Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, BCS-CL : The Importance of Play and Narratives in Early Learning | Season 7, Episode 2

In this episode, we speak with legendary Speech-Language Pathologist, Dr. Carol Westby, about the importance of play and personal narratives in early learning for later language and academic success. During the episode, Carol discusses how she began researching play, and shares her years of experience supporting students in public schools. She also details the ways play development supports later academic skills and how personal narratives support language development, academics and social-emotional skills.

Dr. Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, BCS-CL, an award-winning consultant for Bilingual Multicultural Services and fellow of the American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She has published and presented nationally and internationally on a wide variety of topics and is the developer of the renowned Westby Symbolic Play Scale, a research-based scale used to assess children’s social and play skills. Carol was also The Parish School's "2024 Giving Voice to Children" Luncheon keynote speaker and was longtime friend of The Parish School founder Robbin Parish. 

Transcript

Stephanie Landis (00:00):

Hello and welcome to Unbabbled, a podcast that navigates the world of special education, communication, delays and learning differences. We are your host, Stephanie Landis and Meredith Krimmel. And we're certified speech language pathologist who spend our days at the parish school in Houston helping children find their voices and connect with the world around them. Gateway Academy is a unique school in Houston, Texas, serving sixth through 12th grade students with academic and social challenges. Gateway's committed to teaching traditional academics while also meeting the social and emotional needs of their students with learning and social differences. Over the last 15 years, their work has been to provide students with opportunities for identity exploration, learning self-awareness, and practicing self-advocacy, opening a path to personal significance in college career and community. For more information, visit their website at www.thegatewayacademy.org. Hello. Welcome. Meredith and I are so excited today we're gonna be a little bit nerdy <laugh>, but our guest today, Dr. Carol Westby, is here to talk to us and she is this year's luncheon speaker and she's just a legend in the field of speech language pathology. So it is quite an honor to have you talking to us and here as a guest. So welcome to our podcast.

Carol Westby (01:24):

I'm so excited to be here, uh, and to see the Parish School. Robin and I, Robin Parish and I started our careers around the same time and became friends working with the National American Speech Hearing Association. We were state association presidents of our two states at the same time, and so we had many years of working together. So I was thrilled and honored to be invited to come and speak here. So excited to see the school and particularly adventure Playground.

Stephanie Landis (01:55):

The Adventure Playground is the highlight of the tour often and oftentimes adults will be like, can I stay and play <laugh> <laugh>? And I wish I could often as well. So thank you again, you have such a long career and so many different areas of expertise, but let's back it on up, like what got you into the field of speech language pathology.

Carol Westby (02:16):

That story is too long to tell <laugh> <laugh>. That's very important in terms of my personal narrative. So we'll be talking some about play and personal narratives and life-changing moments. I grew up, my mother had a third grade education. Our next door neighbors grew up in an immigrant community, and my uh, next door neighbor treated me like her little sister. We're still friends to this day. And Frannie got to go to college, which was unusual for girls in that community. And again, she's 12 years older than I am. She wrote to me in college and at that point I knew I would go to college. No one else in my generation in my family has a college degree and it's because of Frannie, who all the years and all of my years, she's never missed a birthday. So that's how I ended up in college. And how I ended up in the field is a whole nother story. But without Frannie, this would not have happened. So

Stephanie Landis (03:18):

It's amazing to have somebody like that that's so important in your life that can make that big of a difference. And early in your career was your first interest studying children's play?

Carol Westby (03:29):

My undergrad degree was in English, and it just happened that the dean of women in the college was a speech pathologist and I was trying to find something that combined literature and science. So that's kind of how I ended up in speech language pathology. When I graduated from the University of Iowa, my first job was in upstate New York. And again, this was a long time ago. It was before public law 94, 1 42 was passed. My first job was in a program we called them arcs Associations for retarded citizens. I had never been trained to work with youngsters like that. I went to the University of Iowa. We knew about stuttering. I knew an awful lot about stuttering and I knew a little bit about child language. So I was dealing with children, had no background. Brand new special education teacher who I'm still friends with to this day was in the same situation.

(04:33):

We read PJ's book P uh, play an Imitation, and we began playing and we began documenting the play. And then the federal special education law was passed and our children were moved into side-by-side programs in the public schools. And the state of New York came out with a request for proposals. They didn't know what to do with these kinds of children. And so if you wrote a grant, you could get money to set up what you were going to do. So Ellen, the special ed teacher and I talked about this and we wrote what we call the PI in playroom. It's still the best playroom I've had in my life other than some of what I've seen here. <laugh>, uh, and we were funded for it. We were given a huge room in a public school building. By that point, I was also teaching at the State University of New York at Albany.

(05:33):

So we had graduate students. So graduate students would come out. This was so long ago, it was before there were any kind of computers. So they had the hand write everything, watch a couple students would play with the children. Other two students would just sit and write down everything you see happening. The end of that year, we went back through all of the notes and was the first version of the play scale that was put together in the late 1970s New York City went into bankruptcy. I knew I wasn't meant to be as cold as I had been all of my life being in Pennsylvania and Iowa and New York. So that brought me out to New Mexico. And for a number of years I was on a child development team. New Mexico did not take the federal special education law until 1987. And it ended up really not being a bad thing because we got to do whatever we wanted.

(06:34):

There was no law that said kids had to qualify. We could look at the child, talk to the child and say he needs our help and we think he needs four hours of us a week. And no one challenged us. So that was the the good side of that. So we evaluated and convinced some other people, we need to have these play-based programs, went into childcare centers, videoed, then we got a lot more of the background data. So the play scale evolved to kind of how you see it now in symbolic development in several different areas. So that's how the whole play scale started.

Stephanie Landis (07:13):

It's held up over the years. I mean like children's need to play and they're learning through play. It seems like it's, it's the same across all children, all areas.

Carol Westby (07:23):

Over the years, what we've learned is that there are different components of play. The first version of the play scale, I had play development on one side and language on the other. And then as we used it over the years, we realized particularly as kids would get older, I'd have someone say, well, when I was using the play scale, I got her at a two year level for this task. And yet there was something else that was a four year level. I don't understand. It's like she scattered all over. And so we began looking and realizing there are different domains or dimensions of play. And out of that, then no, not only are we looking at language, but we look at what we call theory of mind. In order to play it, you have to realize, oh, I'm pretending this plastic strawberry is not real.

(08:16):

I better not try to eat it. <laugh> and pretending requires a theory of mind. I'm thinking I'm pretending. The other aspect of pretend play that involves theory of mind. If you're taking on the role, I'm being the fireman, I'm going to be the princess. What would that princess, that fire person say or do? That requires theory of mind. And there's a whole body of literature. How does theory of mind develop? Play is a primary way of developing that skill where children learn to think about what am I thinking and feeling and what's he thinking and feeling. And it's not the same thing I think and feel. So play provides a lot of opportunities for learning about how you and other people think and feel. So that's what we call the theory of mind dimension. Then there's the dimension I call decontextualization. How realistic do the props have to be?

(09:18):

You take a toddler, they need something that looks fairly realistic. A 4-year-old with good language skills doesn't need any prop at all. They can create the whole scene in their minds. So there's that movement of what we call decontextualization. How imaginative can you be? How creative, how can you picture things in your head and bring them to fruition? So there's a development from needing very realistic props to smaller props that kind of look like the real thing, but you realize they're not. And then eventually language can set the scene. Then there's the dimension of theme. What topic am I playing at? Little children just pretend that what they do every day. So it's eating and sleeping. Um,

Stephanie Landis (10:12):

Being mommy.

Carol Westby (10:13):

Yeah, being the mommy. They can get very good at at that. And then as they get older, the first things are things they do every day. Then they start, they're developing an autobiographical memory and they begin to play things that they don't do every day but are memorable. That's going to the doctors, it's going to the grocery store. And then around three, they start playing at themes they have themselves have never experienced. That's where, you know, playing the the fireman, playing the astronaut things they've seen in books they've seen on tv. And then gradually they start combining all different kinds of ideas and themes and creating their own themes by around five or six. And then the last dimension is how organized are you? Are you going from one thing to the other? There's no connection by three or four kids are aware of a temporal sequence. Things have to go in order. And then there's some cause effect relationship. So that's how the play scale developed. And when we're looking at the play scale, looking at how play develops in each area and some kids develop more quickly in one area than another. Another area.

Meredith Krimmel (11:33):

When you guys started first researching and watching and playing with these kids, what was it about the play that struck you as important? Did you start to notice that you could assess other areas of their development through play? That you could get growth

Carol Westby (11:46):

Through play? Oh, both of that. First, one of the most important things was how we could see the really performing, how were they functioning? So yes, early on we were looking at the play also as a context for looking at the language skills, the cognitive skills. Tony Linder has done that with her play scale. I realized where mine was a little different, we were using play like Linder does to look at all those aspects of development. But we were also looking at the development of play itself. And I think it's the only scale that specifically looks at how is play itself changing. So both pieces are important.

Meredith Krimmel (12:29):

Yeah. And we know play is so important because it's crucial for developing all sorts of different lifelong skills, um, including academic skills, which I assume is partially your joy and love of play led you to studying other parts of development down the road.

Carol Westby (12:43):

Well, and what happened also, often now when I do the play workshops, I'll frame the symbolic part of talking about play. And when I talk about play often talk about pres symbolic. How does play develop between birth and 18 months and then between 18 months and five or six, how does symbolic play develop? And that's play where again, it's pretending, it's imaginative. Symbolic play involves being able to substitute one object for another. So the banana becomes the telephone or the yarn becomes the spaghetti. Or it involves even just, I'm pretending to turn a key here and I don't even have a key in my hand. It's pretending to say this plastic teapot is hot and it's not hot. You can imagine that that should be an attribute of a teapot. Those are the characteristics of symbolism, very important, unique aspect of development that some children have real difficulty developing.

(13:46):

That symbolic aspect of play in around 2000 Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act. And there was a lot of money that came with that. And particularly if you were in a poor school system. Now I live in New Mexico, we pretty consistently have the highest poverty rate in the nation and the lowest literacy scores with the passage of that law, a lot of money came into the state. But you had to show that you were changing some behaviors in the school. Now New Mexico had had some good kindergarten programs. In fact, their kindergarten programs were better than New York's when I went out there. And it was because there had been several women at the university who specialized in early childhood and were very much into play. And they had convinced the state, this was even in the seventies, they convinced the state that kindergarten should be play areas.

(14:52):

They designed play areas. They, there were kitchenette areas, there were lofts, gorgeous play areas. 2000 came, the state looked at those and said, our kids can't read. They went in, they pulled out the play areas and they burned the lumber. Oh my gosh. And I'm looking at this hurting my heart, <laugh>. I know. And that's when I started looking at play because I couldn't get anyone out to even listen to it. So I started looking at play. But looking at it with different eyes, what's happening in play that contributes to what you need to understand what you read, not to decode. Play is not gonna help you to decode. That's a special skill. But play helps you think about the things you need in order to comprehend. You're reading a story, you need to think about what other people are thinking and feeling. You're getting practice with that in play.

(15:50):

When you're reading, you need to see the pictures in your head of what those words are saying. You're getting practice of that. When you pretend you have to understand themes. What are people doing and what's the sequence of what they're doing? All of the things that you do in play are the foundations for what you need in order to comprehend. Kind of in recent years, we've gotten maybe overly focused on decoding, and I know we need that, but we're realizing decoding isn't enough. With all of that funding for No Child Left Behind, you had to use very mandated science of reading programs that were very phonics based. When they evaluated those programs, the kids did learn to decode. There was absolutely no change in their comprehension scores. They don't have any vocabulary. No. And and they didn't. They couldn't string the ideas together. Have context. Yeah, well, no context. And Whitehurst who was in charge of millions and millions of dollars said, I think we spent too much time on decoding <laugh>. So we are seeing people now say, what does it take to comprehend? And that's where understanding people's thoughts and feelings, visualizing it in your head, understanding things, having the content and the context, and you're getting practice through play.

Stephanie Landis (17:14):

And you know what that, I think they're still looking for a balance of that in schools now. And we see the push and pull. And kindergarten now is so, sometimes looks like a second grade, but definitely looks like a first grade. And it's really rare to go find kindergartens where they're truly playing and get that time to develop those skills and the comprehension and the understanding. And it's, it hurts my heart, <laugh>. I

Carol Westby (17:42):

Know. That's right. It's, it's so exciting to see what's happening here and to see the play areas and all the, they're reduced in your elementary, there's still play areas there. It's still part of the curriculum.

Stephanie Landis (17:55):

Yeah. Play is just so important. I think play is important as adults, but our play just looks different. It just looks very different. <laugh>. Yes. And one of the things you've been recently speaking on is narratives. And to me, and you mentioned it when we were talking beforehand, but like as they start to develop and they're developing that language, like narratives become an important part of play. And you can start building on those narrative skills while you're playing.

Carol Westby (18:21):

And particularly you see the children, the four and five year olds are really now putting stories together. It's not just a single activity. They're making sense out of this. They're making a story. Something is happening here. And there is data that actually shows now that children in their play who play in more decontextualized ways, where they start figuring out they don't need a prop for everything, have better vocabulary, they have better reading comprehension. By fifth grade children have better theory of mind skills. They become more empathic to other people. And again, you need those skills for reading. And so we're seeing, I now look at play being the foundation for the comprehension. All of those dimensions of play are part of what you need to comprehend. 'cause you're putting all the pieces together. And what's happening in a lot of the, the reading programs until recently, people assume that if kids could decode, they're going to comprehend. And that's not the case. And so we really need to look at what does it take to comprehend and what kinds of experiences do kids need? And again, that's where play can really set the stage for it. Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Landis (19:46):

<affirmative>. And as you're saying, the four and five year olds, I'm thinking of the four and five year olds that I've played with that are basically writing a play in their head and they're like, no, no, no, you're supposed to say this and then I'm gonna do this, and then you say this. And I'm like, oh, I'm just a prop in this play. <laugh> in your brain. But they just start, you're right, they're building their own stories and narratives, and it's that oral that you do first before you even start writing a story.

Carol Westby (20:09):

And, and again, the, the data is strong to show kids who, who can do that in play at fifth grade. It's highly predictive of how they're going to function academically throughout much of their school years.

Stephanie Landis (20:21):

We have a population that when they're young, they're still developing their play. And some of them play looks a little different. Are there ways that if the children are enjoying play in a different way, that we can still bring some of these areas in? So some of our kids play, they still really like the organizing and stacking or like very repetitive, highly structured play.

Carol Westby (20:43):

This is a, a tricky one. There's, this was old literature and I don't know why I hadn't seen it followed up on late seventies and I think it was Smith looked at children's play and said, some children are dramatists. They like pretending, and I am the king and you're the queen. And here comes the dragon. Other kids are patterns and they really do like stacking and building and creating things. So there are these differences. You tend to sometimes see that accentuated in kids on the autism spectrum, that they tend to be more patterns than dramatists. And I know there's now controversy. Now, should we not try to have them do anything else? If that's what they like to do, and I'm conflicted over that. You want to respect their preferences. Scientists become or more paters from what we know. And those of you, you know, uh, going into education, social services tend to be more dramatists. So we tend to have these preferences. So you want to figure out kind of how to incorporate some of those, the things that are appealing, but how can you also integrate some of the other aspect of the play?

Stephanie Landis (22:08):

Yeah, I think that that's, you know, an area that we're working actively here too is to, like you said, be respectful of every child's preferences. And this some things are easier or harder, other brains are more drawn to it while also like working with them to expand.

Carol Westby (22:23):

Yes.

Stephanie Landis (22:23):

Yeah.

Carol Westby (22:24):

After play, I spent a lot of time looking at narratives. And for quite a number of years I was looking at how do children comprehend and tell fictional narratives. That's what the literature was looking at and how do we do this? And let's get kids telling good, coherent, fictional narratives. And they get a lot of data that shows if you can do this well at kindergarten, you're going to do well academically. I hadn't thought much at all about personal narratives. There wasn't a whole lot of literature and I didn't see how they were particularly helpful. So that's been much more recently that I've understood the value of personal narratives. One of the ways that came about was that it's been over 10 years ago now, uh, I met a boy, I'll call David, my friend and colleague, Barbara Kata was working with him. Uh, David had been a perfectly typically developing child until he was around four and a half.

(23:28):

And then he developed what's called Landau Cleft Nurse syndrome. It's fairly rare neurological disease. And over a few days time, he had a series of seizures. He lost all ability to comprehend or speak at all. And so this was seeing him now over five years later, uh, and at nine he had regained quite a bit of his language and he was in general education classrooms struggling. And Barbara and I's, we were working with him, realized he just, he was a really sad little boy and he'd be saying things like, why do I have to go to that hospital in LA a couple times a year? And why am I coming here all the time? And I'm the oldest kid in my class, why am I older than everybody else? And Barbara and I said, he really seems depressed. And we were having a hard time engaging him.

(24:24):

And we realized, we said, he doesn't know his story. He doesn't know why he is the kind of child he is. And so we talked with the parents and said, we want David to be able to tell his story. And they brought in pictures and videos and we helped him tell his story. But in order to do that, again, Barbara and I are always looking for evidence-based information. So what do you need in order to tell a personal story? And that's where then we started looking at the literature on autobiographical memory, which is our memory for our personal experiences and how that develops. And children who have language impairments have kind of problems in autobiographical memory. If you have problems in autobiographical memory, you usually have language problems too. So there's this interaction and the data is now showing how important it is to be able to tell a coherent personal narrative that Elaine Reese, who's a researcher out of New Zealand, has been following children for about 20 years. She took a group of a hundred families, trained them in what she called reminiscing, how to talk about past experiences. And over 20 years has compared them with family similar demographic backgrounds. Who but who hadn't been trained and reminiscing in talking about your experiences, those persons who as toddlers and preschoolers had parents who reminisced could tell better personal stories, had better self-esteem, had better emotional health at 21, had, uh, less depression and more insight into problems and how to deal with them. And within native culture, stories are used for healing.

Stephanie Landis (26:24):

Yeah, I could see that coming up a lot in New Mexico.

Carol Westby (26:26):

Yes. And in fact, Leslie Marmon Soko, who's uh, noted native author, uh, wrote a story called Ceremony. And it's about a man KO who comes back from the war with PTSD. He is healed by returning to the stories of his culture and learning to tell his story. And I realized David's story was healing for him. He needed to be able to tell his story to know who he had been and who he was now. And stories are healing. And so that's one of the reasons they're so very important. And when we talk to people, we don't run up to someone and I don't say, oh, let me tell you this story I've just made up. We start sharing. Well, I, when I came here today, I had been friends with Robin. It retrieved my memories of being with Rob and some of the things we had done together as Asha. And that's what I, I, I started sharing was one of the first things I started sharing. What were the stories? Why do I feel a connection here? And that's what's so important to personal stories. Fictional stories don't give you that connection. And I want kids to develop academically and fictional stories help that. But you want good social emotional development. And that's why that personal story is so critical. And being able to share your personal story

Stephanie Landis (27:58):

And as you share that and, and use Robin's name, I'm thinking of the good news book that she started as a tradition. I mean, it starts one, just so that children can share good news throughout their day instead of always coming home of like, Johnny took the toy again. You know, like instead it's like, wow, Johnny said this word that he's never said before, or he read this whole sentence. Or like, he got to be in this part in the play and he usually doesn't interact. And instead we're helping them one, look for the good in their days, but two, like it's so hard, especially for our children with language issues, to then re have that autobiographical memory so when they go home, what did you do? Nothing. Or like, I don't know, or I played. And two, it then gives them that practice of telling their story and having that say. And so I just, I mean, I've always been kind of in love with the good news book tradition and now that you're bringing this up, I'm like enjoying it more.

Carol Westby (28:56):

Thank you so much for sharing that. 'cause I didn't know about that. And that is so

Stephanie Landis (29:00):

One of her traditions that we've done, like since the school is founded, if I'm understanding correctly.

Meredith Krimmel (29:05):

Yeah, yeah. One of the very first, you know, tradition and also just our core beliefs here, that everyone should have a voice to be able to share their beliefs and their story that aligns so closely with what the parish school believes that, you know, sharing your story is so important and, and we value that enough to make sure that everyone can do that.

Stephanie Landis (29:23):

So you're speaking our language. Yeah. <laugh> being able to tell that narrative and those stories are just, it's so powerful and you know, social emotional context to it as well. And it just, you're right, it's healing and it's connecting. And when you are in conversation with people, we're not typically, sometimes we dump facts, but oftentimes we're just, you're right. Connecting with personal stories.

Meredith Krimmel (29:45):

Well, we might be dumping facts, but we're not usually telling each other fictional stories. <laugh>, we're definitely not

Stephanie Landis (29:50):

<laugh>. I don't know. Sometimes, I mean a little bit there's fictional stories.

Meredith Krimmel (29:56):

I do know my 7-year-old loves to share fictional stories with me,

Stephanie Landis (29:59):

But they claim to be autographic. Right, exactly, exactly. Story. Which is also another town that's with that imagination, a different kind of

Meredith Krimmel (30:08):

Narrative development.

Stephanie Landis (30:09):

Well, we have just so appreciated speaking with you today and getting to know you, and I'm so excited to hear you at the luncheon. Me too. And I'm excited for you to talk to the staff. There are so many staff members here that are extremely excited as well. We end every podcast with asking if there's one piece of advice you'd like to give. And it can be on anything you want. It can be on the related topic or just whatever's on your heart. You have one piece of advice. What would you like to give?

Carol Westby (30:37):

Now this is so much advice, but I will be saying this tomorrow at, at the luncheon, and as again, as I was thinking about this and remembering Robin, and when I started really looking at play and literacy and came across a quote from Joel Barker and he said, uh, vision without action is merely a dream action without vision. Just passes the time, vision with action can change the world. And that's what I see has happened here. Robin had a vision, but she was able to act on it. And her vision with action is changing the world for children. And so I just want to encourage people to have a vision and act on it. That's beautiful. Love it. Yeah. Love that. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It's, it's a real honor to be here.

Meredith Krimmel (31:38):

Thank you for listening to the Unbabbled podcast. For more information on today's episode, please see our episode description. For more information on the parish school, visit parish school.org. If you're not already, don't forget to subscribe to the Unbabbled Podcast on your app of choice. And if you like what you're hearing, be sure to leave a rating and review. A special thank you to Joanna Rissmiller and Mackey Torres for all their hard work behind the scenes. Thanks again for listening.