More than 8 in 10 public schools are seeing stunted behavioral and socioemotional development in their students, according to May 2024 data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ School Pulse Panel, according to an article in Education Week.
In Spokane, Wash., the school district has developed a program to help elementary schoolers who may have trouble managing their emotions. Engage IRL (“in real life” in internet terms) is a two-year-old initiative that links a classroom cellphone ban with expanded extracurriculars to give students opportunities to engage in real life and off screens. It starts as early as kindergarten, says Stephanie Splater, the executive director of athletics and after-school programs for the 29,000-student district, and it teaches lessons children would not likely learn from watching hours of YouTube videos on a cellphone or tablet screen.
Elementary schools tend to struggle less with digital distraction problems than middle and high schools. Still, more than half of kids have their own personal tablets before entering kindergarten, and 1 in 4 have their own smartphones by age 8, according to a report released last year from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that conducts research on youth technology use.
The Education Week article describes 4th and 5th graders having fun playing the basketball shooting game H-O-R-S-E, using the name of their school, A-D-A-M-S. They do dribbling relays and have short practice games, focusing on basketball’s “triangle offense.” After practice, Olivia Collins, a 4th grade teacher who runs the school’s basketball club, congratulates the students on their attitudes — not on their athletic prowess.
“I will say excellent job with sportsmanship, because playing a game can be hard,” Collins says. “Some people got frustrated, and rather than getting angry, what did they do? They took a break, and that’s OK.”
There are going to be ups and downs during a basketball game, she says. “It’s sports, it’s competitive. I would rather you take a break and then get right back into it, than get angry” and ruin the game for others.
“Elementary (age) is important to us,” Splater says. “We know that we are teaching great lifelong habits, and we want (students) to connect and feel a sense of belonging at their school site” early on.
There are some hurdles to participation for younger kids that are less of an issue with older students. For example, parents may not want an elementary-age child walking home later in the afternoon or taking a city bus after an activity ends. (The district has set up activity buses at select elementary schools to help alleviate that problem).
“Sometimes we have to convince people that it’s OK that kindergartners are there after school,” Splater says. “They don’t need a nap.”
Younger students participate in many of the same clubs and sports older ones do, including volleyball, cheerleading, knitting, arts and crafts, and coding. But some activities are specific to the elementary school age group.
One elementary school hosts an informal “stay and play” club, where students can compete in board games or just hang out on the playground after school.
Other districts should consider creating such loosely structured clubs in the future, suggests Faith Rogow, an media literacy scholar and author of Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates.
“I think it’s a great idea to offer kids lots of opportunities for lots of activities,” Rogow says. “At the same time, especially for littles, we know that often what they’re lacking the most is just opportunity for free play, where they get to make the rules, do what they want.”
Free-form play teaches students to negotiate with their peers and figure out how to make a game fair to everyone, Rogow says. “After-school activities, for a whole variety of reasons, often are very structured,” she says.
Collins, the 4th grade teacher at Adams, remembers growing up in the 1990s and running around with kids in her neighborhood until it got dark. She hopes her work in extracurriculars allows her students to experience the freedom she did as a child.
With more activities filling their time, children today can almost get a taste of the era of being told to “play outside, when the lights come on, go home,” she says, as opposed to “technology … all the time.”
Education Week
