Talking about being out on the playground .. here's a paradox I always note as true each year... "The more teachers you have assigned to playground duty, the less the children are supervised..." Why? Because if you have just one teacher out there, they are actually watching the students, if you have two or more teachers out there, they just cluster together with their backs to the students and yap yap yap.
I pointed this out to a student teacher one year. She is now a principal and teaches her staff how to properly do playground duty. One teacher is enough. Stand centrally located and slowly turn in a circle monitoring the activities. DO NOT have one of those stupid "Freeze bells" where the children freeze until the teacher blows her whistle.
They are in vogue now but it sets the teacher up for a power struggle - the kids behind her back will move around to defy her. Some teachers want to assert their power over the students by making them stand there in that frozen position until all 140 students are absolutely frozen. You'll often hear her yelling across the field to FREEZE! at students. This delays getting back into the classroom and Time on Task.
I always blow my whistle right away - even as the bell is still ringing - the children look for one piece of trash as they retreat to their lines. No fuss. The only time this backfired on me was the day little Joey returned to his line with blood streaming from his hand. It seems he picked up what he thought was a glittering wrapper, but was instead a broken piece of glass ! I felt horrible !
The kids are always getting blamed for throwing trash onto the playground. But I knew who the real culprits were ! At the end of the day the kids leave a clean playground - BUT ! I noticed BIRDS rummaging through the trash cans and spreading trash everywhere ! Of course the custodians are going to blame the students instead of themselves. They should have emptied the cans !