This past week, SHAPE America and the CDC released Strategies for Recess in Schools. This comprehensive set of resources will help schools leverage recess to support an active and healthy environment.
The strategies include a broad range of practical guidance and tools for everything from how schools can incorporate youth leadership at recess to infographics and policy suggestions for recess advocates. They address a broad range of recess challenges, from the impact of weather to the need to align a recess approach with a school’s behavior management system.
The key recommendation—that a great recess for every student will contribute to students’ overall health, development, and success—is an extraordinarily important recognition, especially coming from the nation’s largest membership organization of health and physical education professionals.
SHAPE America, which was originally called AAHPERD, (the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance) is a membership organization that has been around for over 130 years, historically focused on providing quality physical education.
As the world has changed, so has SHAPE America, and for the past decade or so they have been increasingly working in partnership with other organizations—such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Let’s Move! Active Schools, and assorted state organizations to provide training, support, and guidance for schools around school health programming.
The Strategies for Recess benefits from SHAPE America’s leadership in the field and their unique ability to bring together a number of different organizations to help in the writing and review process (Playworks was happy to be a part!). This collaborative, wide-ranging approach is evident in strategies that will set schools up for success.