The Classroom as Living Room and Laboratory: Appreciating the Work of Vivian Gussin Paley

Look to the bookshelves of those interested in the inner world of the classroom and chances are a copy of Sylvia Ashton-Warner's Teacher will be within arm's reach. Ashton-Warner's narrative, published in the early 1960s, remains a classic in today's burgeoning field of educational literature often referred to as Teachers' Stories and Stories of Teachers.1 In her autobiographical accounts of classroom life-of teaching and learning and the lives of the children-Ashton-Warner is often opinionated, at times controversial, but always passionate. It is this same sense of passion-an emotion often lost or left out of our show-and-tell discussions about education-that drives the writing and research work of Vivian Gussin Paley. Yet, for Paley, it is this sense of passion and urgency that continues to fuel her ongoing work with children to capture the unheard or unfinished murmur, the misunderstood and mystifying context, the disembodied voices asking for clarification and comfort (Paley 1986b, 123). Vivian Gussin Paley's career as an early childhood educator is both exemplary and inspirational. A kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, Paley has written seven books over a thirteenyear period that spans 1979 to the present. The evolution of her pioneering work with storytelling technique in the classroom is well documented through White Teacher (1979), Wally's Stories: Conversations in Kindergarten (1981), Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner (1984), Mollie Is Three: Growing Up in School (1986a), Bad Guys Don't Have Birthdays: Fantasy Play at Four (1988), The boy who would be a helicopter: the uses of storytelling in the classroom (1990), and You Can't Say You Can't Play (1992). In her writings and reflections on classroom life, Paley can be observed as devoted teacher, eager student, storyteller, meaning builder, collaborator, and theory-maker.'2 The purpose of this review article is to highlight and celebrate some of these threads that wind their way through Paley's