Inspiration for the New School Year

The start of the school year can feel like a whirlwind. Sometimes I find it hard to remember what first inspired me to be the type of writing teacher that I do, in fact, aspire to be. One thing that helps ground me in a pedagogy of emergent writing that I value in the early childhood classroom, and gives me a way to channel my overzealous energy into clearer, more productive thinking, is revisiting some of the works of my favorite writers on these topics. One such favorite text is Vivian Gussin Paley’s The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter, published by Harvard University Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, in 1990.

The following are some quotes taken directly from this book, or as I like to think of them as, “mantras” for the new school year.

“Once we push deeply into the collective imagination, it is easier to establish connections and build mythologies. The classroom that does not create its own legends has not traveled beneath the surface to where the living takes place” (5).

-This quote reminds me that as a teacher, I must suspend some sense of my own reality to fully listen to and embrace the tales and imaginative stories that my students bring with them to the classroom. In so doing, we can create a world together that lives and breathes because the children believed it into being.

“If I am to step to the rhythm of the storytellers who inhabit my classroom, I must perform on their stage or we will seldom hear one another out. I can never, of course, be as they are, for a child storyteller is a story player” (7).

-This quote reminds me that I must listen and watch carefully, not to direct the stories of my students, but to participate in them as only an adult can, which is never as fully embedded within them as a child. The stories made by children and played by children are of a different order than my adult brain naturally can conceive of–and that’s a remarkable thing.

“Problems are not meant to be solved. They are ours to practice on, to explore the possibilities with, to help us study cause and effect. Important issues can’t be solved with one grand plan — or in one school year. Some are worked at for a lifetime, returning in different disguises, requiring fresh insights” (80).

-This quote reminds me that I will never be able to solve all of the problems I encounter, or that my students encounter, in the classroom. As a younger teacher, I used to think that it was actually my job to solve all the problems. I have learned that it’s everyone’s job to work on improving problems, or at least to explore more than one solution together. This is an important lesson for my students and me.

“Once changes begin, they happen fast. The child leaps and expands in several directions, according to a mysterious plan that no one can anticipate” (142).

-This quote reminds me that just as soon as I make note of an area that a child may need to work on, before I can even come up with a plan to support them, they have already grown and changed in so many ways. Teaching is a minute-by-minute practice. It is my job to stay on my toes and adapt to what my students need and can do, because before I can blink, it will change again.

Re-reading Vivian Gussin Paley’s The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter keeps me grounded in the world of ‘teacher as student.’ No matter how many meetings I have to attend, lessons I have to plan, or pencils I have to sharpen, at the end of the day, I have the most to learn from my students–the characters they create, the stories they tell, and the miraculous worlds we weave together as a classroom community.

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Work Cited: Paley, Vivian Gussin (1990). The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: The Uses of Storytelling in the Classroom. Harvard University Press.