Channeling Vivian Gussin Paley

“A day without storytelling is, for me, a disconnected day. The children at least have their play, but I cannot remember what is real to the children without their stories to anchor fantasy and purpose.” –Vivian Gussin Paley (from The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter, Harvard University Press, 1990, pg. 3)

A Backstory

When I first became an early childhood educator, I knew very little about the work of Vivian Gussin Paley. Over time, I read several of her books and learned about the rich culture of storytelling and storyacting that she nurtured in her preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Her transformative and visionary work with young children was, and still is, eye opening for me.

Paley, who passed away in 2019, believed that young children were natural, wise, and competent storytellers. She understood the deep connections that could be made between stories and human relationships, between fantasy and reality, between symbolism and metaphor, and between the authentically spoken words of young children and the co-creation of an empathetic community of learners.

Throughout her decades of teaching, Paley prioritized listening to children. She took dictation and sometimes made audio recordings as children told her their stories. She always honored their exact wording, mistakes and all. She retold these stories aloud to her classes and had children act them out together. This routine was part of an ongoing storytelling and storyacting process that became deeply entrenched in her work with children. She documented these stories and her experiences and insights in her many books, which include Wally’s Stories, The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter, and The Kindness of Children, among others.

As a Teacher

As young children play and go about their everyday activities, they engage frequently and naturally in story. Just listen in to almost any preschooler or kindergartener as they play, and you will hear them singing, narrating, or just talking aloud to themselves as they work. Their play–whether solitary or with peers, whether with blocks, dolls, playdough, or dress up clothes, tends to elicit a whole world of talking, conversing, and storytelling–sometimes with rather complex storylines that include characters, plot, dialogue, and even sound effects. Children do this so intuitively as they make sense of themselves and the world around them that we often take it for granted. Paley was keenly attuned to this phenomenon and valued and respected their words–their stories–by documenting them, celebrating them, and weaving them into the very fabric of her classrooms.

Paley’s work matters because she shows us what teachers–specifically teachers of young children–are capable of achieving when we let their words and ideas live large in the space. We all have standards to meet, objectives to follow, and explicit skills to teach. I know from my own experience that these things can weigh me down and stifle my creative instincts. But I truly believe that as teachers, we have a responsibility to foster a world of magical and literary thinking in our classrooms. Whether through storytelling and storyacting or through another creative means, it comes down to leaning into our basic human instincts for connection, belonging, and shared experiences.

One Final Thing

The question I often grapple with is, how can I create an environment in my classroom in which this type of work is possible? Am I even capable of doing this when there are always so many other demands and requirements placed on me as a teacher? It always feels like a daunting task, and yet this year I really and truly hope to make it happen.

For the first time I am teaching pre-k instead of kindergarten. My students are all four years old, and most won’t turn five until the late spring or summer. Formal writing is not happening at all just yet. I’m setting the bar high for myself, but I hope to make my classroom a space that is inspired every day by stories of all kinds.

Certainly I will need to tell my own stories so that my students can see me as an active participant in this process. I will also need to provide ample opportunities for my students to tell their stories to me, themselves, and each other, and find ways to capture them through dictation. I will have to carve out a dedicated time and place to have their stories read aloud and acted out.

I want my students to become so familiar with the narratives and character patterns of their classmates’ stories that they too feel like they are part of them. I want to build a community that is as linked by the stories we tell and share as it is by the friendships we make, the projects we work on, and the places we visit together. I want story, narrative, and expression to flow freely from one day to the next, from one child to the next, and in the process of doing so I hope to build authentic connection, true belonging, and deep empathy with, for, and by my young students so that one day when they start to write, they will be ready.