On a cold, windy February morning, a bus pulls into the Boston University Track and Tennis Center parking lot, and 50 boisterous third-graders tumble out. The children are from the Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Brighton, Mass., and each week, they come to the BU campus to run, play, throw, catch, dodge, jump, skip, and slide.

For the past 35 years, students from Boston public schools have taken part in the School of Education’s Tuesday-Thursday Physical Education Program. Founded in 1972 by John Cheffers, an SED professor emeritus, the program is recognized internationally for its unconventional teaching and learning environment. It also is one of BU’s longest-running community service initiatives involving the city of Boston.

When a school district needs to cut its budget, one of the first programs targeted is often physical education. And yet, with obesity rates among elementary school children hovering at 30 percent, it is more important than ever to engage students in physical activities, says Eileen Sullivan, an SED clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the school’s Physical Education, Health Education, and Coaching Program.

SED is doing just that. Twice a week every semester, graduate students from the Physical Education Program teach three 45-minute classes to children in kindergarten through fifth grade. But the kids don’t play traditional phys-ed games like soccer or basketball. “Too often, team sports discourage children from physical activity by fostering rivalry and low self-esteem,” says Sullivan, the program coordinator. “Our goal is to encourage movement, not competitiveness.”

Read the entire story and view the Tuesday/Thursday Physical Education Program slideshow

Children were bused to the Case Center that September of 1972 and the rest is history. The program has continued to thrive and the cheering on the buses each Tuesday and Thursday can be heard up and down Babcock Street. The students on West campus have the pleasure of hearing and seeing the children bounce off the buses as they greet their leaders who guide them onto Nickerson Field or the indoor facility at the Track and Tennis Center (TTC) at 100 Ashford Street. Come to the TTC any Tuesday or Thursday, from 11-1:15 to see the program in action. We used to teach the children at the Case Center but we are pleased to report our recent home (beginning fall 2005) at TTC is an incredible setting; the children run the indoor track each week and we use three tennis courts as gymnasiums. It is a perfect non-traditional gymnasium to teach a non-traditional physical education program!

Each fall and spring, graduate leaders from the Physical Education Program plan and teach age/developmentally appropriate activities to three groups each Tuesday and Thursday. There are three groups each day with classes running forty-five minutes. The busses drop off one group of about forty students for the 11:00 o’clock class. These students are arranged into three groups. The bus then returns to school and the next group of students return to BU so that the bus can also pick up the first group as the second group of students arrives for their classes. This pattern continues each Tuesday and Thursday. If two schools are involved, the schools elect to send different grades each semester and sometimes we have multi-grades/ages each session.

Eileen Crowley-Sullivan, Program Coordinator for the Physical Education, Health Education, and Coaching Program from Boston University’s School of Education oversees the administrative details of the program, but a doctoral student is appointed as the Director. From 2005-2007, Emily Clapham (SED, Ed.D. ‘08) served as the T-R PE Program Director and she brought her experience in teaching physical education and her passion for meeting the developmental needs of the students. She worked with Dr. Sullivan to introduce the use of heart rate monitors and pedometers for the 4-5th graders. This academic year, 2007-2008, Karen Anderson (SED, ED.M Health Education ’08) serves as the Director and she is continuing the pedometer theme to teach all students in grades 1-5 the use of measuring physical activity level with step counts.

With our Tuesday-Thursday Physical Education Program, our teachers are guided by the National PE standards (National Association for Sport and Physical Education or NASPE) and the Massachusetts Frameworks. They teach what are called skill themes (Graham, 2006) with the elementary education students where the focus is on skill development. Cooperative, all-inclusive physical activities are played and no one is ever excluded. We aim at a participation rate of 100%. The kindergarten through fifth graders are moving about 90% of the time when they come to the Track and Tennis Center at BU. The other 10% is the time for verbal instruction and skill feedback. We want the children to be exposed to a variety of movement experiences so we develop a new skill them curriculum each semester. In addition to the skill themes we teach fitness components. These are blended into the classes. One week the children may be learning and participating in flexibility exercises and another week they may be using medicine balls (med balls) to help develop their core strength. They like to jump and hop through the fitness ladder; although the element of fun is high with the ladder they are also working on their agility skills. 

In addition to planning and teaching movement, graduate leaders work with SED PE 511 students five of the nine weeks of the program. Typically, the graduate and undergraduate leaders teach their own classes for a full four weeks before elementary and early childhood students join the practicum session with the Tuesday-Thursday Program. The experience of each graduate leader is further enhanced as he/she works with undergraduate non-movement majors. For this reason, graduate leaders must be familiar with all the content taught in the required movement course for non-majors, SED PE 511. Often graduate leaders are asked to teach some games and activities during the game seminars the first few weeks of this SED PE 511 class.

There is a four-fold purpose for our Tuesday-Thursday Physical Education Program:

1. To provide a quality movement experience for children in the inner city who do not have regular physical education in their schools
2. To provide a pre-practicum for the preparation of Physical Education licensure students at Boston University (graduate and undergraduate)
3. To provide the opportunity for serious research into the learning process of children and the teaching behaviors of the leaders
4. To expose Elementary Education majors to a movement experience (SED PE 511 students join the T-R Program for five weeks as assistants)

Everyone benefits from our Tuesday-Thursday PE Program-the graduate and undergraduate licensure students who acquire hands-on teaching experience, the children from the Boston schools who benefit from the instruction, the elementary education majors who join the T-R PE Program to play and teach some movement activities, and the faculty who mentor and guide the students to become more effective teachers in the gymnasium.

During 2006-2007 Dr. Sullivan and doctoral student, Emily Clapham, obtained a technology grant from Boston University. The name of the grant was called, TECH HEARTS (Teaching and Educating Children through Health & How to Exercise And Reach Target Scores in Physical Education. They used funds to purchase heart rate monitors to teach the 4th and 5th graders from the Tuesday-Thursday Physical Education Program to monitor their heart rates. We will be posting a link about the results of this grant soon.