Recess!

At some of my elementary schools I go out for recess with my students and play. Here are two things that I forgot about recess.

Playground Drama
I was skipping with 3 kids and there appeared to be some sort of fight going on between the 2 girls. I was turning the rope and the other rope-turner would always intentionally make it impossible for the girl jumping in to jump. The girl who stopped the rope would then take over turning the rope. This annoyed me as well because it seemed like no one was having fun, and things came to a head when one started crying. I had no idea what to do, but some older girls came over and let the girl cry on her shoulder, talked about it (I assume) and then left the other girl who was part of this fight standing alone looking very lost. I had no idea who was in the wrong or why, but I decided that the girl alone didn't need me to abandon her too so we kept skipping. I'm happy I'm not 7 anymore.

Energy Levels
As in kids have way more than I do. After the first bell at Ohyama I joined in on the "morning run" where the WHOLE school runs outside around the track (apparently they do this until February) for about 8 minutes. After the run and a break, I taught one class (Do you like banana? Yes, I do!) and then it was recess time. I joined the roku-nensei (6th grader) girls in a game of tag, and realized that they could both run faster and were far cleverer than I at tag strategy. One of the girls was really sweet and when I was exhausted from fruitless chasing, let me tag her so she would be "it"* and I could take a rest.

*they don't call it being "it" in Japan, I think it's more like dragon/demon, but I'm not quite sure.