Vivian Paley
After producing three programs about Paley's work, reading every book she has written and spending 10-plus years practicing storytelling and story acting, we are more convinced than ever that the stories children tell offer unique opportunities for helping them solve the puzzle of teaching and learning.
Vivian Paley was declared a genius by the MacArthur Foundation for her teaching and her writing. In her many books about working with young children, she documented the changes she made in her thinking and teaching as a result of collecting evidence from children's stories and play.
As Gil McNamee wrote in her article, The one who gathers children: the work of Vivian Gussin Paley and current debates about how we educate young children (The Journal of Early Childhood Teacher, 2005):
“Paley found that listening to children, giving them the experience of being heard, and valuing their point of view fundamentally changed her. She learned that in order to teach, to be heard, she had to listen. Because she cared so deeply about what children were thinking and how their thinking developed, she invited, cultivated, and encouraged the children's play. The more she did, the more benefits she reaped; the more articulate, creative and expressive the children became. Her collected works now show how her methodology of teaching through fostering pretend play can be repeated year after year with groups of children from diverse backgrounds, and lead to the same results —highly educated children.”