You Cant Say You Can_t Play_

I read this book quickly. I am not familiar with Vivian Gussin Paley, but from reading this I feel that she was a friendly, dedicated, sensitive, and insightful educator who wanted to share with other educators and people who work with children. I think she would make a fine mentor and will likely explore her other works.

This book unique to me. In this book there's the nonfiction of the day-to-day of a kindergarten class mixed with a classic fairytale (but a sanitized one, no evil stepmothers, wickedness, or anything menacing except an eagle being an apex predator and bad weather) interspersed as Paley writes it and shares it with her class. There doesn't seem to be much of a connection except when Paley decides to shoehorn the rule into her fictional schoolhouse for the benefit of her class and occasionally the kids reference it or make art for it. Sometimes there's also a slight metaphorical connect, but they felt a little weak for me.

She created this good tension of ‘what's going to happen? How is the fiction going to impact the reality of their classroom?'. That tension kept me reading, it felt like pulling on a string and I kept hoping that in the unraveling I'd have clear answers.

She does end up creating the rule for her class ‘You can't say you can't play' which the phrasing of annoys me a little as I'm in ABA and have been ingrained to avoid saying no/not and to instead say the clear expectation, so I'd probably say it like ‘everyone gets to play' and then explain it. Although her kindergartners seem to understand the phrasing without issue and to like that it rhymes.
It's unclear to me if the rule is only for her classroom or if it extends to the playground, but I guess it doesn't matter as most kindergartens in my experience have a separate recess time and/or play area.
I have mixed feelings about the rule, but overall I think it works for the classroom and would also work for a first grade classroom as I have seen that there's still a lot of play in the classroom for both grades. However, I'm not sure that it works on the playground.

Paley talks about how some play is private and some play is public; home versus school. In a classroom there's a set amount of space with easier supervision, including what's heard, and more concentrated resources. On an elementary school's playground there are resources, but they're varied, more competition and the supervision is more difficult as in the bigger area it's less likely that the adult heard and saw everything or even cares as the adult my not know the kids. I also feel that play in the classroom is different from recess/play on the large playground in that recess is a break, possibly a break from peers or specific peers. It's hard to take a break from someone while being in the same room as them.

I recall working in an expensive preschool, it was during COVID so the age grouping might have been a bit off from their usual as I recall the room having ages 2-4. A young boy, aged three, was sitting at a table with a mountain of LEGO's, a two year old girl who didn't yet have much English sat at the table and showed an interest, so I slid about ten LEGO's her way. The boy begins to cry and one of the room teachers comes over, pushes the LEGO's back into the pile, and informs me that ‘this is not a sharing school'. I was baffled. The girl starts to cry and the room teacher tries to get her interested in an available toy/activity. I still feel like I'm missing something. Other times it made sense, the toy/area was limited to a set number of people, eg up to four people can be in the trains area or in the play houses. Space IS a factor, but I did see little ones seemingly delighted to tell or yell at their peers ‘Only four people!'