The classrooms of yesterday were places where a studious and obedient group of submissive learners hung on every word of the teacher-narcissist. That is old thinking. It is not what a TPRS classroom is really about, certainly. If happiness is the goal (happiness naturally generates gains in all facets of life), then we need to allow for a new kind of TPRS classroom, where, as long as the kids are focused on the language, it doesn’t have to be all studious and everything. The magnitude of this change continues to impress and amaze me. We are working for language gains, equity in American schools, and, now, the creation of a genuinely new picture of what learning actually looks like in a language classroom.
