The TPSR Alliance: Learning with a Family Who Won't Give Up on You

Abstract

The TPSR Alliance has become a vital community of practice for my graduate students and for me personally. During the past decade, I (the first author) have worked with graduate students at Boston University to provide a program for youth development through sports and fitness at a large, high-needs public high school in the Boston area. Our program, “Get Ready,” is inspired by the teaching personal and social responsibility (TPSR) framework and has offered a variety of services to hundreds of students. The Get Ready program is run through the Institute for Athletic Coach Education in the School of Education at Boston University. Our efforts have been supported in part by a collaboration among Boston-area universities named “Step Up.” The goal of this effort is for universities to provide assistance to Boston public schools in closing the achievement gap and “to give our city's students the best education possible and to help them reach their full potential.”The purpose of this article is to describe the aspects of the TPSR Alliance that make it a community of practice for those of us at Boston University involved in the Get Ready program. It will describe the impact the Alliance has had on our youth development program, as well as on us — the coaches and personnel who face the daily challenges of such a program. In particular, I will focus on how the TPSR Alliance is a community of practice that helps us learn about the important aspects of our work.