Child Care Collection - Vivian Paley

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Vivian Paley

Vivian Paley taught preschool children for 37 years, much of that time at the University of Chicago's Laboratory Schools. She is the only Kindergarten teacher to ever receive one of the MacArthur "genius" grants. In addition to teaching, Paley has written more than 10 books about life in the classroom. The books are:

White Teacher
Wally's Stories
Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner
Mollie is Three
Bad Guys Don't Have Birthdays
The Boy Who Would Be A Helicopter
You Can't Say You Can't Play
Kwanzaa and Me: A Teacher's Story
The Girl With the Brown Crayon
The Kindness of Children
In Mrs. Tulley's Room: A Child-Care Portrait

During the years that Paley taught, she took the stories that children tell as part of their play and made them part of her daily curriculum. Her curriculum is not limited to learning the alphabet; it also includes thinking about larger questions such as fairness and justice, and about what it means to go to school -both for teachers and children.

In 1999, Paley visited Muncie, Indiana, where we filmed her at work and play for two days with a group of preschoolers. From those two days of footage, three videos have been made. They are Storytelling and Story Acting, Storytelling Themes, and The Boy Who Could Tell Stories. In all three videos, children's stories are interwoven with Vivian's comments about the connections children make and the ways in which storytelling and story acting can help young children feel more at home in their classrooms.

In the last video, The Boy Who Could Tell Stories, Paley talks about why she concentrates so much on issues of fairness. With the help of the children, she demonstrates that every child has a story to tell and a contribution to make to the classroom community -- even those children whose difficulties in communicating may lead them to behave in ways that many people might consider distracting or disruptive.

In addition to the videos, we have produced a companion guide to "The Boy Who Could Tell Stories." This guide is designed to offer concrete support for teachers inspired to explore the techniques that Vivian Paley demonstrates. It is written for those who want to get started, but are unsure of how to do so or of what to expect.