TPR Storytelling® inspires me
TPRS® enlivens me. TPRS® empowers me. TPRS® is
world-changing. TPRS® is more than just a method.
TPRS® is about more than just teaching languages.
TPRS® is fun. TPRS® brings joy and a love of learning
languages to students. TPRS® makes my classroom more
loving.
TPRS® eliminates the take-home work load that tears me
away from my family and friends and life pleasures so I am
more present and energetic when I’m teaching. TPRS®
improves problem-solving skills.
TPRS® improves interpersonal relationships. TPRS®
makes me and my students more authentic and transparent.
TPRS® turns my students into risk-takers. TPRS® makes
me and my students more outgoing and sociable. TPRS®
can inspire, enliven and empower my students. TPRS® is
fuel.
Here’s the secret that good language teachers know: There
is nothing magic about a book. There is nothing magic
about the languages we teach. It’s all just words.
There is, though, magic in the combination of imagination
and people that, when mixed together, bring books to life,
bring languages to life and bring kids to life.
TPRS® is a renewable energy source we can all run on.
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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INTRODUCTION
“Unless you know Karen and have seen that her initial visions eventually
become part of mainstream TPRS, she can seem kind of spooky and what
she’s saying can seem kind of spooky to the rest of us. But I know her, and if
she thinks something’s worth trying, it’s going to be the next big thing.” –
Jason Fritze, NBCT
I was sitting on the back porch of the conference center after just finishing a
coaching session at the 6th Annual National TPRS® Conference. 7 teachers
had followed me out asking to keep practicing coaching personalization. We
sat in a circle in the sun and they took turns. Those 7 so far exceeded my
expectations for the potential of the session, that I was stunned.
What if I’ve been doing this wrong all along? I thought. What if ALL
teachers who come to TPRS® workshops could get this good after just one
workshop? What if we’ve been doing it wrong all along and holding
potentially phenomenal teachers back while we’re training them to be
simply good teachers?
The thought haunted me and tortured me. What if in my determination to
present good workshops and good conferences I had failed to realize that
teaching with TPRS® is, in fact, quite a bit simpler than I had made it out to
be?
What if I’ve spent the last 11 years doing it wrong? What if everyone who
had ever come to one of my workshops or our conferences could have gotten
this good this fast? What if I should have been nothing more than a
facilitator all along, allowing each teacher’s natural genius to explode?
I am a slightly obsessive perfectionist.
This thought drove me completely out of my mind.
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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Who is this book for?
The intention of this series of coaching books and workshops is to provide
TPRS® teachers, presenters and coaches with the tools they will need to
teach on their own more effectively. Many people believe that it takes 8-10
workshops to get good at TPRS® . I’m not sure if I ever believed that, but I
do know that there was a time when I had only been to a couple of TPRS®
workshops and I was really bad at TPRS® . Thankfully, Blaine Ray, the
inventor of TPRS® , says that bad TPRS® is better than good traditional
teaching any day. It’s not the textbook or curriculum that’s the problem. It’s
the difficulty we teachers have in bringing the textbook to life in a way that
is meaningful to our students. When we teach the kids, not the book,
according to Blaine, we uncover a whole new way to teach.
Greg Stevens is a Spanish teacher in Northern California who attended one
workshop in San Francisco and over the course of the following year
practiced one TPRS® skill per week in his classes. By the end of that year
his mastery of TPRS® was so complete, that we hired him to work for
Fluency Fast.
A fellow foreign language teacher who was wanting to learn TPRS®
observed Ben Slavic, a French teacher in Littleton, Colorado, and asked for
help. When Ben told her to attend more workshops, she said she didn’t have
time. She was ill and did not have long to live and wanted to be able to teach
with TPRS® in the time she had left. Ben wrote down the directions for
becoming a better TPRS® teacher in his book “TPRS® in Less Than a
Year” (available through www.goodteachingstuff.com).
I began presenting TPRS® workshops in 1996. What I have learned through
attending and presenting workshops is that, just as with anything else, we do
not learn by listening to lectures. We learn by doing. We learn by trying and
failing. We learn through experiential education. We learn by asking
questions. We learn by designing our own experiences. We learn by coming
back after experimenting to get feedback.
This book is intended for:
1. Experienced TPRS® teachers who would like to run TPRS® workshops;
2. Teachers who have been to a workshop or two and would like to organize
regional, informal coaching sessions in their states;
3. Teachers who are isolated and trying to supplement a workshop with
coaching in small departments or on their own.
4. Teachers who are already proficient at TPRS, but who struggle to create
stories “on their feet” and would like to prepare less.
5. Teacher who would like to connect with their students more authentically.
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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The Gradual Transition from Traditional
Workshops….
I attended my first TPRS® workshop in December of 1995 during my first
year of teaching high school Spanish at a public school. After that one day
workshop with Blaine Ray in Littleton, Colorado, I began teaching with
TPRS® immediately, entirely abandoning my textbook. I was not by any
means a good teacher. Neither TPRS® nor the textbook could have saved
me or my students from the fact that I was a first year teacher on a mission
to teach as well as my junior high and high school Spanish teachers had
taught me. I am nothing if not determined, however. I emailed Blaine Ray
constantly, trying out versions of tests and stories. I attended more
workshops on scholarship. I sat by the hot tub with a legal pad and picked
Blaine Ray’s brain late into the evening. In spite of my lack of experience, I
was consumed by a passionate desire to share TPRS®. I began presenting
workshops and in-services on TPRS® within 18 months of graduating from
college. Again...not good workshops.
I was working on a Masters in pedagogy and Spanish and dedicated myself
to studying Dr. Stephen Krashen and Dr. James Asher and reading research.
I stood quietly next to Dr. Krashen and brought him coffee. I drove him to
the airport. I took him to dinner. Much to my surprise and gratitude, my
initial position as self-appointed gopher eventually built into friendship and
a professional relationship that culminated in collaborative projects such as
the International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (www.ijflt.org). I
wrote the TPRS® textbook ancillaries for Paso a paso 1 and 2 and
Realidades 1 and 2 for Prentice Hall and also co-authored books with Blaine
Ray. I started my own company, Karen Rowan Workshops, Inc., and over
the next 10 years began presenting workshops independently and later began
presenting for Blaine Ray Workshops, Inc, as well. I took a new job as a
high school Spanish teacher and department chair at a private school.
I had attended workshops that included basic information on language
acquisition theory, a demonstration in a language unknown to the teachers,
an explanation of how to do TPRS® and a rapid explanation of how to test,
assess, assign homework and organize the weekly lessons. I presented in the
same way. My workshops got better over the years, but it wasn’t until I
started applying the brain research and effective language acquisition
research that I was practicing in my classroom to the presentation of
workshops, that they began to change drastically.
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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…to Coaching Workshops…..
The Inaugural Coaching Workshop, Oklahoma, 2001
In 2001 at Jody Klopp’s 1st National TPRS® Conference, I attempted to try
out my new brain-child, coaching, in front of a group of 200 people. It was
the biggest professional disaster of my life up to that point. No one
understood the directions. I walked around watching small groups get
frustrated and ultimately begin just chatting amongst themselves. I passed
one group that, by ignoring my directions, had managed to working
effectively. It was led by a man I had not yet met, Jason Fritze. I presented
another session that day on adapting the textbook to TPRS® which was
boring, but packed with people.
Coaching At NTPRS®, 2003: Naperville, IL.
In 2001 I called Blaine and told him I thought I had something new. I asked
for a chance to present coaching at the 3rd annual National TPRS®
Conference in Naperville. He was skeptical. I offered to run the entire
conference for him in exchange for an opportunity to run coaching
workshops. He agreed. Luckily, Lisa Reyes, a Spanish teacher in Naperville,
Illinois, contacted me asking to help with hospitality. She became my
indispensable right-hand woman and would later become the Director of the
National Conference. (A far better one, I might add!) I had naively
scheduled very few coaching sessions. There were wait lists to get into them
and those who couldn’t get in asked to stand and observe. I coached only
asking question and was the only coach. About 50 people participated in
those sessions and another 50 or so observed.
Coaching At NTPRS®, 2004: Las Vegas, NV.
The next year I ran the 2004, 4th Annual National conference in Las Vegas,
Nevada. For the first time we added a week of Fluency Fast Language
Classes in Spanish, French and German the week prior to the conference.
We had a pre-conference workshop to train more coaches and about 10
coaches ran their own coaching sessions during the week. 270 people
attended that year and about 220 of those attended at least one coaching
session. Many attended 3 or 4. The final session was
advanced coaching, and for the first time we moved beyond coaching just
basic questioning. We added coaching rules and an ordered set of steps to
practice.
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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Coaching At NTPRS®, 2005: Kansas City, MO
In 2005 the 5th Annual National TPRS® conference was in Kansas City,
MO, and by this time I had also become the Director of Fluency Fast
Language Classes. During that year people who wanted to become Fluency
Fast teachers apprentice-taught Fluency Fast classes with us while we
coached them. More coaches were trained at the pre- conference “Coaching
for Coaches” workshop. We opened up the coaching rooms in the evenings
when sessions were not being held and people came in to coach each other.
Diane Greiman and Ben Slavic became coaching junkies. I wandered
through occasionally, but the posters on the wall provided the basic
directions and they coached small groups independently. One night they
even practiced circling at a Wendy’s. It was at that conference because of
the success of “open coaching rooms” that coaching began to transform. All
but about 50 of the 300 attendees were coached. That week we brainstormed
coaching on one skill at a time: circling, parking, personalization and
reading.
….to Personalization as the Heart of TPRS
Coaching At NTPRS®, 2006: Burlington, VT
The following year at the 6th Annual National TPRS® Conference in
Burlington, Vermont, Jason Fritze presented a coaching session on reading.
Pia Gutierrez presented one on Parking. I presented one on Personalization
and a handful of beginning coaching sessions. The personalization session
was created by Jo Newman and Jason Fritze and me the night before the
session. A table full of people who had stayed late at the hotel restaurant
were our guinea pigs.
The personalization session was klunky, as most sessions are the first time
they are presented, but 7 people gathered on the patio later that afternoon
wanting to spend more time on coaching personalization.
We came up with a pay it forward approach and they all agreed to head out
to dinner right then and pass this on to as many people as possible before the
next morning. The “pay it forward” approach was later re-named “Drop
Coaching” because they idea is to teach someone to coach and then drop
them into a new group and move on. As each coach trains a new coach, the
number of coaches grows rapidly. An all day coaching workshop on circling,
parking and personalization led by about a dozen coaches resulted in this
book, a compilation of notes from participants and coaches which they
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
6
scribbled on notebook paper and stuck in my back pocket.
What was wrong?
In workshops are trying codify and explain how we have seen amazing
teachers teach. We observe and we explain. We imitate and try to replicate.
True TPRS teaching is impossible to replicate in a workshop because in our
classrooms we have built personal relationships with our students that build
the stories.
I observed Blaine in Bakersfield, California in 1998 talking about his
students, incorporating details from their lives into stories and sometimes
just talking about them and complimenting them. When we tried to explain
what he usually did, it was difficult to replicate the history and relationship
he had with each student that made the story compelling and memorable.
I observed Joe Neilson in his classroom in Tucson breaking every rule we
had every created and not following a single direction we had ever written
down to explain best practices. The way we had described it, what he was
doing wasn’t even really TPRS. It was better. It was far better that our
directions for how to do TPRS.
I observed dozens of other teachers in their classrooms who had followed
the directions. What they were doing could not be described as TPRS,
either. In general it wasn’t even comprehensible input. It most certainly
wasn’t better. It was stilted and uninspired and boring. Even when it
followed the directions, it still was not approaching the magic we were
trying to help teachers approximate.
Not all teachers, certainly. Some seemed to have a natural talent for
engaging their students in compelling stories.
So what were we missing? How were we failing to support all teachers?
And how did seven teachers achieve near-perfect TPRS in such a small
space of time? What had made us suddenly so amazingly proficient at
training teachers? And could it be done again?
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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Practice Makes Perfect.
Through each workshop I have presented in the last 11 years I have worked
on the coaching component of TPRS®. I have experimented with scripting,
with having groups take turns so that each person adds one new skill on their
turn I have tried dividing groups by language and dividing them by level. I
have tried writing the story in advance. I have tried asking participants to
choose their own words. Each choice represented an error. Sometimes
colossal errors, sometimes minor errors. The origin of the word “sin”
actually comes from archery. It is the word used to mean “to miss the
bullseye.” When we sin, we correct and aim again. Ready... fire... aim. I am
quite certain that I have made more mistakes than most other coaches or
teachers who came by teaching by being talented at it. I am not talented. I
just stick with problems longer. My mistakes have been bigger and grander
and more public and more colossally embarrassing. My hope is that this
book will contain all of my corrected errors so that other teachers will not
have to spend quite so much time “sinning.”
I no longer present traditional TPRS® workshops at all. All of my
workshops and trainings involve only a small amount of direct instruction
and are followed by large doses of coaching and practice. If traditional
workshops were effective, teachers would not have to invest a small fortune
attending 8-10 of them to become proficient at the method. The current
manifestation of my trainings seek to forever embed the experience of
magical “home run stories” in the long-term memory. A bigger bang for
your buck. Coaching can be applied to any Comprehension-Based
methodology. Take Berty Segal Cook’s Levels of Questioning and coach it.
Take James Asher’s Total Physical Response and coach it. Coaching is like
Total Physical Response in that it deeply imbeds teaching strategies in our
muscle memory.
WHO SHOULD RUN A GUIDED
PERSONALIZATION WORKSHOP?
Anyone who has been to a TPRS coaching workshop him or herself and
wants to “pay it forward.” Some people are more talented coaches than
others, but anyone can do it. Be supportive, interrupt as little as possible so
that teachers can find their rhythm and eliminate any inclination to criticize
or judge. Bringing in an experienced coach will prevent you from giving it a
try and being able to pay it forward. Drop Coaching means training coaches
who will train new coaches who will train new coaches... until we reach
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
8
critical mass.
If you do not want to coach, these techniques are just as applicable as Greg
Stevens used them. Apply them one at a time to your own teaching in your
own classroom on your own timetable.
60% of all human communication is nonverbal, body language; 30% is your
tone, so that means 90% of what you're saying ain't coming out of your
mouth. – Will Smith, Hitch
Karen Rowan, Fluency Fast, ©2014
[email protected] / www.fluencyfast.com
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