This was written in 2012 but since the topic came up here, I thought I’d share it again, for those still doing TPRS. The same basic principle applies to NTCI anyway:
I am presenting in Las Vegas on this topic of transitioning from PQA into a story so I am republishing this article from 2007 to get my mind back into it. It’s a skill we all need right about in October when we start to crank up stories.
Question: How to go from PQA into a story?
One possible (if lengthy) response: In PQA, I always try to remember to take the first bit of information that lends itself to being bent into something weird and I go with it. I push it, if I have to, but generally, if the kids are doing their job of supplying cute answers, and if I am doing my job of circling creative questions, we can quickly get into something interesting.
This means that if I found out during PQA that Jenny has two guinea pigs, I just leave the direct questioning of Jenny and instead ask the class about these rodents. Jenny is too “close” to her little darlings to make up weird stuff about them.
But the class is not! So I would just stop the discussion about Jenny’s rodents, and start one about an imaginary rodent. We don’t want to offend Jenny. To heck with Jenny – talking to her is keeping everything unintentionally too real. Who cares how many guinea pigs this child has? I try instead with:
Class, there was a guinea pig!
Nothing great here yet, but I try to spin this into a bizarre image. I point to an empty part of the room. The left brainers have trouble with this, but the right brainers are ready to pounce.
Class, the guinea pig was eating!
I remember to embellish with nuance. I say the words with mystery, maybe yelling them, maybe whispering them. In doing this, and not saying the words like a computer merely conveying information, I am focusing the minds of my students on what the words mean, and not the words.
Right brainers lean forward. Left brainers try to figure out why. They control the classrooms in this school, yet these right brain “C” students who never listen are suddenly shouting out insane answers in response to:
Class, what was the guinea pig eating?
And soon this rodent has become Sam, a twelve inch high, twenty inch wide, very hairy, very ugly, toothless rodent who eats earrings.
You can circle your way into that much information in five to seven minutes. Moving from PQA into a story involves getting away from Jenny’s pets, wonderful though they are (to her), and to move the discussion to this more interesting creature.
Now you can simply ask the class to imagine more, to create more, with their group mind. You always use circling to do this. You will find that, even in later classes, sometimes lasting all year, they will find ways to bring Sam back into future stories. It’s what they do.
Why? The answer is precisely because they created it. Of course, in this case, with a creature like this, you have to say no to Sam being brought back into story lines simply because he is so disgusting.
Now what does this rodent have to do with transitioning from PQA into a story? Nothing. Just kidding. It is what we just said: by asking the class to imagine it, to create it, it is their work, their mental effort that is working, and all you have to do is guide the questioning along, and not feel like you have to be funny. I don’t want that kind of pressure on me. It is enough that I just circle!
So I am just describing here how a little twist in the focus of the questioning can get you out of boring PQA questions.
Now, as soon as this becomes real enough to make a student play the role of Sam, you have a story. If it doesn’t naturally evolve into a story as described, let it go. But if it does, stand a kid up to be Sam, and start circling.
At this point, since it is looking more and more like a story, you may want to bring in a problem. You have choices. You can:
- 1. try to parallel this Sam character into a previous story script, one with a pre-set problem, which is waiting in the wings if you need it.
- 2. think of a problem on the spot without basing it on a parallel script.
- 3. wing it, which is what I usually do, not caring if there is a problem, and just see where the circling goes.
I used to like option #3 but now I have moved back to the safety of #1. It’s a long story.
Whichever option you choose, just remember that answers can’t be forced. If they are forced, they are, at best, ineffective. As Pearl Buck wrote in Pavilion of Women,
“All the strength of our listening must gather around the opportune moment of the right answer. And then it will be the right answer.”
So, in order to be successful, you learn to keep in touch with the story script as a guiding force, but you learn to follow the direction of the circling as well.
The natural flow of any circling or, for that matter, any conversation, cannot be directed in any one direction any more than water can be told which way to flow down a hill. It will take its natural, gravity induced, direction. BUT that story scripts needs to be there to follow along with. It’s enough to make a person crazy, this stuff.
However, it’s a good crazy. When we divorce ourselves from any idea of establishing meaning, defining words, telling a story that resembles a script, or even of teaching, then we have arrived at the threshold of a new world, a new experience as teachers.
We are no longer clever TPRSers who worry about how PQA differs from a story, but just people talking to other people in a spirit of shared meaning and a desire to communicate and uplift each other’s experience of life by means of the vivid experience of imagining things together. This is where I see the method going.
This kind of TPRS brings a new day of lighthearted discussion, laughter at the expense of none, language flowing like water in any direction, language that is free to follow in the direction created in each moment of circling during PQA.
As I have said above, I am not so naïve that this kind of classroom experience can be reached without first basing one’s work in the classroom on all the established premises of TPRS. Indeed, the steps of TPRS are just that – stepping stones to a higher experience of teaching.