January 2009
By Andrea Rivera
Arizona Daily Star – Tucson, AZ
Students learn to participate in recess activities and are expected to play nice with new Peaceful Playgrounds Program.
Minor spats and disagreements between children on the Twin Peaks Elementary School playground don’t require adult intervention as long as the students know how to play nice by using rock, paper, scissors.
“We taught them walk, talk or rock, which means walk away and play another game, talk it out, or play rock, paper, scissors if you can’t decide. Whoever wins that, wins the argument,” Twin Peaks Principal Dondi Luce said about the school’s approach to conflict resolution during recess where kids learn to play nice.
Teaching conflict resolution skills to students is the objective of a new program — Peaceful Playgrounds — implemented last week at Twin Peaks, 7995 W. Twin Peaks Road.
Peaceful Playgrounds has been put into practice by more than 7,000 schools across the country to combat conflict, increase motor skills, reduce injuries and maximize playground space and teach children to play nice.
Implementing the program at Twin Peaks, which is in the Marana Unified School District, required about a year-and-a-half of planning by the school’s Safe and Healthy Environment Committee, or the No Bullies Committee as they preferred to be called.
Preventing bullying on campus is the committee’s No. 1 priority, committee chairwoman and school counselor Shari Attebery said.
Attebery and the rest of the committee selected the Peaceful Playgrounds program because loosely structured play, such as recess, provides ample time for students to get into trouble.
“When we saw this, we said this is perfect,” she said about Peaceful Playgrounds.
Recess at Twin Peaks is 15 minutes.
“This is a place where kids can learnconflict resolution skills, they can learn social skills, they can gain friendships and they can feel included,” Attebery said about the playground.
As part of Peaceful Playgrounds, Twin Peaks’ existing playground was transformed into a smorgasbord of activities and all it really took was some cans of paint.
In December, 50 teachers and staff usedplayground stencils and blueprints to paint more than 13 activities on the playground’s concrete basketball court and also near the kindergarten playground.
Traditional games such as hopscotch and four-square boxes were painted on the basketball court, and an alphabet track was painted around the perimeter of the court. A bowling dodgeball circle also is new to the playground.
A playground for the kindergarten students now has number and alphabet boxes so children can learn while playing.
New playground equipment, such as basketballs and soccer balls, also was purchased so there are more options for students. A tetherball court also will be added to the playground, Luce said.
Twin Peaks used $5,000 in federal Title IV grant money to fund the Peaceful Playgrounds program.
A leadership opportunity for students at Twin Peaks also formed out of Peaceful Playgrounds. Sixty students act as Peacekeepers during recess and issue equipment and carry around a playground rule book.
Fourth-grader Alexis Gibbs is one of the Peacekeepers. “It sounds like fun because you get to check out (equipment) and help people play games,” Alexis said about her new role on the playground.
Alexis, 9, said she and her friends are going to make up their own games on the playground now that they have activities painted on the concrete.
Fourth-grader Liam York said recess for him included walking around and sometimes joining in on a game, but he expects recess will be different now. “There will be more games that I can play that I like,” he said. “I like the bowling dodgeball because it was fun to do bowling and dodgeball.”
There’s never major conflict on the Twin Peaks playground, but staff still expect Peaceful Playgrounds to have a positive effect at the school, instructional aide and technology coach Tanya Shackle said.
Shackle has recess duty and sees firsthand what happens on the playground. “I just think it will give them a variety of opportunities. Something different to do every day,” she said. “It won’t be the same doldrums every day. When kids get bored, they tend to bully one another. There won’t be that tendency anymore.”
