There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

  The night before Maya’s first day of school we get several inches of snow, and for about a millisecond I wonder if school will be closed, or at least on a two-hour delay. For the past five years, since Maya started preschool, this had been the norm. No wonder my brain was doing a double take. Then I remember that snow tires are mandatory during the winter months in Sweden, and that both schools and workplaces will be open as usual. I’m barely able to maneuver out of the Shack’s microscopic parking space, and then take a wrong turn, but finally we get on the right track. As we get closer to the school, we see kids on foot, some accompanied by parents and younger siblings, others by themselves. All, including the adults, are wearing the kind of bright yellow high-visibility vests that most Americans probably associate with hunting. Here, they are a practical, cheap ticket to survival for pedestrians on the road: At close to eight o’clock in the morning the school is still draped in a predawn veil of semi-darkness.

  We walk into the school building just as Maya’s classmates are lining up and getting ready to go into the classroom. After passing a couple of industrial-size drying cabinets on our right, we leave our snowy boots in the hallway and put on some slippers for wearing in the classroom, as is customary in schools in Sweden. Maya’s teacher, Suzanne, a tall lady with short dark hair, greets us with a warm smile. “Welcome, Maya! We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Maya swiftly hides behind my back as fifteen brand-new classmates pierce her with curious looks. I squeeze her hand and remind her that I’ll stay with her the entire day, since this is her first day in a new school. “Today I want you to write about your Christmas break,” Suzanne says after the class finishes its morning routines. “It’s okay if you don’t finish before recess; you can keep working after you get back inside.”

  At nine thirty, an hour and a half into the day, it’s time for a twenty-minute recess. The kids quickly jump into their insulated, waterproof coveralls and snow boots and run outside. About a dozen so-called snow racers, basically fast-running sleds on skis, lean against the wall of the school. “They’re welcome to bring their own sleds to school, but they do need to wear a helmet in order to ride them,” Suzanne explains. “We also have some toboggans and helmets that they can borrow.”

  The hilly school yard fills up with children, who immediately get busy in the snow. Those who are not sledding are either climbing up a big pile of snow and finding creative ways of getting down, or making things out of the snow, which is just wet enough for building. Maya, who is shy and sometimes takes a while to warm up to new people, starts to roll a big snowball with some of the girls from her new class. At the far end of the school yard, six boys are working together to break the unofficial record for “the biggest snowman ever built at the school,” according to one of the boys. “Suzanne, we need your help putting the head on!” another boy shouts. (In Sweden, pretty much everybody but members of the royal family goes by their first name.) “It’s too heavy for us.” Suzanne excuses herself to go assist with the giant snowman and I watch as Maya flies down the hill on a small toboggan.

  At the bottom of the sledding hill is a small soccer field that is partly covered with ice. “Our wonderful PTO is making an ice-skating rink,” Suzanne explains after ensuring that the record-breaking snowman has all its parts. “It’s not quite done yet, but as long as it stays cold they’ll finish it any day now. We’re hoping to ice-skate for PE class on Thursday.”

  I almost can’t believe it. Thirteen years in the US have conditioned me to always weigh a situation from a legal standpoint. I was used to signing one liability waiver before going to yoga, another one for letting my daughter go on a field trip, and a third one for leaving my Labrador at a kennel, to confirm that she knew how to swim and wasn’t likely to drown in a dog pool with six inches of water. I knew that for a certain type of personal injury lawyer the combination of a slick, hard surface, sharp skates, speed, and young children would be like blood in the water to a shark. Yet there were no liability waivers in sight, not even a sign stating the rules, and definitely no mention of any lawyers. How did the school handle the responsibility? The risk? The injuries? After all, getting out on the icy blacktop had been strictly verboten at Maya’s school back home. But in Sweden, ice-skating was apparently not only allowed at recess, it was encouraged as part of the curriculum.

  “It’s very rare for somebody to get injured. We have our rules and the kids are really good about following them,” Suzanne says, as if she were reading my mind. “We nag them about wearing helmets a lot, and they know that they’re not allowed to start sledding or ice-skating until there is an adult outside.”

  “But what if something were to happen?” I insist.

  “All the students have casualty insurance coverage through the county. But, really, nothing serious ever happens.”

  And that was the end of that.

  After recess, the students do individual work, depending on what they need to catch up on. Some students read; others write in their journals. Just like when I was in second grade some thirty years ago, a lot of the work is project based and the children are fostered by the teachers to plan out and take responsibility for their own work. There is also a new focus on integrating movement and physical activity into traditional academic lessons—for example, by using math cards with prompts to bounce a ball so many times or count the number of steps required to walk to the other side of the room. “We try to keep the schedule varied so that the children don’t have to sit all day,” Suzanne says.

  Sometimes, regular classes like art, science, and physical education are taught outdoors. In the woods, the children learn while moving around, something that is especially important to the youngest students. Chatrine, who is in charge of the school’s environmental education, believes that nature makes subjects like math and physics come alive in a way they never will in a classroom. “With the six-year-olds we’ve looked for sticks and compared length, which ones were shorter and longer,” she says. “In science class, with the older children, we’ve used the sledding hill to learn about friction by comparing different ways of getting down—for example, with a wax cloth, a plastic sled, shoes with grooved soles, and so on. There really isn’t anything you can do inside that you can’t do outside.”

  All the changes in Sweden have not necessarily been for the better. Years of plummeting results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an evaluation of fifteen-year-olds’ skills in math, reading, and science in different countries, has caused outrage and led to some erratic experimentation with the Swedish education system. Inevitably, it has also increased the focus on testing. Whereas I didn’t have to take a single national standardized test until eighth grade, these are now given out in third, sixth, and ninth grades. “I think the tests steal a lot of time from teaching, and we know where the children are at anyway,” Suzanne says, echoing a sentiment that I’d heard from many American teachers. “But we don’t teach to the test—we continue to follow our curriculum as usual.”

  At eleven o’clock, the class breaks for lunch. The next class starts at noon, effectively giving the students another thirty to forty minutes of outdoor recess, depending on when they get done eating. “Do the kids always go outside for recess?” I ask Suzanne as we once again watch the children bounce around in the fluffy white stuff covering the school yard. She seems a bit surprised at the question. “Why, yes. They’re always outside, unless it’s storming so badly that it would be too dangerous.”

  During the lunch break, more sleeting snow starts to come down from overcast skies and some of the cold, humid air seeps in through the crack between my snow pants and my puffy coat. Had we been in Indiana on a day like this, it’s a stretch to think that Maya’s school would even have been open. It’s even less likely that the kids would have been outside for recess, since that might have caused them to get wet or cold, or to slip on the blacktop. These were the kinds of conditions that would cause people to curse winter, announce the com
ing of the next snowpocalypse, stay at home from work, and hibernate. But in this small town in Sweden, the first- and second-grade teachers saw it as a reason to move the last class period of the day outside as well, giving the kids a rather cushy start to the new semester. When I, slightly skeptical, ask Suzanne if the students’ schedule really allows for more sledding today, she says, “Well, yes. We’re required to have a certain number of hours for instruction, and we have our academic goals that we must meet.” Then she adds, without so much as a trace of sarcasm, “But today we felt like we had to take advantage of this lovely weather. I’m so happy that we have snow; I really hope it’ll stick around.”

  After lunch, during the last class period of the day, the sledding picks back up. Maya and three boys find a creative way to go down the hill all crammed on the same sled, recalling the dangerously overcrowded tuk-tuks that I had often seen people drive around in Southeast Asia. To further increase the challenge, the older kids have built a big bump in the middle of the hill, which these first and second graders are now trying to hit. As they go down the hill they fall off one by one, squealing with a mix of delight and terror. Not once do they all make it down to the bottom still sitting or standing on the sled. And not once do I see an adult trying to stop their risky games.

  I can’t help but think about the poor teacher back in Indiana who told me that all she did during recess in the winter was tell the children what they were not allowed to do, and how different the approach of teachers seemed here in Sweden. “I actually believe that you have to let them take some risks,” says Lisa, one of the older staff members on recess duty as she watches Maya and her new friends at the top of the hill. “That’s how children learn. It’s a form of trial and error—they try one thing and if that doesn’t work they’ll try something different. It’s hard to watch sometimes, because as an adult you’re wired to intervene. But even though it looks chaotic, they do a really good job of looking out for each other.”

  “Sometimes I think that it’s better for the adults to take a step back, observe, and not interfere,” one of the younger staff members chimes in. Watching the organized chaos on the sledding hill, she jokes, “Sometimes it’s better to just look the other way.”

  At 1 p.m., Maya’s first school day is over. The anxiety from the morning has all but vanished and been replaced with a big smile and flushed cheeks. She looks healthy and happy. During her five-hour day she has been outside for two hours. Granted, this is not a typical schedule, because the teachers wanted the children to enjoy the newly fallen snow, but even on a regular day outdoor recess will make up about an hour, or 20 percent, of the school day. This is pretty standard for the Scandinavian countries, where students have recess through high school. In Finland, a country envied by educators worldwide as the only non-Asian country to consistently rank in the top ten on the PISA test, students typically get a fifteen-minute break after each lesson, averaging seventy-five minutes of recess every day. They also have fewer instructional hours than students in any other country in the developed world, and little homework, leaving the children with more time to play outside. This is a drastically different approach to education than what is normally found in Asian countries, where many students rack up twelve hours or more per day hunched over their textbooks. Obviously, many other factors go into the Finnish success story. But one thing is for sure: The fresh air that teachers and parents in Scandinavia insist that children get every day is not just good for them—it’s actually essential to their health and well-being.

  According to the rules of survival, we can go about three weeks without food and three days without water, but only three minutes without breathing. Every single cell in our body needs oxygen to live and produce energy. Fresh air helps oxygenate our cells, which in turn makes us feel more energetic and alive. If that fresh air is combined with exercise, like sledding or climbing up a pile of snow, even better.

  In some American elementary schools, cutting recess has become a popular way for administrators to gain instructional time and pad the schedule with subjects that are most easily assessed with standardized tests—reading, writing, and math. But the research is not on their side. A 2011 Swiss study of five-year-olds showed that aerobic fitness improves children’s attention span, and that better motor skills, like balance, result in improved working memory. Both are crucial to academic success. Many other studies have shown that movement and regular breaks from the routine help children’s ability to learn and pay attention, and that recess makes hyperactive children less fidgety and more capable of concentrating. A meta-analysis of two hundred studies showed that physical activity during the school day resulted in increased fitness, better attitudes, and a slight improvement in test scores. Moreover, recess is often the only time of the school day that students have a chance to socialize and play in an unstructured setting. This is when they make up their own games, negotiate rules, and resolve conflicts, honing their social skills in the process. And the effects of recess are most tangible when it is held outdoors. Children may view watching movies or playing computer games in a classroom during “indoor recess” as a welcome break from routine, but it gives them none of the benefits that are associated with outdoor recess: fresh air, exercise, and a chance to develop social skills.

  Even if indoor recess is held in a gym, it is less effective from an exercise point of view. A 2011 study of urban public school children in Missouri showed that both boys and girls take more steps and work up a higher heart rate when recess is held outdoors, compared with recess in a gym or classroom. Experimental research has also shown that children who are physically active during recess at school are more likely to stay active after school, according to Olga S. Jarrett, a professor of early childhood education and science education at Georgia State University, who is nationally renowned for her research on recess. Conversely, children who have no recess or PE during the school day tend not to compensate after school but are instead more likely to get stuck on the couch. Finally, several studies have showed that outdoor recess can help prevent myopia, or nearsightedness, in elementary school children, since children’s eyes need bright, natural light in order to develop normally.

  Calling for research-based decisions on recess policy in elementary schools, Jarrett writes, “The available research suggests that recess can play an important role in the learning, social development, and health of elementary school children. While there are arguments against recess, no research clearly supports not having recess.” (Italics added.)

  Then there is the anecdotal evidence. Parents who complain that their children are depressed because they have no recess and are inside all day long. Teachers who struggle to make school fun for the youngest children when recess is sacrificed on the altar of standardized testing. Children who act out in the classroom but whose characteristic signs of ADHD improve significantly after they spend more time outside.

  Rebecca Lowen, a history teacher at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, experienced a radical change in her nine-year-old son’s behavior after the family moved to Norway for six months and she decided to leave his ADHD medication behind. Back in Minnesota he had needed the medication to cope with school, but now she wanted to give him a break from the side effects. Besides, her expectations for what her son would learn while the family was abroad were limited anyway. Amazingly, her son stopped fidgeting in the classroom and all of a sudden found joy in his schoolwork, even though he was unmedicated and taught in Norwegian, a language that was new to him.

  “Incredibly, he cannot wait to get to school each day,” Lowen writes in the Minneapolis StarTribune. “He is rapidly learning Norwegian. He is happy to do homework and, in fact, sometimes works ahead or asks his sister to make up math problems for him to solve. At night, he readily reads before falling asleep, something he would never do back home.”

  What accounted for this dramatic change, according to Lowen, was neither an altered diet nor reduction in screen time, two factors that are so
metimes believed to improve ADHD symptoms. Rather, she credited his school experience for the turnaround. “He has three recesses here, rather than just one, as in Minnesota. The school day is about an hour shorter than at home, giving him extra time to play before doing homework. He enjoys nearly two hours of unstructured, outdoor play every day here, four times more than in the United States.”

  ADHD is a recognized condition in Norway, and 3 to 5 percent of Norwegian children and adolescents are estimated to have it. That figure is consistent with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which estimates that 5 percent of children in the US have ADHD. Yet 11 percent of all American children are currently diagnosed with the disorder, a figure that has been rising steadily for at least two decades. Of these, more than half receive medication for it, and among preschoolers who are diagnosed, the number is over 75 percent. Researchers are still scrambling to explain the recent ADHD epidemic, and the debate about how to treat it goes on. Outdoor play is certainly no cure-all for ADHD, but in Lowen’s case it was a game changer. Her son’s behavior no longer fit the diagnosis, nor did his Norwegian teacher see any evidence of it.

  The Sledding Party

  * * *

  Maya quickly adapts to her new school and new routine. So quickly, in fact, that I’m baffled by the change in her behavior. Unlike Lowen’s son, Maya didn’t have ADHD or problems with acting out in class. On the contrary, she was quiet, generally kept to herself, and did her work diligently and well. Her teacher back home had called her smart and, as the admittedly biased parent I was, I would have to agree. The problem was that, even though she had so many things going for her, Maya didn’t seem to enjoy school much. In kindergarten she had struggled with the long school days and complained that she wanted to go back to preschool. She was moody and tired after school, and things didn’t get any better as the homework load started to build up in first and second grade. Her standard five-syllable response whenever anybody asked her something about school was “I don’t remember,” and unless a classmate had a birthday (which meant there was a reasonably good chance of scoring a cupcake), I rarely saw her excited about anything that had to do with school. It was difficult for me to relate. I had always loved school, at least until I was faced with incomprehensible algebra sometime in eighth or ninth grade. Then again, having grown up in Sweden thirty-some years ago, I had a school experience that was very different from hers.