Lessons from My Correspondence with Vivian Gussin Paley

Abstract

This article shares three main lessons the author learned from her correspondence with Vivian Gussin Paley. Early on, the author wrote Mrs. Paley about how she discovered the meaning of story acting for visually impaired children. The act of sharing her thoughts with Mrs. Paley showed her the power of writing to promote thinking. Equally important was learning Mrs. Paley’s storytelling and story acting (ST/SA) approach, which the author persisted in to find a way to combine with her English lessons. The process provided an opportunity to reevaluate what the author sought for her classroom. Finally, the author appreciated Mrs. Paley’s “gift” of providing the space to reach her own conclusions when they had differing views about communal add-on storytelling. Mrs. Paley’s reply led the author to discover the key of doing ST/SA: localization. In the end, the author concluded that the three lessons she learned from her mentor resulted from dialogue in context.