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Transitioning from PQA into a Story 1
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3 thoughts on “Transitioning from PQA into a Story 1”
My friend Byron loves your Realm idea, Ben. I like and can relate to this posting, and I felt obligated to comment just to get it out of the archives for your other readers. Just out of curiosity, which role do YOU have in the Realm?
There is that Kierkegaard quote again from two years ago. I love it.
I do have a list of Realm characters, by the way, that seems to have been swallowed by my computers, so I am looking for it in my clasroom. I know that I have sent that list to colleagues doing the Realm, so if anyone is reading this who has that file please send me a copy.
My role in the Realm. Susie and I were just talking around that topic today. Not the Realm, but my role with the kids in stories, so it applies. I used to be an AP teacher, and I was watching some video of me teaching and I saw that guy, but not the guy I wanted to see, the other guy, The Guy Who Listens To Kids.
Sometimes, as Susie pointed out to me, all we have to do to make our stories come to life is JUST LISTEN to the gold coming from our students’ minds in the form of cute suggestions for the story. Stop fretting about getting the right story script and let the kids create their own (which is one of the premises on which I based the Realm idea).
I digress, but what role, indeed, do we play in the interlocutory process that is TPRS? Are we narrators? Do we get to play? How much of US do we allow into the narration? Obviously, I don’t want to be the Village Idiot. I don’t want to be the Troll Under the Bridge (one year a kid who NEVER would have gotten involved was quite happy to spend the year under his bridge. Whenever a character went over the bridge on a location change – two tables together – he reached up and tried to grab an ankle as it went by. That was the extent of his contribution to the class).
No, I think my role is to become invisible in class, to allow the story so much muscle that the kids hear my voice but don’t notice me. I am the narrative voice only. I would love to learn how to become the sweet narrative voice of the pilot/narrator in the Little Prince, actually. The tone there, the feeling of love and respect for the protagonist, is a thing that I feel has never been captured in anything else I have ever read. Susie and I agreed today (at Starbucks University), that in TPRS it is not about being a teacher, but about being someone who coaxes language from children by showing love and respect for them.
Anyway, a long answer to a fine question. The short answer is, in the Realm or in stories, become invisible, don’t put your own ideas on the kids, let them create by enforcing the rules, let them learn what it means to be happy in school, let them fly.
The days when I I stay up a little too late the night before and just let the PQA flow trumping the script are always the best classes. It’s just people chatting, me throwing in a few pop-ups and circling some word that seems important to me (because I use it a lot when I speak to the natives, and the kids thinking that we have had an easy day.
Sometimes I can’t believe that I get paid to laugh for hours at a time.