Vivian Paley Quotes

Pretend" often confuses the adult, but it is the child's real and serious world, the stage upon which any identity is possible and secret thoughts can be safely revealed.

Children are deeply curious about odd behaviors and seldom offended or worried by them. What a remarkable gift to bestow on another person, it occurs to me, and so difficult for adults to accomplish.

Each child wants to know immediately if he is a worthy person in your eyes. You cannot pretend, because the child knows all the things about himself that worry him. If you act like you like him, but ignore the things he is anxious about, it doesn't count. The child is glad you are nice to him, but deep down he figures if you really knew what he was like, you'd hate him. So your liking him without knowing him just makes him feel guilty.

since fantasy play is the glue that binds together all other pursuits, including the early teaching of reading and writing skills, I am compelled to put it on display as clearly as I can.

The children were actors on a moving stage, carrying out philosophical debates while borrowing fragments of floating dialogue. Themes from fairy tales and television cartoons combined with social commentary and private fantasy to form a tangible script that was not random and erratic.

Well into my teaching career, I learned that good and bad play are usually a matter of having a script that works or one that needs to be rewritten. Once you begin to depend on storytelling and story acting, you start looking at your classrooms as theater. The children are constantly imagining characters and plots and, when they have a chance, with each other, acting out little stories. You can look at the children and yourself as actors. "Well, this hasn't worked. We'd better think of a better way to pretend this story." What seems to be a chaotic scene, one we might call bad play, is simply a scene that lacks closure for one or more characters. The teacher's role is to help the children make up a new scene. The children become used to the teachers - or even other children - saying, "This isn't working. We need to tell the story of what were doing with each other. What characters are we playing? And what needs to be played in a different way so that the play does not have to stop?" (via a Meghan Dombrick-Green interview with Vivian Paley 2001)

I am eager to expose “You can’t say you can’t play” to public scrutiny. The teachers are cooperative and curious. They are quite used to my passionate espousals, and this is a problem about which there is widespread concern. In general, the approach has been to help the outsiders develop the characteristics that will make them more acceptable to the insiders. I am suggesting something different: The group must change its attitudes and expectations towards those who, for whatever reason, are not yet part of the system.

If the room were always like this there would be no need for our new rule. Everyone is occupied with individual projects directed toward a goal created by the teacher. No one is excluded; every contribution will be given equal attention and find equal expression in the margins of the Magpie story. No problems here. The rule is needed for all those other times, the bulk of the day, when public and private needs and obligations are in conflict.

web being constructed by the children in their constant exchange of ideas the moment I stopped talking and they resumed playing.

If fantasy play provides the nourishing habitat for the growth of cognitive, narrative, and social connectivity in young children, then it is surely the staging area for our common enterprise: an early school experience that best represents the natural development of young children.