Once upon a time…..
…Happily ever after.
These are common fairy tale phrases. But they’re more than just staid story stems. These common phrases — and the stories in between — hold not only a recipe for imagination and fantasy but also for resilience.
Stephanie Goloway (EdD) is a powerful advocate for the importance of imagination, play, and storytelling. As a now-emeritus professor, she’s taught young children as well as college students and has focused her research on how fairy tales align with and support child development. She’s written a book called, Happily Ever Resilient, where she shares how the ordinary magic of resilience is woven into the extraordinary magic of fairy tales, supporting all children as they face the challenges of life.
You can now also find Not Just Cute: The Podcast on Spotify and Amazon Music!
Notes from the Show:
(*May contain affiliate links.)
Find Stephanie’s book from Redleaf here: Happily Ever Resilient
***Be sure to use the coupon code “HER24” for 20% off. (You can also find the book at Amazon and other book retailers…but no coupon code.😜)
Stephanie mentions ACES – Here’s a primer from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child if that’s a new term for you.
Ann Masten’s Ordinary Magic work on Resilience – Journal Article, Book
Ann’s 2019 Ordinary Magic keynote at Miami International Child & Adolescent Mental Health Conference
Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives (2014, European Journal of Psychotraumatology)
Why We Play
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Transcript
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This transcript was created with Podium.
Highlights:
(02:21 – 03:18) Play and Resilience in Early Childhood
(07:59 – 09:04) Supporting Children in Substance-Affected Homes
(15:07 – 16:23) Importance of Building Supportive Childhood Networks
(19:50 – 22:06) Building Classroom Culture Through Cultural Affirmation
(24:23 – 24:57) Resilience in Fairy Tales
(25:54 – 27:58) Respecting Children’s Thoughtfulness Through Fairy Tales
(32:29 – 33:46) Children’s Interpretation of Fairy Tales
(38:37 – 41:33) Importance of Symbolic Play for Literacy
(44:22 – 45:20) Fairy Tale Integration in Early Childhood
(50:36 – 51:42) Exploring Protective Factors Through Creative Activities
00:03 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Hi, I’m Amanda Morgan, and this is Not Just Cute the podcast where we discuss all kinds of topics to help bridge the gap that exists between what we know and what we do in early childhood education. We’re starting conversations with academics, authors, decision makers, educators and parents so that together we can improve the quality of early childhood education while at the same time, protecting and respecting the childhood experience. Stephanie Galloway is a powerful advocate for imagination, play and storytelling. As a now emeritus professor, she’s taught young children as well as college students and has focused her research on how fairy tales align with and support child development. She’s written a book called Happily Ever Resilient, where she shares how the ordinary magic of resilience is woven into the extraordinary magic of fairy tales, supporting all children as they face the challenges of life. You can find this episode’s show notes, which are always full of links, tidbits and resources, at notjustcutecom. Forward slash podcast. Forward slash episode 72.
01:22
Before we jump in, I wanted to share a quick email that made my day. Sarah wrote in shortly after picking up the why we Play letters. She said this I just wanted to thank you for this amazing resource. I absolutely love it. I’ve been searching to find a resource to explain to parents why I do what I do. I teach at a traditional preschool and I am not that traditional. I am the only teacher that does things a little differently. I have parent-teacher conferences and, although my parents seem to be okay with how I do things, I now have this resource to hand out if they do have any questions. It makes my day every time I get to hear about these letters doing exactly what I hoped they’d do.
02:10
If you’d like to learn more about the why we Play letters and grab a free sample letter, go to notjustcutecom forward. Slash whyweplay. As I’ve said over and over, people don’t value what they don’t understand, so let’s do our best to help others understand and value play. Stephanie is passionate about the power of fairy tales as well as the science of resilience. I think the way she weaves the two concepts together is really fascinating. I hope you will too. Let’s jump in, stephanie. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.
02:52 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Thank you, amanda. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you for a long time, since I started following you years and years and years ago.
02:58 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Oh, thank you. Well, I think that you touch on so many really interesting topics, things that I love and the way that you weave them together is really, really interesting to me. So, before we jump into that, I always love to get people’s stories of how they came to do what they do. There are just so many interesting things within the field of early childhood education and so many interesting paths that different people take. So would you start by telling us a little bit of your background, the journey that you’ve taken through the profession of early childhood education, and how that led you to write this book?
03:28 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Sure. So I had my first paying job as an early childhood person when I was nine. I had a preschool on my back porch for neighbor kids and I’ve been in the field ever since I love that.
03:42
So I was very lucky. I always knew this is where I wanted to go. But I’ve gone in a lot of spirals since that time. I worked a lot with preschoolers and with kindergartners, with elementary school, both first grade, sixth grade. I worked with adjudicated teens in a residential treatment facility in a lot of capacities in a public library, ended up teaching community college for 20 years at several different community colleges, full time. So that’s kind of how I like that. That’s my background. Early intervention.
04:18
I did a lot of things and I always, through it, tried to weave together my passions for children’s literature, for fairy tales, for storytelling, picked up. Obviously, working in a public library and doing story hours was a wonderful way of really doing a deep dive into storytelling, and having to shelve books gave me a good ending of fairy tales. I did my master’s thesis, actually on fairy tales and children’s socio-moral development from a Piagetian point of view, wrote a newsletter for teachers about using fairy tales in their classrooms back in the 80s. So it all kind of came together in that way. But the thing that kind of made this book happen when it happened was my husband passed away from substance use disorders and I suddenly realized that I had never, as a classroom teacher, in all of the different things I’d done, ever had one single minute on how do you work with children who are impacted by living with kids with substance use disorders in the home, and I thought that’s weird, like that’s doesn’t make sense to me, since it’s one in four kids that are impacted in that way. So after I kind of got myself together, I thought you’ve always wanted to get your doctorate. You have zero self-discipline to learn about all that yourself, so go back, get your doctorate. I thought you’ve always wanted to get your doctorate. You have zero self-discipline to learn about all this yourself, so go back, get your doctorate.
05:49
I was already teaching full-time at a community college. It didn’t mean nothing except for give me a platform to really investigate these questions about what was the impact of living with substance use disorders and, of course, all of trauma on young children and what can we do about it, since teachers spend the majority of a young child’s day with them. So that’s how I kind of got into it. I went into a program that did not require a dissertation. It required, or it said you could do a project, and I thought, great, I don’t. You know, I’m too old, I don’t care about a dissertation, I want to get something into the hands of teachers, and so I did my research. I learned about resilience because it’s the most important protective factor for people who are, for children who are living with substance use disorders and trauma, and also adults. And so it came time they changed the program and they said you have to pick you to do a dissertation.
06:48
I was like oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no it and decided, okay, if I have to, I have to. And what’s going to make it fun? And I thought, oh, fairy tales, fairy tales would make it fun. And so I had read in a. One of the leading researchers on resilience is Dr Ann Mastin, and she actually called her book Ordinary Magic and talks about fairy tales in the first chapter. And it was kind of like light bulbs went off and I thought, all right, you have a problem, you don’t want to do this. I love research, but nobody reads dissertations. So I went forward, I did the research and still nobody would read dissertations that I cared about. I mean, people do. And so after it was all said and done and I took a breath, I thought how do I get this information into teachers’ hands? And so I thought, oh, a book. So that’s what I did.
07:59 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Well, first and foremost, I’m so sorry for the loss that you’ve had, but what a beautiful thing to be able to take that experience and turn it into something of good and of help for others and be able to do it from a place of really knowing. And, like you mentioned, it is interesting that there isn’t more out there for children who are living in homes where substance use disorders are present, because it is so tragically prevalent right now in particular.
08:26 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
And I’m still boggled. I have a list of different professional development opportunities that I can offer and very rarely do centers or organizations choose anything to do with substance use disorders and I can’t. It’s fine. I figure resilience if I know resilience is what it is that these children need, then we’ll just go with resilience. And if people want to hear about like who and why in this particular people are interested in trauma but not that trauma.
08:57 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
That’s very interesting Not specifying, and maybe because there are so many things and that we all need resilience for so many things. So tell me a little bit about how you would define resilience. I love the phrase that you used from is it Dr Mastin? Yes, of ordinary magic, and that is beautiful. But how else could you expand on that to define resilience?
09:20 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Especially for people who aren’t sure about magic. I mean resilience, I think very broadly is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity, and I think that that is I mean, it’s a good, nice, general definition of it. I think that’s what it serves us to do. One challenge I have with that, though, is that suddenly, and especially after the pandemic or during and after the pandemic, everybody’s like resilient. This resilient that I mean, like you, can, everybody wants. It’s everybody’s favorite word, like so many words that we have used in our field and in every field. I think it’s been very diluted, and it got to a point where people were like oh no, you know, like resilience is, like we don’t need to worry about resilience because it means nothing.
10:12
And for me, I look at it as a neurodevelopmental concept that there is a ton of research from Harvard Center on the Developing Child.
10:21
Dr Ann Mastin has done decades and decades of research on resilience that Harvard actually took and combined with their neuroscience work on toxic stress and executive functions, and I mean it’s center to their whole push for what all education should revolve around, these constructs, and I think that, when you look at it as not just something that’s nice to have and oh too bad, something bad happened and you’re still smiling but really as the way our brain handles traumatic responses or any kind of challenging things, and how do we move on from that and how do we cope with those challenges and those stress responses?
11:15
To me, that’s what is important to understand about resilience, is it’s not just nice, it is the way our brain works. All of us have the capacity for resilience, and when Dr Mastin talked about ordinary magic, she said it’s not any kind of special magical, extraordinary experiences that we need to provide for children in order to develop resilience. It’s the basic kinds of positive experiences that we didn’t have even 20 years ago. So that’s a. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s the nerdy explanation of it. No, I think you’re so right.
12:14 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
It’s one of those words, like you said, many words start to lose their meaning, they get watered down, they get overused, and I think with resilience in particular, you hit on several things One, that it is not just for those kids that are at risk or something that we need to inject into somebody, but that there’s a human capacity that we all have and that it is for all of us, for all children, to develop and build this. And I think we’ll get to protective factors in a moment. But when we think about, oh, resilience it’s for those kids or for these kids, but that it’s for everyone, for whole healthy development, and that the tragedy is that some children who need to pull from resilience the most also are not resilient, don’t have the access to the protective factors. That is, that they are doubly traumatized, in a sense that they’re missing both the protective factors, and then they also have more trauma that we expect them to be resilient in.
13:07 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Right, right, I think that’s a really important point and I think we like, when we look at it for all kids I could look at my own. I mean I finally one time, like within the past year, took the ACEs test. My childhood I had zero ACEs, so I had all of the kinds of components. I mean, from the trauma point of view, I had no, no traumatic experiences as a child and I had already looked at my own childhood and I had all of those protective factors that my parents provided for me as an adult. My ACEs score went up to like nine, which, if anybody knows about ACEs, that’s not good.
13:50
But for me it was just such an aha moment because I’d kind of intuitively known that. But I thought, okay, so I had this resilience and that’s how I’m. I was able, after a whole bunch of really awful things have happened to me, be able to like bounce back and have a happy life and wrote a book and got my doctorate and wonderful teaching career and all of these great things in the midst of um some very stressful situations. So I, to me, that’s a to keep in mind that we don’t know what kids are going to experience later in their lives, and that’s why all brains need to have that capacity for resilience.
14:28 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Yeah, these protective factors and ACEs for those who may not be familiar are those adverse childhood experiences, and I’ll link some more about that so that we don’t have to go too far on down that trail, but it’s a fascinating area of study that connects to this. So let’s talk about those protective factors that you were able to draw from as an adult and that we would hope that we could build in all children. So what does the research tell us about those protective factors? What are those things that really stand out?
14:55 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
This is one of the things I love about this particular model, because it kind of breaks it down into they’re just five.
15:01
And so it’s easy to get your head around it and they are all things that we kind of already know. One is relationships. We’re really familiar with relationships with adults, with primary caregivers. That’s research that’s been done forever. But what Mastin found and other researchers is that relationships with peers is also really important and also relationships with other competent adults and honestly, teachers, child care providers, coaches, neighbors, family, other family members all can serve that purpose purpose. But she said, all three of those kinds of relationships were very important for developing resilience. And so we don’t have control over what happens in a child’s home, but we sure do have control over what happens in our classrooms and in our neighborhoods.
15:48 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
And it’s really building that village. And, like you said, I think it can be challenging when you can’t control everything that goes on in a child’s home. But instead of throwing up our hands and saying we can’t fix that, just focusing on the elements that we can and giving support in the other areas that we can, that really does have an impact.
16:07 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Right, and I think especially like thinking about play and peer relationships is something that is so easy to just kind of no, not for me.
16:17
But it was easy to say, oh, it’s just, but I mean that’s critical for children’s resilience.
16:23
Number two is initiative, which I like to think of it. As you know, a child having their own wonderful ideas and being able to use them to meet their own needs, like problem solving, being able to act on your own ideas. You know, if you want to build a block tower taller than your head, you know what. If that’s your idea, will we let you do it. It has to do with perseverance and being able to stick to a task until it’s done, and it also has to do with agency, how a child feels about themselves and that they have control. I mean, I think initiative is how much control do I feel like I have over my environment, over my world, which for young children is a lot of times it’s not much. But again, if the research tells us that this is critical for a child’s developing brain, what can we do in our classrooms to provide the child with lots more choices, and real choices, and things that they can actually act on, and you know like, again, play comes into it.
17:27 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
I was going to say, and that’s often found in play right. That’s where it’s developmentally appropriate for them to be in charge Right.
17:34 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
So I mean all of those kinds of things. Taking risks is also another way of developing resilience and initiative, but it also taking risks also ties into executive functions, which have to do with the prefrontal cortex of the brain. That’s the most brainy part of it, and again, harvard Center on the Developing Child has tons of research about that. And again Harvard Center on the Developing Child has tons of research about that. But again, breaking it down, executive functions one of the easiest model that I found is it includes three broad categories. One is cognitive flexibility being able to come up with, generate ideas for situations that are beyond just what you see right in front of you, and if one thing doesn’t work, what could you do to solve a problem in a different way, is just a simple example of that. Working memory, being able to keep your mind on what it is that you’re doing while you’re doing it, which of course, has to do with focus and concentration, and then what they call inhibitory control, tied into self-regulation, but the idea that you have a thought that seems to be dominating, and being able to know if that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing, if you really really, really want to pinch the person next to you and you know you’re not being able to. The executive function is being able to inhibit that initial response and not pinch somebody.
19:02
And you know, when we think about all kinds of challenging behaviors that children have, that ties in very well. And then self-regulation, which is we all know a lot about self-regulation being or what it, what we know, what it looks like when it’s not happening, um, and that I think is a is the hard part. But being able to control your, um, your body, which we tend to forget, that children, that self-regulation doesn’t just mean behaving and sitting still, it means all of the kinds of things that children do in the context of their play and interactions. They’re still learning how to do what that body needs to do. So self-regulation ties into that controlling your emotions and your actions.
19:50
And then the fifth is cultural affirmation and just feeling like you’re part of something bigger than just yourself, and I think that’s we think of culture, usually with a big capital C, and that’s part of it. But it’s also our classroom culture. It’s, you know, like knowing that all of us know the cleanup song in this new way, and and and we’re we’re, we’re in it together, and I think that’s another really interesting aspect that you know. Putting tacos in your dramatic play area.
20:25 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
It’s part of it, but there’s so much more that we do to create this community in a classroom that can help to serve kids as well as affirming what their cultural context is outside of our, of our, our settings and I thought that was such an interesting point that you hit on, because I’ve um, I’ve done a little bit of research on, on um spiritual development and that we don’t we tend not to talk to it, so about it so much because we don’t want to cross those lines right into religion and and different things.
20:55
But I appreciate it when you addressed that um, that cultural context, which can include religion as well, that even though we’re not going to cross that line and endorse certain things, you know, depending on the type of context that we have, but that we can, like you said, create a classroom culture, that there is something affirming there as well, that we can again affirm and support individuals and individual families in those big C culture, like you said, but that there is this thing that we can build and support within our classroom of a classroom culture, and belonging to something bigger than ourselves can begin with this small group here in this room, in our classroom.
21:35
And even I think the wonder and the beauty that we talk about and enjoy together is part of that awe of being something bigger than yourself, right, belonging to something bigger than yourself. And so I think it’s a beautiful piece that you included, that the research includes, and you included that sometimes people are uneasy about talking about, and I think that you presented it in such a way that is accessible and applicable, rather than just saying we don’t really know what to do with this one, we’re going to set it on a shelf. It actually matters.
22:08 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Yeah, so so those are the um and I. You know they’re massive and called them protective factors. Um, the more I write, the more I talk about them. I like I the word factors feel so clinical to me, but they’re really just ordinary, magical experiences, I mean, that’s it’s. You know, if you think about them, they’re. None of them are revolutionary, none of them require money, none of them require anything except for being human. The thing to me about resilience is that it really like that’s. That’s why fairy tales have so much resilience in them is because they are stories of of us as human beings, and stories people have told for thousands of years about how, how to be human, and and we, we find ourselves infinitely fascinating. So, of course, our stories are about how it, how it is that we overcome challenges yeah, and when you talk about these protective factors being a part of just being fascinating.
23:02 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
So, of course, our stories are about how it is that we overcome challenges.
23:04
Yeah, and when you talk about these protective factors being a part of just being human, I’m actually I’m glad that you used that phrasing because I think of, like you mentioned, that these shouldn’t be anything really special or out of the ordinary for any child’s experience.
23:13
But too often we’re not building these protective factors for a variety of reasons for young children, but that one of those reasons is when we forget the humanity of young children, when we begin to look at them as a product or, as you know, something that can just go through a stagnant checklist. And we have to look at human development, not just checklists and spreadsheets and that sort of thing that these aspects of human development require humans who engage with one another in really important and meaningful ways and, like you mentioned, as you were going through them, so many of them are woven into play. That that’s where we build relationships and exercise initiative and practice executive function and self-regulation and where we belong to something bigger than ourselves. So I think it’s really important research Now you started to mention you took all of this research with resilience and all of your research with fairy tales, which to many people would probably seem to be two completely separate areas of study. Right, people?
24:21 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
would probably seem to be two completely separate areas of study. Right, my dissertation advisor was like you want to what?
24:27 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Oh, your advisor, what I said. I think I can do this. Hang with me, right, but like you, like you’re beginning to say there is so much of these resilience, these factors, these elements are woven into fairy tales. So can you tell a little bit more about how you’ve begun to use fairy tales as a vehicle not just in your academic study, but also in practice in classrooms? Why fairy tales for building resilience?
24:55 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
I mean I think I always used fairy tales before I ever heard the word resilience. I always used fairy tales and storytelling and play as the cornerstones of all of my work with all kids, including teenagers, I mean I just if you learn through play at three, you learn through play at 13 and 16, and as a college student as well. So those, those, those are kind of who I am as a, as a teacher, as an educator. So of course I wanted to bring in those things, but I decided to to really as as also as a longtime fairytale lover. Everybody was like, oh, you just want the happy ever after, and that’s true, but having no, I mean you don’t get to the happy ever after without like defeating the troll and the witch and all you know. So I knew that there was challenge in them and I think that I kind of look at fairy tales now is like the risky play of children’s literature.
25:54
A lot of modern children’s literature and I am a literature, children’s literature junkie I mean I love children’s books, um, and but a lot of books that are coming out now are either like really superficial stories that don’t seem to get at the at anybody’s humanity they’re there for the quick laughs, or or they go flip to the other side and they’re like and this is how you become a good human and like here is how we let us sit and talk about solving this problem together and we’ll call it a story and we’ll put in a talking bear instead of. And I I just think that a lot of modern children’s literature disrespects children as thinkers. I mean, they know stuff isn’t just listen to kids play and like light and happiness. Of course we want that for kids, but they know that there’s another side to reality, to reality, and so to me, fairy tales have always been a way of respecting children’s thoughtfulness, about recognizing that there’s a lot out there that is not just designed to make their life lovely and sparkly as much as we would like that. And I think fairy tales are an interesting vehicle to share with children, to to give them that affirmation that you know, like everything’s not perfect and happy. My, you know you may not be facing a dragon, but you know what you know, like you weren’t able to have that third cookie after dinner, and that that mom of yours is wicked, that mom of yours is wicked. Have that, and how are you going to deal with that and I just think, yeah.
27:49
So that’s kind of why fairy tales I’ve always used fairy tales, but they seem to really work well with the resilience model because the heroes and heroines really show initiative. They show good problem solving, they are consistent, they stick to their task until it’s done. They have cognitive flexibility. If one thing doesn’t work, they pivot to another and they have good self-regulation. You know like they’re good at hiding, they’re good at being quiet when they need to be quiet, or sometimes not. Rumpelstiltskin is a great example Someone who had no self-regulation at the end and he exploded. So it kind of shows, I think, in a very playful and imaginary way, that kids can connect with on it, from whatever frame of reference, they’re experiencing um, that they’re what they are feeling and what they are experiencing is is real and valid um, and I think that that’s an important thing to do for children and when you talk about respecting children as just respecting them, first of all, respecting the children, but also as critical thinkers and as active participants in the story.
28:57 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
I think that really connects to what you’ve said about addressing some of the criticism of fairy tales, especially in the modern era, and we begin to have discussions and concerns about why does the princess always need to be saved, or why is the stepmother always wicked, and couldn’t we see things differently? And is this really, you know, the most, I guess, acceptable or politically correct way to address? You know that maybe there’s some problems with these fairy tales and I thought you had an interesting take on that, especially as you look at children as from their perspective of the story.
29:30 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Yeah, I think I mean, right off the top, kids don’t understand anything the way that we do. We know that from a developmental point of view, and so they clearly don’t understand story in the same way that we do. We know that from a developmental point of view, and so they clearly don’t understand story in the same way that we do. And I think that it might, both in my experience as a person who’s worked with kids forever, but also the research shows that they if, for example, parents are very upset often about the violence in fairy tales and but for a child like we have an image of, for example, in some of the versions of Cinderella, her stepsisters cut off their heels so they’ll fit into the shoe, and as an adult we’re like, oh my God, that’s horrible. But as a child it’s kind of like take, you know like they snip off pieces of paper all the time and you know what. The paper’s smaller and it fits into a smaller space on their, their art, and so what’s the big deal? They don’t have this visual of like dripping blood and like now, you’ll never be able to walk for the rest of your life. I think that that I mean that’s a piece of it that children interpret all of the images that they get from fairy tales in a different way than we as adults do, because they have different experiences and a different cognitive structure. At this point they also believe in magic, and I think that that’s something I mean developmentally.
30:50
Piaget nailed that, you know, a century ago, and the brain hasn’t changed that much. Three-year-olds still think of things in that same way. So I think those are some of the things that I think are important to recognize. And if you listen to children’s play, they have play themes that are equally as challenging as a lot of fairy tales. And then the other piece is that there are many, many, lot of fairy tales. And then the other piece is that there are many, many, many fairy tales that definitely the princess does the saving. It’s just that they aren’t the ones that Disney happened to choose. Now I mean now pressure is like okay, we better do something about this. But I think to write off a whole genre because of the interpretation of really one company is a shame, but people love them anyway.
31:52 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
I mean like doesn you want to? People need to make their own decisions for specific situations and specific stories and specific everything, of course. And at the same time, I just love that reminder that we shouldn’t inject our adult perspectives on something that’s meant for children and that if it’s meant for children, we need to look at it as they’re going to look at it. And I just love that reminder that, like you said, in their play there are challenging things and that that’s part of the point is that they’re wrestling with how do we overcome really challenging things. And again tying back to that resilience that these fairy tales need to have challenge in them. They need to. That’s the point of a good story, and especially for what they’re getting from that story.
32:34 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Right, I think it’s really interesting. I mean, I used fairy tales with my college students for years as part of children’s literature and literacy development and they had to do a project and they all had to pick a fairy tale and most of them would come up with their favorite fairy tale as a child and some of them, when they went to actually reread those fairy tales, were shocked at all. One student was like I can’t do this. Like do I have to do this story? This is a horrible story. And I’d be like of course you don’t Choice. I’m all about choice for three year olds, also for you. But I think that it’s such a good indicator that their memory of a story, our memories of stories, are very different from when we reread something now as an adult. And that’s another, just a real strong affirmation that children take out of things different things than we do.
33:23 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
I absolutely remember. I think I was probably in high school when I discovered you know, actual classic fairy tales and checked out a book and was reading through them and had the same reaction. Wait a minute, this isn’t how I remember this and this is so dark and this is so, or whatever. But you’re right that that’s the way that we take it in as a child. Or maybe we got a different version, which is another thing. Actually, that was interesting in your book that each section as it talks about whether it’s Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel that then you share a variety of similar fairy tales from different cultures, different areas that have this similar structure. But I loved seeing that variety and and also the the way that a similar story weaves through so many different cultures that it can be the same and different at the same time.
34:12 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Yeah, that that to me is a as a fairy tale nerd. That’s what I find most fascinating and and it’s almost like they’re loose parts. You know, like I recognize that from Cinderella and that’s from Mother Holly. And oh, wait a minute, there’s a Jack and the Beanstalk theme. How did that even get into this story from Albania? But again, I think to me that’s a that it ties into cultural affirmation. I think if you share a story with a group of children, that helps to build your classroom culture. But you can also find variants in most of the affirming for children and I again, I did it with my college students as well, with young children, and they were like, yeah, you know, like I’m from Syria and this is absolutely the way I heard this story and everybody’s like, ooh, that’s really cool and it just builds that understanding on a, maybe on a deep level, but on a very human level, that understanding of the similarities and commonalities as well as the differences between cultures. Exactly.
35:24 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
That we can share what is similar and also celebrate what is unique at the same time. I love that and I also. It was striking to me as I was looking up you know, doing some background research before we did this I found you actually cited in a book review for Lessons in Chemistry, which is a fascinating. It’s a, you know, a fairly new publication, it’s a novel, it’s for adults. But the reason that they referenced you, they were talking about this is a Cinderella character in that and then kind of laid out their reasoning and you know, here’s the fairy godmother.
35:57
And and it struck me because I thought we do this with high school, college students we say Shakespeare is the template for everything. And so look at this movie or this story and how does this follow the Taming of the Shrew, or how is this similar to Romeo and Juliet? And pull out these similar things. And when I landed on that review, I thought, well, this is fairy tales for young children. It’s a similar literary analysis. We don’t do it as formally but to give them that foundation of like you just said, that later you look at stories and say, well, this is a theme from this fairy tale and this is something that comes from this, that it introduces these really deep literary elements without doing the worksheets and the definitions and all of the things, but just creating a foundation and a familiarity with these story structures. That that really is a deep literary study that we prepare our young children with.
36:53 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Yeah, I think I mean I agree a hundred percent with that, and I guess that’s another reason I always loved folk and fairy tales. They have such a formulaic structure that I think for as we’re hoping to get young children to obviously be able to read and to write and to do all of those things that their stories which I mean they play their stories in men make believe. They play them in the block area, they play them at the snack table, wherever they play them. But fairy tales have that very basic story structure of characters, plot, challenge, resolution that they’re going to be learning about and using in their own reading and writing throughout their entire lives.
37:34
And I’m actually right now really interested in, like, narrative schemas and I’m trying to dig in in representational schemas and how fairy tales tie into that, because I my, my experience with kids is that that it does support their growth as emergent readers and writers. And I’m I’m looking into, you know, like, but is there more than just me thinking that? And so I I very powerful and I you’d start to see, I did a lot of stuff with Vivian Paley’s work in my own teaching and kids telling stories and acting them out, and I found that those. You could see them doing the same thing that storytellers have done for years, which is to take bits and pieces and combine them with their own experiences, and that’s what literacy to me is.
38:22 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Yeah, and in addition to that, that practice with story structure and bringing together those pieces. And then there’s the obvious work with language, because they’re using language. We’ve talked a little bit about that symbolic aspect as well. That is overlooked that when we start to take stories and imaginative play, which so often go together because that’s what imaginative play is it’s acting out a story Can you explain a little bit about how important that symbolic play is for cognitive growth and specifically for literacy building?
38:55 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
I mean years and years ago I read I was a big Piaget person and the pre-operational period is what we call early childhood, and somebody one researcher, and I’m not sure who it was, but said actually we shouldn’t call this the pre-operational period. Piaget did because he was interested in the development of cognitive operations. But really what is developing is representation and the child’s ability to use symbols through in all of these different ways. I mean Reggio Emilia calls it the hundred different languages of children, but that’s when they learn to talk, that’s when they learn to listen, that’s when they learn to tell stories and represent symbolically in their play and in their drawing and in their movement and all of that stuff.
39:40
And that was a real aha for me, because that’s why focus on what a child isn’t yet able to do during this rich and wonderful period of development. I mean that’s when their imagination comes online. We need all of those things and those are the foundation for literacy. And the focus in many programs on like letters and number shapes and colors as a way of supporting the foundation of literacy really goes against everything that we understand about what what a child really needs, because letters are the most abstract symbol that we have in human existence. And so why take children, who are rich in this imagination and imagery and learning how to symbolize that this pen could be a microphone, why are we thinking that they will suddenly make this leap without this solid and really integrated understanding of how to use symbols and what symbols are? And it’s so wonderful and exciting and beautiful through their play everything.
40:51 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Yeah, and that symbolic and representational thinking is really what differentiates us as humans. Right, that we can do that. But, like you said, that if we’re only looking for that in reading and writing letters and numbers and that we’ve skipped an entire phase of building that symbolic, representational thinking which is in play, it’s an imaginative play. It’s in pretending, like you said, that this pen can be a microphone and then we have to understand that first before that we can say this letter can build a word that then represents a whole other idea. I mean that’s you’ve got to take those steps. We have to build that foundation and let them play with symbols and representation. And that’s imaginative play. I just think, like you, I just think it’s so fascinating and wonderful and beautiful and so easily overlooked as just this cute thing that kids do. And now let’s move on to the real work.
41:43 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Right, and that’s I mean I know for you as well as for me. I mean, that is the real work is what they are, what they are playing and they’re imagining. I mean, I think it’s honestly, it’s why I went into early childhood, probably because it was so much amazing, just so amazing to watch it. And I wonder how much of it is that. You know, we just don’t. Many people don’t pay enough attention and listen to what’s going on in those rich play scenarios to make that connection for themselves.
42:13
But yeah, I mean we wouldn’t tell a baby who’s three months old, come on, get up and walk across the room. For me, we are so excited when that baby starts to roll over and all of the developmental stages of physical development. We tend to applaud each and every single moment. But somehow, this whole cluster of things that build up to symbolic representation on an abstract level of reading and writing, we just want to push forward and I don’t get it.
42:48 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
We missed that part. So, as they’re doing this dramatic play, they’re obviously building all of these language and literacy skills, like we talked about. And then going back to what you said about resiliency, that they’re building resilience as they play with that as well, because as they act out their story whether it’s dramatic play or they’re bringing the dramatic play to the block area or the other areas everything becomes a story as they play, almost always there becomes this crisis. There’s something awful, whether it’s in the story or just between the children trying to figure out what happens next. And so they have these opportunities to overcome, to practice all of those things that you mentioned before, to work together and find a solution, and they are putting resilience into practice to see that they can overcome, whether it’s in the story or in reality, with their friends. That play gives them all that practice.
43:38 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
And I think that’s you know. That was again such a big aha moment when I was like oh, wait a minute, we’re talking about play here. I mean exactly Great, I’ve been doing it Right.
43:49 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Well, that’s why I love so many of the trainings that I do. I like to say that I’m not giving you something more to do. I’m helping you to recognize what you’re already doing. Why is that so powerful and why? You know how can we do that with a little more intention. It’s not that we need to do more things.
44:03
We have plenty of things to do but when we start to see why we’re doing things and how that impacts development, then we do it with a little more intention. We maybe do it a little differently, but we don’t need to do more. We just need to be able to see what, what’s already right in front of us, those amazing things right in front of us. So how do you see those fairy tales weaving their way into other areas of the classroom as well, the other types of play that we have in an early childhood classroom, I mean, I think any story that children are interested in will naturally spill into everything in the, in all of their different kinds of play.
44:43 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
And there’s that balance between are the children bringing those ideas into the block area or into their art area or are you creating an environment where there’s an opportunity for them to make those connections. And I think it’s a. I mean, it’s a. It’s a fine line to walk at times. In my book I put it probably more explicitly than people who have been in the field a long time would have liked it. I’ve gotten that feedback. Or like here’s a cookbook and I’m like well, did you read it? Because it has ingredients, but I can’t cook out of a cookbook, so probably not. But I think that that they’re again embracing everybody with where they are and what kind of program you’re in. So if you are, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing Hansel and Gretel and as a story, and the children are interested in it and you’re, you know, really doing a deep dive into it, then make you know how can you make a. I think in the book one of the examples is you know, having a candy testing lab where they’re like, you know, seeing what, what, how different kinds of candy interact with water and what they can do with them. And you know science and you know like I mean. Is that a teacher prepared activity? Yeah, they’re not going to like automatically get out. Maybe most kids won’t, won’t go into your discovery area and get the eyedroppers and the magnifying glasses and start looking at candy on their own. But offering that as a choice, I think, is a way of helping them to make that connection, because to me that’s the big deal with symbolic function, is that the more connections a child makes in the more different areas of their life, whether it’s outside, looking for, like you know, again Hansel and Gretel, like dropping stones. I mean, if you happen to put a bucket of white stones out, maybe they’ll make trails with it, maybe they’ll dump it and fill it up again and dump it out. Maybe they’ll make trails with it, maybe they’ll dump it and fill it up again and dump it, or maybe they’ll ignore it. But I think as a classroom teacher saying, okay, here’s some things that are popping to me in this story. I can place those in my environment, I can set up so that children could make those connections.
46:56
Or if you hear kids talking about different, and often those are not the things that we glom onto on us in a story, but I think those are. Those are ways. You know, big anti-circle time people out there don’t want to. You know, I don’t know why it’s. I mean, I agree, 45 minute circle times are never appropriate, but you know, if you have five minutes and you know that kids are interested in a story, then can you do a movement or a music activity that connects with it as, looking at it is not like this is something you’re going to need to do well, in kindergarten or first grade, but as an opportunity to help them, um, just make a more rich and densely connected understanding of what this symbol, what this idea is, and all of those things I mean will help to build resilience, if it’s also intentional, of what it is that you’re doing. I believe.
47:53 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
And with all concepts, but especially with language, that, as they get to play with those ideas over and over, in different areas, in different ways, like you said, take a different context but a similar concept, that we know that that expands vocabulary, we know that it expands that critical thinking and just the way that they can play with an idea. That’s the whole concept of play, that’s the lab, right, that they get to do a lab, a different lab, over and over with these similar concepts and ideas. And I think, as you mentioned the criticism, I just couldn’t help but think that, well then, that book’s not for them, right? If you already know what to do, you don’t need the book. But I think it’s important for us to recognize that the classroom and the children, that there’s a spectrum of ways that we as the adults in the room support and guide that play and that, like you said, sometimes that means sitting back and just watching what they do. And sometimes it’s watching what they do and realizing oh, let me support that with this prop or with this resource that they’re going to use, if I just put it in the area, they’re going to use that, and sometimes it’s preparing the environment. There are lots of different ways and sometimes it’s a brief circle time, right, and I just love that.
49:04
When you give those resources that there’s, you can use that in a spectrum that maybe I’m watching and I’m thinking, oh, they do need something here, but I don’t know what it is.
49:14
But because I’ve read these ideas now I can think of how I might better support it. Or, moving along that spectrum, how I can prepare the environment. I think there’s a great article called I think it’s Play a Spectrum. I’ll link it because I’m sure I’m not giving the right title, but it’s just that same concept that we have to get off of, this idea that it’s one or the other. There’s one way to do play in our classrooms, but there’s a spectrum of support that we can offer and still be respectful of the child’s experience in that play. And I think that your book is a great resource for people to take and then look at where on the spectrum do I need to bring that support and see what these resources might help me to figure that out, what that might look like and see what these resources might help me to figure that out, what that might look like, I think everything.
50:06 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
I hope that people take from the book is that, oh, wait a minute, I do something like this. It has nothing to do with fairy tales, but I do an art project like this, or I do loose parts like this and going like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay, so that means that I could be more intentional about developing the protective factor of resilience, or a wait a minute. This is a perfect opportunity for relationships, and let me think more intentionally about that, because we all do wonderful things in our classrooms and it’s a matter of connecting the dots. That is, I think, sometimes a challenge.
50:36 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
That was a great piece that you have in there, that these different activities. It’s a creative activity which is wonderful and has so many valuable pieces and we’ve talked about that before but that you can bring attention to those protective factors in any activity and, like you said, that by looking at this book and seeing this specific activity which I’ve done before can actually also be a great opportunity to build this protective factor, then they’ll start to see it in a lot of other activities. Like you said, it’ll start to make those connections, so that it isn’t just the five activities on this page, it’s every activity that I do. I start to see how that works, how those protective factors can be supported through that different type of play. So do you have a favorite fairy tale for yourself personally and or one that you have loved the way that it has evolved in your work with children?
51:27 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
I have many favorite fairy tales I continue to add to my. This week for my newsletter I’m doing something on six swans which I’m like, just go, oh, that’s my new favorite. I’m like, just go, oh, that’s my new favorite. But with kids, probably the most stunning example I have that is most memorable is I had I was teaching first grade, so a little bit older children but I had a little boy who came into my classroom who was developmentally probably like a young three maybe, had foster child, had a lot of things going on in his life and I always had books in my classroom.
52:04
And he went one day and he brought over the book of Rapunzel to me, beautifully illustrated, paul Zielinski’s version, scholastic, and he said read this to me. And I said Okay, so I read him the book. And he goes I want me that braid. And I said oh, okay, and like how are we going to make a braid? And went through all that and, like you know, he ended up like taping this. He would cut out big pieces of paper, he taped it all together, he taped it to the back of his head.
52:37
By this time all the kids in the classroom were like what’s going on? And he goes, I want me a tower. And I was like, okay, what are we going to? How are we going to do that? And and I, I called a couple of kids over and I said this little boy wants, our friend wants a tower, to make a tower. He just read Rapunzel and we talked a little bit about it. I said I’ll read you the story later, let’s see what we can do. And so they all started to work together and they put up this massive paper tower. We put it up on a bulletin board and over the course of a couple of weeks I used it, for you know, like I mean it was first grade, I needed to do some formal literacy, so we made it the high tower. And every time anybody came him, he was like you know, I want, I don’t like that part, like I don’t think that brick looks good, let’s do this. And it was.
53:45
It lasted like maybe two or three weeks that the whole class was just caught up in this story of Rapunzel and this little boy’s vision of it. I mean, he continued to wear the braid on the back of his head. Everybody had braids on the back of their heads for a while, um, and then the most amazing thing happened as we were continuing to talk about it and blah, blah, blah, um, he said I want to rip the tower down. And I was like, okay, it’s your tower, I could use the wall space. So all the kids like, ripped it down in this great like, like I can still see them. And he was.
54:21
I found out that in fact he had been abused. He had been locked in closets for a long time when he was misbehaving. And right before he was taken out of his home, his birth home, they made him, they strapped him to a chair in a pickup truck and made him watch all the other children play. And I mean, I still get goosebumps when I think about this child. But what he took you know we talk about initiative he took control.
55:18
I’m not a psychologist. I had no idea at that time. I really didn’t know a whole lot about trauma and its impact on the brain. I knew I had this kid who just needed a lot of things and I let him lead us with that story and play into whatever. Wherever we went. I did my best to connect the dots so that nobody would come into my classroom and saying wait a minute, you’re supposed to be teaching these children how to read like what are they doing? And to me, that’s really the power of fairy tales and play and child initiated curriculum development is that we don’t know what’s going on with a lot of these children, and being able to take their lead, we can offer them something very, very powerful and really help them move into resilience.
56:12 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
What a powerful example. Thank you, stephanie, so much for sharing here and in your book. The Power of Stories, of Fairy Tales, of Play and Imagination for Our Young Children is such a great resource. Thank you so much.
56:23 – Stephanie Goloway (Guest)
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share it with you and for all of the wonderful work that you do about all of the same things. Well, thank you.
56:32 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Thanks again for listening to Not Just Cute the podcast. You can find show notes at notjustcutecom forward slash podcast forward slash episode 72. There you’ll find links to Stephanie’s book, along with a coupon code to pick it up from Redleaf Press, as well as other fascinating links and tidbits I know you’ll find interesting. You can also hit up the show notes for a link to the why we Play letters. Head to notjustcutecom forward slash podcast forward slash episode 72, or go straight to notjustcutecom forward slash why we Play to get signed up and download your free sample letter. I’m Amanda Morgan. You can read more on my blog and sign up for the Not Just Cute newsletter at notjustcutecom. You can also stay tuned for social media updates on Instagram by following me at Amanda underscore notjustcute. Thanks for listening today and, as always, thank you for standing up for children and for childhood.
