Letters from Dr. Gillian McNamee

Dr. Gillian McNamee has been invited to serve as a consultant for Story Corner since 2025.

Beginning Story Telling and Story Acting in Your Classroom

April 14, 2025

Yuching visits schools and classrooms of young children and their teachers to share her experiences with inviting young children to tell their stories and then act them out with their peers. Yuching and I had the lucky experience of having the same teacher guiding us when we first started trying out these activities: Teacher Vivian Paley. Even though we speak different languages and come from different countries halfway around the world from each other, Yuching and I share a love for what happens when young children tell their stories, when teachers listen, and when teachers help children share their ideas with one another.

Beginning: I have some thoughts about how to get started trying out these activities in your classroom.

When I first began trying out these activities, I was a beginning teacher. I had no experience working with children in small or large groups. Teacher Paley had one important reminder for me: do everything I possibly can with small groups of children, even with just 2 or 3 children at a time. I first helped all of the children learn what activities they could choose from in the classroom each day: painting a picture, drawing, building with blocks, trying out a new game like checkers, or pretending to cook meals for babies they were taking care of. With the help of

parents and an assistant teacher, then a beginning teacher could focus on an activity like inviting a child to tell a short story and act it out with 2 or 3 children who might be nearby. It might take 3 or 4 minutes to have a child tell a story that I wrote down such as:

Bird and Squirrel lived in a tree. They both liked to build a nest there. They ate nuts

together.

To act this out, I would invite the author to pick which character they wanted to be, and then I would ask the child next to him or her, “Do you want to be the squirrel?” Right then and there, I would reread the little story and the 2 children would act it out. That’s all! I did this over and over again and did not worry about doing these activities in a large group for a long time, until my confidence grew. And it did, but it took time.

I tell you this so that you will know that you can create small starting points for yourself and let the activity grow in your classroom in its own time, at a pace that fits you and your children.

First stories: I love hearing about the very first stories children tell, and how different their starting points are. Some children tell a story in one or two words. One child might describe a scene from Chinese folktale or poem. Some children use a drawing to tell their story, and some children pick a favorite story like Little Red Riding Hood to tell to jump-start their own story telling. A child might tell a story about something they did with their family recently.

Wondering: Your experiences with your children will raise so many things to wonder about. You might find that children do the following kinds of things:

  • Pick one story and retell it over and over again. What is it about that story that holds such interest and meaning for them?

  • Shy children, and those who often do not say much in the classroom, all of a sudden want to act in a story, and maybe even tell one. That is wonderful development when that happens! Why do the activities have such an effect on these children?

  • Why do children love acting out stories so much? They will often tell a simple story just to see it acted out!

  • Children with different kinds of special needs feel drawn to these activities where they seem more at home with the group than in other parts of the school day. What is happening that they feel so comfortable?

Yuching and I hope you discover ways in which these simple activities can add meaning to your school day and bring strength and closeness among children as they learn in your classroom.

Comments on children with special needs participating in ST/SA

February 9, 2025

Who has special needs?

In thinking about children with special needs in relation to ST/SA, it is helpful to know where Vivian Paley began her thinking. Throughout her career, Vivian REFUSED to label any child in any way ever. For her, every child has special needs, and their needs differed in every possible way. That's what makes each of us unique, special, a treasure, and simply the best! Vivian had a way of seeing and believing in each of us as deeply, and it was a gift to be seen in her eyes. She offers us the chance to practice this skill and extend it to every child we have the honor to invite a story from, and every child who will act in a story. She started there and so can we.

Children with special needs and methods of working with them:

The next detail is that the special needs we each have can be visible and there are plenty of invisible ones. Whatever the need is, we want to welcome it, accept it, treasure it and not feel that it is a burden or a reason to separate us from others. We might think and feel differently than what others expect but that makes us special.

Often we as teachers are looking for a "method" for working with children with autism, or a child who is in a wheel chair, or who has cerebral palsy, or a child who carries deep emotional fears at being separated from their mother or a favorite toy, or a child with a speech challenge: a stutter or problems forming words. Vivian would say there are no special methods for any range of difficulties. There is only listening, asking the child questions to find out what might help them, and seeking to help the child feel seen, heard, supported and welcomed as fully as any other child in the activities. The adaptations we make to help achieve that goal for any child are limited only by our empathy and willingness to help others.

Another important strategy for working with all children, and one that we may not be understanding how to help, is to ask other children to help you see what might help a child. Children have incredible ways of understanding one another that we might miss. So as the teacher listening to a child dictate a story who is having trouble with certain words that we are not understanding, we might say to a child nearby, “Will you help listen to what Sarah is saying and see if you understand the words so I can write them down?” Children will gladly help each other and you as teacher. When a child says, “Oh, Sarah means “mouse,” not “mommy.” You can then say to Sarah, “Is that right? Did you mean “mouse?” It is important that we always check back with the author to confirm a word and its meaning.

For Vivian, adaptations to children's needs were simple: patience while listening, asking other children what they think might help a child who was struggling while showing deep respect and kindness toward the one in need. She would do anything to anticipate and accommodate a child through sheer generosity and kindness. She would say her methods for all children began there: generosity, kindness and respect and listening - all qualities that the teachers in our seminar already "took away" from the seminar on Jan. 25th. The teachers already have what they need to move forward with all children.