Skip to Content List

  • Skip to primary content
  • Skip to footer content

Site Navigation Lists

  • Fellowship Application
  • Grantmaking Process
  • Contact Us
  • About
    • Mission and Vision
    • Staff
    • Board
    • Leadership Council
    • Impact Reports
    • Impact Photo Series
  • Programs and Impact
    • Our Programs and Impact
    • Education and Youth Development
    • Criminal and Juvenile Justice
    • Addiction and Health Equity
    • Community Fellowships
  • Grantees and Fellows
    • Grantee Database
    • Grantmaking Process
    • Community Fellows
    • How to Apply
  • News and Reports
    • Baltimore Justice Report
    • Newsletters
    • Reports
    • Impact Reports
    • Blueprint for Baltimore
    • OSI in the News
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
    • 20th Anniversary Speaker Series
    • Talking About Race Series
    • Talking About Addiction Series
  • Privacy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Community Guidelines
  • Terms & Conditions
Open Society Institute – Baltimore

Open Society Institute – Baltimore

Open Society Institute (OSI) – Baltimore : Audacious Thinking For Lasting Change

  • Fellowship Application
  • Grantmaking Process
  • Contact Us
  • EN
    • EN
    • ES
  • About
    • Mission and Vision
    • Staff
    • Board
    • Leadership Council
    • Impact Reports
    • Impact Photo Series
  • Programs and Impact
    • Our Programs and Impact
    • Education and Youth Development
    • Criminal and Juvenile Justice
    • Addiction and Health Equity
    • Community Fellowships
  • Grantees and Fellows
    • Grantee Database
    • Grantmaking Process
    • Community Fellows
    • How to Apply
  • News and Reports
    • Baltimore Justice Report
    • Newsletters
    • Reports
    • Impact Reports
    • Blueprint for Baltimore
    • OSI in the News
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
    • 20th Anniversary Speaker Series
    • Talking About Race Series
    • Talking About Addiction Series
Rethinking the school day

Featured in
Education and Youth

Next Article
Protect our children

Education and Youth

Rethinking the school day

Content Social Share Links

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter

Baltimore is a playful, vibrant place.  You need go no further than the parking lot of M&T Bank Stadium to watch adults chasing each other around, football in hand, before and after a Ravens game.  If you stroll through Federal Hill, Patterson Park or Canton on any given evening, you will almost certainly run into an adult kickball, broomball, or dodgeball team on the way to a game.  Even very late on weeknights on the dimly lit field of the park near my home in Hampden, there are without fail adults playing ultimate Frisbee well after dusk.  This is a good thing, but play should not stop with young professionals enjoying kickball, tailgating pigskin fanatics, and hardcore ultimate Frisbee players.

My audacious idea for Baltimore is not only for adults to enjoy the many benefits of a healthy, active lifestyle, but for play to be available to the people who execute it so deftly and naturally, and desire it more wantonly then anyone else.

I’m talking, of course, about Baltimore’s children.

Healthy physical activity for children has become less and less of a school priority as the demands on educators have swayed drastically in the direction of standardized testing and academic rigor.  While pure academics are certainly integral to student’s day, recess was once just as much a part of the day as classroom time.  I’m sure, like me, you remember recess as a positive, exciting part of your day where you played with your friends and classmates in a variety of games.  You had fun, you learned, and you developed a love for one or many sports that you would carry with you the rest of your life.  And, like me, you probably had a caring adult in your life that shaped who you were through coaching and mentoring.

Unfortunately for many students in Baltimore City Schools, this is not their reality.  When we at Sports4Kids came to Baltimore for a demonstration week in 2004, we worked with some schools that had offered no recess the entire year until we showed up.  The children were astonished that they were being allowed to play outside, and that there was a caring adult there who was as energetic and excited about play as they were.  Play is a fundamental part of human existence, and to deny it to our students does a disservice to who they are as people.

Through partnering with 17 BCPSS schools, over the past three years Sports4Kids and its allies have instituted healthy, safe, inclusive and (most importantly) fun physical activity for thousands of students in our city.  All the while, we have seen improving school climate, sense of community amongst students, and burgeoning leadership and teamwork skills in the schools we partner with.  But change will not come through Sports4Kids alone.  We need to rethink what makes up a child’s school day.  It can’t just be long division, and it can’t just be kickball.

My question is simply, why can’t it – and why isn’t it – both?

Related Content

Imagining a safe passage

I propose a simple, but powerful, way for Baltimoreans to support the city’s youth and schools.  It won’t cost a lot of money…

Read More

Post navigation

Previous Article Previous It’s a right, not a privilege
Next Article Next Article Stopping the war on drugs
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Youtube

Subscribe to our mailing list

OSI Logo

Open Society Institute-Baltimore
Bold Thinking, Strategic Action, Justice for All.

© 2025 Open Society Institute-Baltimore
  • Privacy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Community Guidelines
  • Terms & Conditions

OSI-Baltimore has permanently closed. It has been our honor and privilege to partner with and serve the Baltimore community for the past 25 years.

This website is available for historical purposes.  It is no longer being updated.

Skip to top of page