Once
there was a little boy and when he was four it was time for him to start
school. Each day when he went to school the teacher would tell him stories. He
loved the stories – stories about dragons and knights, about giants and wolves,
witches and fairies. Stories about goodies and baddies, about brave people and
cowardly people, about greedy people and generous people. Stories of love and
hate, jealousy and cruelty, friendship and loyalty, betrayal and trust. His
imagination was full of places and events, of people and animals that peopled
his dreams and his play.
Every
morning he looked forward to arriving at school because the teacher would ask
him to choose where to put his name card – would he choose a witch or a
dragon, a castle or a ship, a story or a poem? And each day he would think
about it and put his name card beside his choice and the teacher would ask him –
why do you like dragons best, or story or castles? He would think about his
answer and tell her. He learnt to give reasons for his choices.
Then
the teacher would ask all the children to sit on the carpet and talk about
their choices. He liked hearing the ideas of the other children in his class
and sometimes after he had listened to them he changed his mind and made a
different choice. All together they would think of ideas for stories and then
he would go and play the stories – he would dress up and play being the monster
or the hero, he would take small figures of dragons or witches or Fireman Sam
and create a story, he might use puppets as characters in his games, he might
make props and characters from playdoh. And after he had played the teacher would
bring the class together again and read some of their stories that she had
written down while she watched them play.
Then
one day the teacher set up a story-telling table and said anyone who wanted to
tell her a story could come to the table and she would write the story down.
The little boy was excited – he had lots of ideas for stories so he went to the
table and he told the teacher a story and she wrote it down. His story had a
dinosaur and a boy and Fireman Sam – it wove together ideas from all the stories
he had heard and played. And the next day the teacher read his story to the
class and invited the children to act it out as she read it again. And the
little boy looked at his words and was happy. He liked acting out his story
with others in his class.
Then
the little boy was five and he had to move to another classroom and another
teacher. This teacher didn't ask him to make any choices at the beginning of
the day, she just read out the names from the register and asked him to listen
for his name and say 'Yes, Miss Jones' when she called him. He missed his old
teacher and wondered what the children in her class were doing.
Then
his teacher said, 'today we are going to have new books for you to read'. The
little boy was excited – he loved to hear stories and was eager to see the new
books. The teacher called him up and gave him his reading book. It didn't look
very exciting. She slowly read the book to him. It didn't have many words and
the teacher stopped to sound out the letters in the words. It wasn't a story
like he had had before where he could imagine himself as a knight or a giant
slayer or a big bad wolf. The little boy was disappointed. He missed the
stories he had had in his old classroom. He didn't want to take this book home
to read, he longed for his old teacher who wrote his own stories down for him
to read.
Then
one day the teacher said, 'today we're going to write a story'. 'Oh good'
thought the little boy, he loved to write stories and he picked up a pencil and
began to draw his story. 'Wait' said the teacher. 'I haven't told you what to
do yet.' The little boy was full of ideas but he stopped what he was doing and
listened to the teacher. The teacher gave out a sheet of paper with pictures on
it. She told the children to look at the pictures and write the words to make
the story. The little boy looked at the pictures – he didn't like the story
they told about a boy who walked along the road to the shop to buy some
something. His mind was full of tales of castles and knights, magic and
mystery, but the teacher didn't ask him about his ideas. She sat all the
children down and asked each of them to tell the story to go with the pictures.
The little boy wondered why they all had to write the same story, but he didn’t
say anything. He sat there and looked at the pictures, but he didn't want to
write the story.
And
pretty soon the little boy stopped telling his own stories and learned to do
what the teacher asked him to do. He stopped looking forward to having
his stories written down for him, he forgot how he loved to act out his stories
with his friends; he got used to the reading scheme and learnt to do what the
teacher asked. He read the books in the reading scheme and wrote what the
teacher told him to write about.
This story was inspired by the work of
the late Patrick Whitaker, a wonderful educator, Sara Stanley, an inspirational
early years practitioner and Vivian Paley, the renowned American kindergarten
teacher, now retired.
