So we were talking about how lesson plans lead to less interesting classes in TPRS.
Canned TPRS lesson plans are based on insecurity about what is going to happen in the class. In that way, it kind of resembles life when it is too planned out – a bit stifling and devoid of any real interest.
We need serendipity and surprise in our TPRS classes. But many of us want those qualities without being willing to take the risk. The result is in effect to squeeze the life out of a story before it happens. It is not good for TPRSers to keep singing the same tired old TPRS song that new people need “rails” for their new CI train to travel down so that they don’t get lost. Thinking in that way has become a religion.
Since it is one that is based in fear and insecurity, I disagree with the planned approach. Far more often than we want, we must let our freak flags fly and in this work, even if other people don’t get us, or if we think that they might not want us to.
eSerendipity and surprise won’t ever happen in the teacher’s classroom, we will never get to the inner layers of the TPRS onion, until we curtail the targeting of structures in our TPRS classrooms.
Not only that, we will save a lot of time spent planning and have more time for ourselves, for our lives outside the classroom.
(to be continued)