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Welcome to Stories That Stick with me, Laura, as your resident storyteller. I'm here to show you how oral stories inspire and captivate minds young and old. Tune in each week to hear a compelling story and join in meaningful conversations. I'll be digging deep into the heart of storytelling, connection, and listening.
So whether you're a kid, teacher, caregiver, grandparent, or simply a lover of stories, This podcast is for you. Join me as you get lost in another world and discover how stories shape our lives. Here's to the next page in our story.
Laura: Welcome. Today we have Dr. Stephanie Galloway joining and we're going to be chatting all things storytelling and story acting, fairy tales, literacy, and resilience.
So, I know a bit of her story, but I'm going to have her share for herself a little bit about, you know, the story of what's brought you to where you are today in your life
Stephanie: and career. Well, thank you. , it's so wonderful to, to finally meet you, Laura. I've, I've followed you for a long time on Instagram.
That's how we, we met. Yeah. Um, and I, I think that I was so excited when I saw that you were as passionate about storytelling and story acting as I have been. , I have always been a early childhood person. I had my first experience Preschool on my back porch at the age of nine, , with some help from my mom, , and have taught in, , childcare and, , , kindergarten, public school, first grade, , middle school, public school.
I've been in early intervention. I've worked in a, as a children's librarian in a public library. I've been a storyteller. , and I, uh, worked with adjudicated teens in both counseling and educational capacity, and I, , ended up, , teaching, , at two different community colleges full time in Pennsylvania, and that's how I ended my, , formal career.
And I think the thread that wove everything together, a couple of threads. One is my passion for understanding more about how kids think and learn. Always, child development has always been my, my heart. And I think the, my soul has always been stories and storytelling and they have, that's that I can link the thread through people say, boy, you've done all this really weird stuff.
How does it connect? , Stories have, have helped me to connect it all and helped me, I think, to be a more effective educator. So that's why I'm so delighted to talk about stories with
Laura: you. Amazing. You know, it's interesting that you say people think it's such a random string of things. To me, it sounds like so logical.
I'm like, that all makes perfect sense. I can see how that has brought you everywhere. And sounds like things that I, in my lifetime, would love to, you know, achieve and follow along. , was there One role or job that really. had your heart, like was your favorite?
Stephanie: You know, I, people and people have asked me that, and I have to honestly say whatever I have been doing at the time has been my favorite.
Oh. I mean, I, I just, I've been really, really lucky and great. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had, and I have absolutely been passionate about everything that I've, I've done. And, , you know, when then there came a time when I knew it was time to move on and another opportunity presented and that became my new favorite.
So I'm grateful. Oh,
Laura: that's so cool. That's awesome. Yeah. I, , for those of you that, Don't know. I'm just resigned from teaching this past school year. And so I'm in this like very weird limbo state of homeschooling with my Children and doing some really different work, virtually and not, you know, formally in the classroom.
And it's just so comforting to me. Other educators that are like minded that, have have held various positions and still you Our teachers and educators and to know that like life doesn't end when you leave the formal classroom, because that was such a definition of who I was was I was a teacher and that was, you know, um, well,
Stephanie: I mean, I'm retired now and I still have that has been, I mean, most people are like, Oh, you're so lucky you're retired.
But like, so much of my identity has been wrapped up in what I do. And I'm so I've continued to. To do stuff in the field. I mean, I'm still learning. I wrote a book. I know. I'm like, and I go to professional development. I connect with other educators because I think, I guess I feel like no matter where you are, if you're passionate about being an advocate for young children or for kids, you'll find a way of doing it., and, and it, it, it can look so many different ways and, and just, I'm sure like what you've, how you've morphed in the last year or so, since I've been following you, you know, like you're doing such exciting stuff.
Laura: Yeah. Thank you. I know. I mean, I, I tell you when I honestly say, like you said, we did meet on, on Instagram and I think the first time that I came across. Something that really resonated with me, I think I had posted, and it ties so well in with just our two kind of philosophies, and then, the work that you've done in your studies, and the book that you wrote, was, I was, I think, writing, alternate endings that you might be able to use if you're telling a story, right?
Like, tell the story of the three little bears, but instead Goldilocks knocks on the door and they invite her in. Or I was kind of shifting from, the quote unquote maybe perceived negative, , thing that can happen in stories and fairy tales and shifting it to a more, quote unquote socially positive behavior.
And you kind of just gently nudged and posed like, Hey, but there is a really strong reason why there are fairytales and keeping 'em as they are. And I'd love to hear you just like, I know this is like your life's work, but like , you know, that was, I was like, huh, tell me more about that. And that's how we kind of started our dialogue.
And then you did, right? You sent me your book happily Ever Resilient. And I pull it out on occasion and I'd love to have you share a little bit about that idea of , why keep, fairytales in the way that they are.
Stephanie: Okay. , yeah, I'd love to talk about that. I guess I've been pretty committed.
I mean, there's a lot of anti fairy tale rhetoric now, but it's not the first time that that's happened. , I actually, in the 80s, there was a big anti push back on fairy tales as being, you know, too violent, all of the, all of the bad stuff. And I actually did my master's thesis on children's sociomoral development and fairy tales back then.
Um, because I, I've loved fairy tales and I was like, but, and kids love fairy tales in their original format. So I was trying to figure out like, well, if they're so bad, how come? How come kids are are so drawn to them? Because for the most part, I think if you respect Children, you see that much most of what they are drawn to play exploration, you know, curio all of the good.
I mean, they hate the brain has a tendency to be attracted as for young Children to what they need. And so I wanted to look into that. And what I discovered is that, um, from an adult perspective, we see the negatives. Because we have our cognitive, cognitive development is different from getting children, surprisingly enough, or happily enough, most of us, um, and for kids, they, they do, young children see the world as, as pretty black and white still, and that's natural for their cognitive development, and they see the, they want to know that if you do good, good things happen, and if you do bad, Bad things happen, period.
And for, for very young children, for preschoolers, and really up to like six, seven ish, that's healthy child development. And so when we offer them stories where the fairy tales have that very clear cut delineation between good and evil, and um, at that time that was what I really was, was focused on is, is how kids perceive fairy tales.
And that is one reason I think that The traditional fairy tales are okay. Um, fast forward like 30 years and I, when I decided to do my, my doctoral research on fairy tales and resilience, um, I, I discovered that In fact, fairy tales far more than, um, I mean, resilience is the ability to bounce back after overcoming adversity.
And it's simplest definition. I mean, I love it as a neurodevelopmental concept, but just at its core, that's what it is, is Bad things happen, challenges happen, we overcome them, and then we are able to move on. And that is exactly what I found fair, the traditional fairy tales are, are like roadmaps to, is that when bad things happen, I mean, they're about challenges, whether it's overcoming the giant or the dragon or the wicked stepmother or whoever it is, the heroes and heroines or, you know, the bears.
Yeah. Um, they, they overcome and then they're able to move on. And what my research focused on was. The neurodevelopmental model of resilience really breaks down resilience into what kinds of protective experiences children need to develop the brain's capacity for resilience. And fairy tales I found are a model, like contain those as well.
I mean, the, my, my results were like stunning my, my advisor who thought I was nuts when I said, man, I want to do, I want to do resilience in fairy tales, Because it kind of came out of the blue. I had one topic on resilience turned down and they said, you need to rework this. And I was like, no, I mean, um, and I mean, I, I looked at fairy tales from all over the world.
Like, I took the, the fairy tales that my students had used for projects who were so common, you know, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast and the ones that are the most popular. All right. Did some like random like pulling names out of hats and came up with the ones that had the most hits of students being interested in them and then looked for multicultural variants from all over the world.
So I had 24 different variants from every continent. Um, and I made it shook it up and I did. Made up stuff, definitely, literally, like picking things out of hats, so I would have a totally random assortment of these fairy tales, and I discovered that pretty much every culture had versions of some of the most common fairy tales, and that they all contained these protective factors for resilience, so, um.
That that's why I think it and I think it's I think a lot of modern children's literature, um, puts kids in the situation where everything is, you know, like, here's the explanation, you know, it's all going to be okay. And here's why. And we don't honor children's ability to be able to recognize that there is.
challenge. There is bad stuff. To me, fairy tales are like the risky play of children's literature. We don't want kids to ever get hurt or to see that the world is a challenging place, and we're going to keep them bubble wrapped and not let them climb up the slide and all of those kinds of things. But if we respect the fact that in order to get the brain ready to deal with whatever life throws us, we need to let kids take safe risks, um, in Physical activities and in mental activities in problem solving and have the chance that they're going to fail and not be able to, you know, the block buildings going to topple, you know, if they, if they try to build it on top of a bowl, it may not work.
Um, so how are they going to deal with that? And I think fairy tales offer kids that, that ability to, um. To see that you can solve your own problems and help get other people to help you and all of that, that stuff, too. So, that's, that's my, uh, fairytale spiel. Yeah, I'll
Laura: tell you, that's so beautiful. I mean, what just particularly struck me just now was this way of thinking about it is it's allowing almost like mental risky play, right?
Right. And I've never Like, I, I know the value of, fear, or when you you read a book and they get a little anxious or nervous, right, or even , my children, I see , their fears come out when we play hide and seek, because there's that moment of everybody is hidden, it was such a monumental.
shifted my son's development when we started playing hide and seek and he would open his eyes and not cry. Or he would say, you know, let me hide. Once he closed his eyes for the first time and opened and couldn't find any of us, he immediately cried and was like, you're hiding too hard, come out,
and then from there on out, he needed an adult to be the seeker with him. And it was such a big moment when he was like, no, you can hide, right? And he was able to, feel risky in that nobody's around, even though I know you're here and thinking of it in that same way, taking that mental risky play of, of reading a book that has these elements of fear or badness and evil and seeing it through to the end.
I love that way of thinking about it. That's so
Stephanie: beautiful. Yeah, I mean, there was actually a research study that I came across when I was working on this that, um, they act, they did, they hook people up with all the neuro goop on your head and stuff and covered that that is like, there is, there are the same neurotransmitters that are released when you're in an actual risky situation.
Um, can be released as you're reading and they, they didn't look specifically just at fairy tales. They looked at, but they looked at like Harry Potter and like fantasy books. So fairy tale, adjacent, um, books and that they, they track the brain's response to, to risk and, and danger. And the same neurotransmitters were.
Transmitters were released, but then when you got to the happy ever after the same positive neurotransmitters were released, and they said it was actually a way of developing these neural networks, um, in the brain. Um, and 1 reason why we, as adults, we certainly are gravitating towards, um. Stories and books and really movies that help us feel that way and that, um, they, they, the extrapolation was that it worked in a child's brain the same way.
And when I read that, I thought. Oh, so there's it's not just theory. It's also the neuroscience, right?
Laura: Yeah, you know, that reminds me. I know that you also know, Tricia Lee and her work as well. And that really struck me. I remember in her book, Princess Dragons and helicopter stories. There's a little blurb she has.
And then the neurons start to fire. And she says it's That science is showing that when we connect with a story, parts of our brain related to a particular emotion or action light up and went on to talk about another study that was done that, parts of our brain are used to figure out the thoughts and feelings of other people when we're trying to make sense of stories.
And. I think really that's, a lot of what I want to, , send out to other early childhood educators because storytelling and telling children's stories is really what is lost so much, between throwing on a YouTube channel to play a video or a song or just picking up a book or singing, a nursery rhyme Those are what,, we have in our back pockets, more than likely, than just telling a story, or retelling a story.
And, that's what I really want to be spreading, is that, you know, it doesn't have to be anything elaborate. There's a benefit to making up a short, one minute story about something really silly, or recounting your day, or retelling Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Something happened the other day, , we were using some language that I was saying, , it was too hot, too cold, or whatever, and I made reference to the Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and my kids looked at me, and I was like, Goldilocks and the Three Bears? And I realized,, oh my goodness, , I haven't told them this story, at least in their working memory, they can't recall it.
And I was like, oh, okay, well, let me tell you this story, you know? But how easily, even me, somebody that loves to tell stories and tell stories all the time, forgets just the simplicity of telling. A little story like that, and that they just, they gravitate to it so much, and, I think one of the things that really has struck me as well about Vivian Paley and the work that she did was in so much of her reflections, she started to kind of categorize and notice children's stories.
And sure enough, one of the, classic stories that children tell are,, good guys, bad guys, right? That's what so many of children's stories fall into this, there was a something and then someone else came and then they were okay, right? And then children are telling those stories so much and them telling stories and acting out those scenes in their play are, them trying to make sense of this.
And, and understand it.
Stephanie: I, I, and I think, I mean, to me, that's another reason to share. I always told stories. I can, I really appreciate it. Love the fact that you, you tell these random stories that you when you really, you know, that because I always did that as a, as a classroom teacher as well.
I'd see what was going on and then. , you know, make up, make up some little five, two minute story. We are storytellers. I mean, as the human brain works in stories, as you know, and kids like everything else that they develop, the more stories they're immersed in, the more that part of their brain, which.
Not only is the foundation of communication, but also of, of, of literacy, , develop. So when we tell them stories, they will be as more as likely to, or more likely to start shaping their own stories, whether in their play or, or just at the, you know, with their snack. Playing with the goldfish or doing whatever they're, I mean, kids are, they're in that story mode because during early childhood, the representational part of your brain is what is coming fully online.
And so they're, they're all about the story and the imagination. And the more we can hook into that, the more we're respecting their developmental process and offering them the good stuff that, that will nurture their brain development and their literacy and their storytelling and their play and, you know, all of that stuff.
And I. I, I love, I, I mean, I, when I discovered Vivian Paley and I was trying to, the dates don't quite match up, but I remember I was nursing my daughter who is now almost 35 when I had the boy who would be a helicopter. And I just have this clear recollection of like reading this book going, Oh my God, as soon as I get back with kids.
Beyond my own, this is what I want to do. And I always, from that point on, I always did her storytelling, story acting with whatever kids I worked with in lots of different ways. And the children's stories were what made me the happiest. Pretty much anything. I mean, I, I, I think it's, it's, I always found it very powerful, not only for developing kids literacy, but I started to see for developing community in my classroom because you'd see these story themes.
I'm sure you
Laura: saw that. That was my favorite. That is my favorite.
Stephanie: Well, I guess we're doing like I had one, one, uh, child whose father was a gynecologist and she was always like having like 47 babies and stuff in her stories. And suddenly like everybody started to have babies in their stories because this young woman like, you know, like they were so fun to act
Laura: out. Yep.
I had a year of ninja stories. It, whatever it was, it started with, you know, one or two kids telling the stories of ninjas, and I don't know if it was the acting out of the ninja scenes or what it was, but by the end of it, every child was incorporating ninjas into their story, and I agree, the community that, of learners that develops is the most, like, you Underrated thing when when you look up the stuff about storytelling and story acting by Vivian Paley and and how much you know It's I mean to you and I it feels obvious right that this lends itself so much to literacy development in Learning narration and the concepts about print but also their creativity and their imagination As well as their social emotional development because they're having to regulate themselves in the story acting but the biggest piece I always just loved was The way that it built a community because it became this shared narrative that everyone knew about because in, in this scheme of a day when children are playing, there may be some type of play that's unfolding in the block area, day after day after day with the same core group of three or four children.
Where some from the peripheral might notice and, and it's unlikely to go for the entire, you know, length of the school year, but with the way that storytelling and story acting is structured and that it's then presented back to, you know, the entire class to be able to participate in. It becomes something that everybody knows about, and that was just so beautiful to me, and I remember, um, it was actually that year with the ninjas, I was like, at my wits end of like, hearing another ninja story, and it was through that year, That I was working in Boston Public Schools, and we were actually kind of partnering with Tricia Lee and Vivian Paley.
So she was, um, you know, writing letters back and forth to our mentor that was leading our monthly, like, seminars. And she shared that she would, she would have told stories about something else, like a monkey. And that monkey being her, and her feelings about Only hearing ninja stories or that she would like, use it in a way to tell stories of, you know, how she was feeling about it, but then also to try to like, dig deeper and peel back the layers and be that kind of researcher to research like, what is it about the ninjas with this class?
That's so interesting. Um, it was, you know, it was really, really beautiful to, to have that little insight into her. And I can only imagine what it would have been like back in the eighties and nineties to really first come across. Her work, you know,
Stephanie: yeah, and, and just, I mean, it just, like I had, I was the teacher in my, my school.
Um, first of all, it wasn't because Ben Mardell was, I mean, I ran across his research when I was doing my, my doctorate stuff and I was like, I actually, on my website, I actually have some snippet from maybe it's your classroom from, from the Boston public schools, um, to, to show how powerful this was and how, yeah, this isn't just Um, and I think that's something that that's Stephanie likes and her own little bubble.
It's, it's like so much broader. Um, but when I, um, went into, um, when I was teaching public school, and I started working in with kindergarten and 1st graders with storytelling story acting, I was also the 1st person in the only 1st grade teacher who did inclusion. Because at that time, it was. Idea hadn't passed and it was a choice and I was like, yeah, heck.
Yeah, I'm on it. Um, and the, um, we had a little girl in our, my class or who came in was pushed in from, from the, um, life skills class who had severe cerebral palsy and she was older. She was in a wheelchair. She had very, very limited speech and. Um, but they wanted her to come into my class because of story, because that's what we did.
We told stories and I read stories and I was animated and, and she got excited. Um, and we included her in our storytelling story acting circles. And one little girl wrote a story about a fence, like there was a fence in her story. And I don't, I don't, I probably have the story someplace, but she said, um, I want Ruthie to be.
At that time, I hadn't read that Paley had said, you know, yeah,
Laura: all right. All right. So I know what you're gonna say. I get it.
Stephanie: That's okay. That's okay. Because what this was what this child said is she goes, I want Ruthie to be the fence. And I said, okay. And she said, yeah, she's got all of the metal in that wheelchair.
She'll make a great fence. And so we rolled Ruthie in and Ruthie was so thrilled to be a fence as part of this story. I'm still, I'm getting goosebumps. Um, and from that point in time on, the kids figured out roles that Ruthie could play in our, in their stories that. Actually addressed who she was as, you know, her, her wheelchair and her laughter, and they always put something in their story.
Some of them, not all of them, um, but they could say, and Ruthie's going to be this particular character, um, because they recognized how, I mean, she just, I can still see her pure delight, her whole body just shaking with excitement that she was in that story. And I think, you know, like to me, that was, Um, you know, does it get any better than that?
No, it doesn't. You talk about building empathy and building awareness of other people's needs, which I think, you know, that's what story does and storytelling, story acting. And there's a ton of research, as I know you know, that supports all of these social and emotional and elements related to resilience in that exact process.
As well as literacy. So to me, it's like, you know, you only got a certain number of hours in a day, you make storytelling, story acting gives you the most bang for your buck. It
Laura: really does. And I mean, in reality, I used to do it in my, like you said, so yeah, Ben Mardel was like my mentor. He was the one that read that, you know, ran the quote unquote seminars that were called Boston listens.
And we had like a A blog where we would reflect as educators, and they brought in Trisha Lee. So she would come and lead story acting sessions and taught us, you know, tips and tricks. And they brought Vivian Paley to speak at our kindergarten conference, to all the pre-K and k um, teachers.
And they've now effectively, embedded storytelling and story acting into their curriculum in Boston from the pre-K or even in the head starts from three to second grade. And so if you're there as a four year old in their pre K, you're doing storytelling and story acting all the way up until second grade.
And just imagine what that looks like when you know what it looks like. And if you're in a school where they do it, you could be the second grader that comes down and scribes the story of the pre K student and how beautiful that is.
. And so it was Ben Mardell that always brought to me the, the community piece of it that really brought that to light.
And then I also was in an integrated classroom and I saw those same things that you were just discussing. And it really is for only. What, 10 minutes of your day, if you're just taking a couple kids stories down that you're scribing and then acting them out later in the day, 10 minutes, maybe. And I had one student who had, a lot of echolalia and a lot of, phrases and his stories were always mommy, daddy, and his name, mommy, daddy, and his name.
And those were his stories. And slowly the children started to incorporate that phrase into their stories. And, at that time, we actually did go around the circle, and so it wasn't always able to be that child being that, but they were included very intentionally by their peers in ways that we know, children that have neurodivergence or are developing differently when they're in these integrated inclusive classrooms as as powerful and as great as the intentions are. It can also be very excluding, right? Sometimes it can bring to light. So obviously skills that aren't their strengths and raise a lot of opportunities for there to be exclusion happening rather than inclusion.
And I did always find that Storytelling and story acting could be a way where any child could be involved and have so many different ways to participate, even if they never told a story. And never acted it out. They could still be sitting around the stage watching it, you know, and
Stephanie: then you'd hear those little snippets from the stories suddenly like in your block area or out on the playground and you'd go.
Yeah, that's what it's all about. Is there you're weaving this classroom culture, this classroom story that is so powerful and so nurturing. Um, to children's development. , so yeah, that's yeah. Well, I'm jealous that you work with I think
Laura: I was really fortunate in Boston, we had people that were from Italy that were using this pedagogy as well as making learning visible. We had a connection with, um, making learning visible at Harvard and Project Zero, and then people from Lesley University.
I mean, I had no idea until I heard about it. Left Boston, how I thought everybody had the same,, early childhood departments and pedagogy and mentors will maybe not the same mentors, but, would have the same foundation that I did. And then when I left and started to realize how few people knew.
About Vivian Paley or, documentation or making learning visible, I, and, and even Reggio Emilia, I started being like, oh, wow, I was so, so fortunate. Yeah, and actually, Ben just did a big project writing the pedagogy of play with the Lego Foundation. Did you see that big? that they shared that whole, yeah.
So he did that project. Um, yeah. And he said he was really pushing to build in some storytelling and story acting there. And another one of his colleagues, Magina Baker, that was in, BU. She actually did a, a research study in,, I can't remember in, in a country in Africa and brought it there for like six weeks and did it, when I started doing a deep dive into like where all storytelling and story acting has been prevalent throughout the world besides in the UK and some pockets in the United States.
That's kind of some of the stuff I came across. So yeah, I am really, . fortunate to have that. .
So I'm so glad we got to have this talk. , Is there anything you want to tell us about? I'll put a link for your, your book there, and I love your newsletter, so I'd love to get, listeners onto your newsletter. I love getting those on Sundays. Oh,
Stephanie: good. I'm glad you're back on track. I love writing them.
I mean, that's, that's, you know, Yeah, I can
Laura: tell, right? It gives
Stephanie: me lots of rabbit holes to, to wander down. And a good way to share. I'd love to have more subscribers. Um, it comes out every, every week and it is, uh, has a fairy tale or two or three or depending on how, how limiting I make myself and each week focuses on a different protective experience for resilience and things you can do in a classroom that, that might nurture it just to give you ideas.
And they obviously aren't tied. They're inspired by the story of the week, but I try to make them so that they're more like springboards for people to start saying, Oh, I'm already doing something like this. Oh, I didn't recognize that it was also nurturing resilience. So that's my goal. And I'd love to, to welcome more people on as subscribers.
Laura: Awesome. Yeah. And where can they find you? Mostly on Instagram. You hang out, right? Um, when
Stephanie: you're there. I'm there. I'm there. I'm there. I'm there. I'm on Facebook. Um, either as my name or happily ever resilient is the name of my, my professional page. Um, I have an email. My website is, , imagination on the move.
com. Um, so I'm, I'm, uh, I'm trying to figure out, I so on respect the way that you, you figure out how to, how to get your stuff out there. And I, um, I'm, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still trying to figure that out. I have infinite time and infinite ideas and it's the focus.
Laura: I hear that. I hear that. So, you know, just slowly pushing the needle ahead is, is, is what we can do.
So absolutely. Oh, well, it was so great to have you. I'm so glad. And, um, we'll leave all those links in the show notes for people to find you. And I. I loved chatting with you.
Stephanie: I love chatting with you too. And, uh, well, I'm sure we'll be in touch. Yes.
Laura: Awesome. Thanks.
The end. But really, that's it for today's episode of Stories That Stick. Inspiring and captivating minds, young and old. Remember, stories have the incredible ability to spark conversations, ignite imagination, and create lasting connections. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a five star review.
It really does make a difference. And, if you have a story to share or a topic you want me to explore, reach out to me on Instagram at LittleStoriesThatStick. Until next time, keep working that storytelling muscle and tell stories every day.
