2 minute read
Playground Leaders
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Mr Cliff Powys
Deputy Head of Preparatory At TSS Prep, we often talk about leadership without a badge. The idea that boys demonstrate leadership and their capability to lead without having the formal title or recognition of a badge. This is a powerful message and one which leads to a lifelong commitment of service and achievement.
As we have done throughout this year, strengthening and enhancing our behaviour approach has been a clear priority. We have implemented a new value system and ethos at TSS Prep around the acronym T.S.S. – Teamwork, Scholarship and Service . You can read more about this in the previous article in the magazine. Our Playground Leaders program is a direct result of developing mentors for our younger students who may model positive play and interaction as well as have someone as a buddy to help them facilitate games and develop strong friendship groups.
Often we take for granted that all boys will be able to make friends easily or just learn how to play by ‘getting amongst it’. Experience and our behaviour data shows that yes, certainly that may be the case for most of our boys, but some do need that explicit and deliberate approach to engaging with peers and friends positively. Our Playground Leaders provide a solid example of how to play and engage but also a friendly face to help solve playground disputes and peer to peer disagreements which impact on playtime. They are distinctive anywhere in the playground and they wear High Visibility Vests with Playground Leaders marked clearly. Our Playground Leaders also carry game cards and when they see a group of boys who are not engaged in any play, facilitate a game and get those boys active.
Our Housemasters have been instrumental in the choosing of our Playground Leaders and quite often will rotate this responsibility within their House so that many of their boys get the opportunity to demonstrate their leadership. Having a mentor can have a powerful and positive impact in a young person’s life and with our Playground Leader initiative, we are planning on providing more opportunities for our young boys to identify strong examples on which to model their own behaviour.
