Edited by Dylan Gunn and Yash Roy

It’s a charged topic: Should students lose recess as punishment for bad behavior?

A child development expert and a state legislator who championed a recess law say, “No.” But some teachers are not so sure. At a time when student misbehavior is an issue at East Rock Community & Cultural Magnet School—and other schools—some believe it can get students back on track.

“We’re seeing it as being effective as stopping those negative behaviors that we want stopped,” Natalie O’Neill, who teaches sixth grade, told East Rock Record reporters in an interview that also included sixth grade teacher Amy Binkowski. “The problem is, the  privilege that gets the most results from most of you is losing one recess,” Ms. Binkowski told reporters.

For example, she said, an alternative response to bad behavior is writing “a referral.” At the beginning of the year, Ms. Binkowski said, “I was writing four to five referrals a week. And this week was the first time I’ve written a referral in weeks.”

Both teachers said that taking away recess as punishment improved behavior.

Others, however, say recess is essential to student mental health and should not be taken away.

“When we use taking away recess and punishment, it is doing more harm than good,” said Dr. Peg Oliviera, a developmental psychologist and Director of the Gesell Program in Early Childhood at the Yale Child Study Center. “We think it’s sending a message but what it does is not allow kids to destress and calm their nervous systems. Without recess, we come back just as stressed, just as worked up.”

Dr. Oliviera said the recess protections are in place for good reason. She said that recess is “just as important” as core subjects like math or science.  “We wouldn’t take away English class, and we wouldn’t take away lunch from a child because we know how important that is, and so the first step is to make everyone understand that recess is just as important.”

Students do care a lot about recess. According to the East Rock Record Fall 2024 Survey, almost 89 percent of students said all grades should get recess every day. They also believe it helps with schoolwork: nearly 72 percent said that they concentrate better after recess.

Interestingly, 69 percent agreed that students should lose recess for bad behavior.

Some adults disagree. State Rep. Liz Linehan, who chairs the legislature’s Committee on Children, told East Rock Record reporters in a Zoom interview that recess should not be taken away as punishment.

She feels so strongly about the value of recess that she pressed for a bill to guarantee students would have it. Rep. Linehan said it would have required recess for public school students in grades K-5 — and that it could be taken away for, say, getting a bad grade. She believes in “keeping those two things —recess and academics— separate.”

Rep.  Linehan originally wanted the law to guarantee each student one full hour of recess each school day, but that “immediately there was pushback.” The bill, which was proposed in 2022, would have required public school students in grades K-5 to get 20 minutes of recess each day.

“There is a common misconception that recess is only for fun and is not necessary as part of school curriculum, “ Rep. Linehan said. “I am part of that group that says that is completely false.”

The bill became part of a mental health law that passed in 2022. That law requires boards of education to have a policy that sets out when recess may be taken away, said Jackson DeLaney, press aide for the state Democrats. And the policy “must only allow recess to be restricted if the student poses a danger to others” or if there is more than once recess period, he wrote in an email. The old rules did not include those limits.

The New Haven Board of Education included a recess policy in the July 2023 district handbook. This requires principals to provide “at least 20 minutes a day of supervised recess (not including transitions) to encourage physical activity and socialization” for students in grades PreK-6. The policy says this has to be in addition to Physical Education and that “school staff shall not withhold participation in recess from students for disciplinary reasons or cancel recess to make up for missed instructional time.”

Leslie DePriest, assistant principal at East Rock School, said the school follows the rules. “According to the State of Connecticut, all students in Grades K through five, have to have recess daily. 
So we go by that.”

Despite this, students say that recess is sometimes unfairly taken away.  Kendal Walker, a 6th-grader said that last year, in 5th grade, her entire class lost recess, “‘Cause the kids couldn’t shut their gosh-darn mouths.”