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How does the teaching personal and social responsibility (TPRS) model fit into the day-to-day program?

This is an excerpt from Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility through Physical Activity 4th Edition With HKPropel Access by Don R. Hellison,Paul M. Wright,Thomas J. Martinek & David S. Walsh.

To ensure that responsibilities truly become themes throughout the program, it is necessary to create and follow a daily program format—a daily curricular or programmatic structure for TPSR programs (see figure 3.4). It consists of five flexible components, each intended to address one or more of the themes and all intended to reinforce the role of the levels in the program.

We have emphasized throughout this chapter the importance of establishing relationships with kids. Relational time takes place before the program begins or sometimes during or after the program, during which the program leader can interact briefly with some of the kids just to recognize them, say their names, and maybe mention something special about them (maybe just a new pair of shoes). Problems that occurred in the last program or class meeting can sometimes be addressed as well.

The awareness talk more formally opens the meeting, although sometimes it helps to conduct a quick activity such as a warm-up or an icebreaker (or a shoot-around in invasion sports) before the awareness talk. Most often, students can sit in a circle with the program leader. The purpose is to emphasize the importance of taking responsibility in the program and that the first step is putting responsibility into practice (i.e., know, then do). Levels are a useful way to discuss being responsible. This talk should be very brief, at first perhaps only describing Level I or Levels I and II, or, sometimes, just broader concepts, such as “Today let’s really focus on not causing problems for anyone” or “Let’s see how much effort we can put into the activities today.” As soon as possible, kids should be invited to share what they think the program is really about (in their own words) as they understand the basic concept. You can also ask them about the best way to show respect during the day’s activities. Simply choose one or two students to share a sentence describing either of these. If they are even vaguely “in the zone,” thank them, reinforce their statement, and go on to the physical activity lesson.

The physical activity plan takes up most of the time by far. The principles of TPSR, such as the levels and themes, need to be embedded in the physical activities. During this time, program leaders can check how the students are applying the levels in the activities. Doing this enables the leader to view successes and struggles that may occur during the activity. See later chapters for many specific examples of strategies to achieve this.

Near the end of the program, students gather in a circle again for the group meeting to discuss how the program went that day. The discussion should include deciding who made positive contributions and giving advice to the teacher about what worked and what didn’t (but not all in one session). The leader can also ask the group members whom they saw demonstrate the best example of a TPSR level. We have found that kids love being called out in a good way by their peers—a nice way to affirm their ability to be responsible.

Reflection time, in the same circle, is really a time for self-evaluation. The levels can be a way for each student to assess his or her responsibilities that day. One way is by having the students use a nonverbal response during the group meeting (e.g., students raise their hands indicating whether they gave their best effort in the program activities). You can ask students what they can do to improve for the next program session. Periodically, Tom passes out index cards to the students, asking them to grade themselves (i.e., A, B, C, D, F) on how they showed responsibility in a session. They then flip the card over and write about why they gave themselves that grade. Kids usually don’t like to write a lot, so the explanation is very brief. The leader can collect the cards and get some ideas (although sometimes vague ones) about how they thought they were responsible. Dave has a workbook for the kids in his program. They are asked to circle how they performed on each responsibility (high, OK, or needs improvement) for a given session, write about one or more of them, and address the transfer possibility. Again, the process is important here. Chapter 6 provides a more detailed explanation of the daily format.

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