No Air

This year my eyes have been opened to the other side of Chicago (and, I believe, also the other side of this country) on the opposite end of what I've been seeing otherwise for my whole life. Recess is one of those times when I see it the most.

I grew up with a soccer field, a baseball diamond, four swing sets, a jungle gym, four basketball hoops, three slides, monkey bars, teeter totters (I hear you people also call them see saws), and tire forts in my playground as I was going through the primary grades a few years shy of 20 years ago. I was able to run free and tear around for two, sometimes three times during the day. There was enough room for snow forts, kick ball, world cup soccer, freeze tag, and vicious games of boys-catch-girls. If we, heaven forbid, had an indoor recess due to extreme rain or snow situations, we had a big gym with tons of equipment in which to get our energy out.

My kids rarely get outside. They get one 15-minute recess a day. Where do we go outside, do you ask? It's called the grassy pasture by my school's administration. I call it the dirt patch. It's a chunk of ground that's about 15 feet wide and 15 yards long. No slides, no monkey bars, no basketball hoops. Just dirt. A brick border wall. Random shrubs and trees that have popped up and invaded games of red rover and tag. Oh, and a nice little sewer drain right in the middle. That's in case they successfully avoided the bushes.

Not only does this patch get ridiculously gross whenever it rains, it falls in the shadow of the school most of the day so the sun can't dry it. If we are within 15 days of any rainfall, it's a muddy mess and we can't use it. It's not my administration's fault that we have little to no options, the building where our school rents has restrictions that they need to follow as well (the first two floors are offices and a day care, and a class of 23 second-graders running around doesn't allow the little kids to nap with all the noise). My principal usually is really good at using her resources as best she can, but there are some things she can't do. She can't wave a wand and give us a field. She can't make a playground appear out of nowhere. She can't ask the day care center below us to have their 2 and 3-year-olds just not nap all day. She knows it stinks and she wishes it could change too. It is just a crappy situation. 

But what, then, becomes of my kids? With virtually zero access to fresh air (our windows are sealed shut and can't be opened due to security and safety reasons) throughout the day, recess often happens inside our own room. It happens within the same four walls where we eat breakfast, give instruction, eat lunch, have art class, and learn Spanish. I almost don't even care about the equipment any more. I'm almost even happy with the dirt patch when we even get to use that. It's a far cry from soccer fields and jungle gyms and kickball, but at least it's fresh air. It's outside. They can run. They can make up games. They can be kids. 

To the right, they're throwing a ladybug funeral in the wood chips. 

But, as I've seen throughout this whole year, East Garfield Park is not an easy place to be a kid. It can even be suffocating at times. There's not much air out there, but we're gasping at any chance to take a breath.