Wally's Stories

by Vivian Gussin Paley

Overview

Teachers are often taught that young children are incapable of logical thought. Prone to fantasy and unruffled by inconsistency, preschool children are frequently baffled by the first lessons of early schooling. Trained to gently resist the child’s illogic, teachers sometimes create just the incomprehension and anxiety they mean to avoid. In Wally’s Stories, Vivian Paley shows that none of this need be so.

Wally’s Stories is itself a story: the story of the evolution of a kindergarten classroom in which Paley learned to stop fighting childish fantasy and instead make use of it to stimulate the very best brand of thinking her five-year-olds can muster. Stories also lie at the heart of her classroom: stories that are first told by one of the children, then transcribed by the teacher, and then acted out by the class in dramatic productions of their own design. Paley shows that in the course of creating their own dramatic world, five-year-olds are capable of thought and language far in advance of what they accomplish in traditional classroom exercises. The children’s stories also become a vehicle that they can use to explain themselves to their teacher and to one another. Together, teacher and children develop an unusual environment, one that is logical and literate, based on rules of fairness, friendship, and fantasy.

Vivian Paley’s book is as refreshing as her teaching method—a new kind of book about a new kind of classroom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674945937
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/15/1987
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Vivian Gussin Paley (1929–2019), a longtime classroom teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, was a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the 1998 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Editorial Reviews

This remarkable book is delightful to read and rewarding to ponder. It is the kind of book a teacher quotes to friends, shares with colleagues, and uses as a source of working ideas and inspiration.

Elementary School Journal - Alice Seletsky

[These] are the reflections of an expert, sensitive, experienced ‘kid-watcher,’ who believes that the children’s magical thinking provides a legitimate framework within which more adult-like thinking can develop… Wally’s Stories does not simply ‘instruct’; it also unfailingly delights.

Judith Lindfors Arts

In a book exceptionally modest in manner and unusually substantial in matter, Mrs. Paley has given a vivid and credible picture of how five-year-olds think. An entertaining picture, too, and a strangely inspiriting one.

Times Literary Supplement - D. J. Enright

[These] are the reflections of an expert, sensitive, experienced ‘kid-watcher,’ who believes that the children’s magical thinking provides a legitimate framework within which more adult-like thinking can develop… Wally’s Stories does not simply ‘instruct’; it also unfailingly delights.

Language Arts - Judith Lindfors

This remarkable book is delightful to read and rewarding to ponder. It is the kind of book a teacher quotes to friends, shares with colleagues, and uses as a source of working ideas and inspiration.
— Alice Seletsky

Elementary School Journal

[These] are the reflections of an expert, sensitive, experienced "kid-watcher," who believes that the children's magical thinking provides a legitimate framework within which more adult-like thinking can develop...Wally's Stories does not simply 'instruct'; it also unfailingly delights.
— Judith Lindfors

Language Arts

In a book exceptionally modest in manner and unusually substantial in matter, Mrs. Paley has given a vivid and credible picture of how five-year-olds think. An entertaining picture, too, and a strangely inspiriting one.
— D. J. Enright

Times Literary Supplement