played in the same play area as the first graders. The third-grade teacher had an entirely different response. During recess, the kids stood around or leaned against the building while talking with their friends. Behavior issues were common because the children had nothing to do to keep them occupied. It seemed that their joie de vivre for play was as absent as the footballs during recess. She ended her answer with a refrain I hear commonly: “Anything you can do out here will be a vast improvement over what we have right now and will be greatly appreciated by all of us.”
Lack of access to play is a national issue with multiple facets. There are geographic and safety barriers as well as access issues. Many kids don’t live anywhere near a playground or can’t use the ones nearby because the playgrounds themselves or the surrounding areas are unsafe. Play spaces may not be accessible to people with disabilities.
Many communities have moved away from valuing pay, particularly outdoor play. Societal changes (video games; increased access to high-calorie, processed foods), educational changes (more time in classrooms and less active time, despite all evidence suggesting that the more time children spend engaged in physical activity and play, the higher their academic achievement), and economic pressures (increased work hours for adults, decreased active and leisure time) have all made for a less active, playful society from childhood up.
My 16-year quest in collaborating with communities to increase children’s access to play spaces has taught me several things. One is the importance of place in community-based playground design. Each community that a playground serves is special and unique. Determining what makes a community special and expressing that uniqueness through a playground design is what I’ve called “finding the soul of the community.” It’s why we can’t pick up a playground designed and built in one neighborhood, plunk it down in another neighborhood and expect that playground to serve the community as well as it did before.
Working with my community has also taught me the uselessness of blame. Blame steals our initiative; when we spend energy blaming other entities (parents, schools, businesses, elected officials, etc.), we waste that energy. We usually proceed from a blaming session feeling vindicated that it’s not our fault or responsibility, and then we move on to other things, instead of using our energy to ask and respond to those tough questions:
- What do the kids do out here during recess?
- What changes for those children playing in an empty field between first and third grade, and why?
- What message do we send our children when we provide them with no time or appropriate place in which to play?
- What is the soul of my community?
Once I quit blaming people and policies, avenues of action opened before me. I found the soul of my community, and it is full of people who believe in justice, fairness, equality and play. Together, we have doggedly pursued the funding to make children’s ideas for their dream playgrounds a reality, and have endeavored to create play environments that enable all children to exercise their minds, bodies and spirits, whether in first grade, third grade or beyond.
Finally, I have learned that responding to honest but tough questions takes equal parts humility and resilience, and the willingness to stay on the path to the answers, even if that path is arduous. At the end of any day, I want children to play imaginary football and “Let’s Dig Up George Washington” because they choose to, not because their imagination is the only option in an empty field.