When students sense that the instructor is attempting to force learning on them, they instinctively draw back. In the moment they draw back, distance is created, and discipline problems can result. We must find a way to draw our students into the learning.
If we focus on the solution, one day we will go into our classrooms and the problems will be gone. Engaging students in interesting, personalized, and meaningful comprehensible input in the target language is the solution to the classroom management issue.
Critical Point 1: Of all the details and skills a teacher must remember in asking a story, the most critical is to begin a story in a spirit of openness to what can happen. Too many TPRS teachers have failed on this point – they try to force the story, or even follow some story that has already been written, which causes the kids to draw back, because they are being denied access to the creative process of making the story.
Unfortunately, giving up control of the story brings fear into the mind of the teacher (What will happen? Will I keep control of the class?). Do it anyway. Trust that the story will develop from the cute answers suggested by the kids. The teacher must teach while not knowing what will happen, and pay no attention to the fear that the story might fall flat. The teacher must learn to trust that the class, not the teacher, will create the story. When the story is created in this way, good classroom management is assured.
Critical Point 2: It doesn’t always have to be funny. The kids are in our classrooms to learn the language we are teaching them, not to come to a comedy club. As long as CI is occurring, that is enough. CI, however, depends upon personalization, so we need to focus on ways to keep our instruction always on the students, just as Susie Gross has always said.