A way to train teachers that I have found very successful is to just return to something Blaine was doing before all the fracturing of TPRS over the past twenty years, Passive Mini Stories, or the infamous PMS term.
Perhaps it was the acronym that threw people off the scent of true TPRS, because they forgot this simple yet brilliant strategy to get a teacher’s TPRS legs under her. Passive Mini Stories provided a set of training wheels and kept the training of the new teacher firmly in the body where it belongs.
Instead of being out of their minds with new ideas to think about and things to do, teachers using passive mini stories, and later actual story scripts, were able to find a nice and simple way to ramp their way up to full blown stories that brought the quality that they wanted.
A secondary level, beyond the PMS but not quite up to full Blaine-type stories, was the story script. Few teachers avail themselves of them now, but they work. Anne Matava and Jim Tripp have the best ones out there, indeed the only ones that I know about. Anne has an important chapter in her script books that teaches teachers how to write really good story scripts.
Combined with an emotionally safe coaching setting, where the coaches don’t tell new teachers what to do but rather gently ask questions about options the teacher might have while working on her feet, passive mini stories and story scripts can provide the necessary lead up to doing actual stories with confidence and ease – like Blaine!
It’s time to return to the basics.