For the past several weeks, I’ve been teaching PE every Wednesday to third, fourth, and fifth graders. Before that, I spent a couple of years playing volleyball and doing other gym activities with K through 8. I went into it thinking mostly about physical activity, but the more time I spend playing games with kids, the more I realize how much else is happening during something as simple as a game of kickball.Think about what happens when a kid kicks the ball and gets out. They have to deal with the disappointment, accept the call, and get back in line. Someone misses an easy catch and has to deal with letting the team down. Another kid thinks they were safe when everyone else says they were out. Throughout the game, they have to wait their turn, pay attention, follow rules, communicate, control their emotions, and cooperate with kids they might not necessarily choose as friends. Then, a few minutes later, they get another chance to try it all again.
I’ve become completely fascinated by this. We talk about teaching self-regulation, resilience, sportsmanship, and social skills as if they always require a lesson plan. Sometimes they do, but a game creates a place where kids have to actually practice those skills. You can explain to a child how to handle disappointment, or you can let them experience getting out in kickball, being frustrated for thirty seconds, and then discovering that the game goes on.
It has also made me think a lot about my own childhood. My father wasn't a sports person. We didn't play catch together, and he didn't teach me how to throw a football or hit a baseball. That's not a complaint, because the interesting thing is that he didn't really have to. The neighborhood kids taught us.
After school, we would meet in somebody's yard or wherever we could find enough space and play tackle football, kickball, baseball, or kill the carrier. Tackle football without pads probably wasn't the wisest activity, although I still jokingly attribute my strong bones to it. But those games required almost nothing. For football or kickball, you basically needed a ball, some kids, and enough space to establish where the goals or bases were.
Nobody organized it for us. We chose teams, figured out boundaries, argued about whether someone was in or out, changed rules when something wasn't working, got angry with one another, worked it out, and usually came back and played again. We were learning how to organize ourselves without realizing that we were learning all these psychosocial skills.
I don't want to romanticize my childhood. I got bullied, kids could be cruel, and there were plenty of things about those experiences that weren't ideal. But we had an enormous amount of face-to-face interaction with other kids, and I wonder what happens when children have fewer opportunities for that kind of unstructured group play.
There are obvious physical-health implications when kids spend more time sitting and less time running, jumping, throwing, catching, and climbing. Those activities help develop coordination, balance, strength, fitness, and strong bones. But I am increasingly interested in the social implications. Where do children learn how to organize themselves into a group? Where do they practice negotiating rules, solving disagreements, coordinating their actions with other people, losing gracefully, controlling frustration, and working together toward a common goal?
That's why I've developed a completely new appreciation for teaching something as basic as kickball. It doesn't require expensive equipment or a specialized facility, and a child doesn't have to be an accomplished athlete to participate. Yet once the game starts, twenty kids have to agree that the same rules apply to everyone. They have to take turns, communicate, deal with disappointment, control their impulses, and recognize that what they personally want at that moment isn't always what the group needs.
This has changed how I think about Youth Services more broadly. Sports can create these experiences, but so can cooking together, hiking, cultural activities, outdoor projects, traditional food activities, and making things together. The activity matters, but what happens between young people while they are doing it may matter just as much.
Our goal shouldn't simply be to produce healthier kids or better athletes. We should be helping young people become comfortable participating in a group, working alongside other people, dealing with frustration, recovering from mistakes, solving problems, and understanding that they belong to something larger than themselves.
We aren't just teaching children how to play games. We're giving them a place to practice being part of a community.
