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March 23, 2011
Helping Kids Resolve Differences
c o n t i n u e d f r o m fron t
panded in Portland from eight to 14
elementary schools, and has a wait
ing list of seven schools, including
four in the Parkrose district.
“Our program is getting great
reviews from schools and that’s
causing the demand from other
schools,” says Jonathan Blasher,
Portland Playworks executive direc
tor. “One thing that’s very helpful is
that we work with each school to
find the ways to be most useful. If a
school has a lot of Somali kids, we
try to find a coach who can speak
Somali Schools have limited re
sources and we try to be as useful as
possible to assist each school.”
The Playworks program begins
with a full-time coach, whose role
might be defined as an assistant
gym teacher. Rather than monitor a
gym class, the Playworks coach
teaches basic games and conflict
resolution skills to individual classes
on a regular basis, usually every
two weeks.
The Playworks coach also helps
supervise lunch recess.
The program is paid for through
fundraising at each school and
through Playworks grants.
For his tim e w orking at
Woodlawn, Ferro said he has ob
served an improvement in student
photo by C liff P fenning /T he
P ortland O bserver
A parachute game at a leadership camp at Rigler School in northeast Portland helps kids play together and work through their differences.
harmony during recess.
“Last year, it would take a long
time for the kids to start a game like
kickball because they had trouble
just making teams,” he said. “First,
you have to have captains, and then
they have trouble figuring out which
friends are going to be on which team,
and before you know it recess is over.
“Now, those games get started
faster because either an adult makes
the teams or they just count 1-2-1-2
and each kid goes to his team and
they play.”
David Flores, a fifth-grader at
Beach Elementary in north Portland,
sees the value of the games.
He was among the dozens of
students who volunteered to be
come ajunior coach during a confer
ence Friday at Rigler Elementary in
northeast Portland w here they
learned more games and bonded
with kids from other schools.
Flores said one thing he learned
was to feel comfortable with speak
ing up.
“I learned to talk more to people,”
he said. “I learned to talk about
myself, too.”
In the 2009 survey, only a third of
students who’d been the victim of
bullying reported the incident to
someone.
Ferro said that while not learning
of the alleged incident at Woodlawn
directly was disappointing, the
progress he can see at the school is
inspiring and will continue as stu
dents, teachers and administrators
learn to utilize his program.
“There’s a lot of focus on test
scores these days, and it’s easy to
forget about the impact recess has
on learning,” he says. “When kids
don’t get to play much, they get
frustrated and they take that into
the classroom with them. When they
get to play, they can work that en
ergy out and they sit down ready to
learn. That’s a much better learning
environment.”
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