Teacher

by Sylvia Ashton-Warner

TEACHER was first published in 1963 to excited acclaim. Its author, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, who lived in New Zealand and spent many years teaching Maori children, found that Maoris taught according to British methods were not learning to read. They were passionate, moody children, bred in an ancient legend-haunted tradition; how could she build them a bridge to European culture that would enable them to take hold of the great joy of reading? Ashton-Warner devised a method whereby written words became prized possessions for her students. Today, her findings are strikingly relevant to the teaching of socially disadvantaged and non-English-speaking students. TEACHER is part diary, part inspired description of Ashton-Warner's teaching method in action. Her fiercely loved children come alive individually, as do the unique setting and the character of this extraordinary woman.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, Biography, Memoir, History, Teachers

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Ashton-Warner was born on 17 December 1908, in Stratford, New Zealand. She spent many years teaching Māori children, using stimulating and often pioneering techniques which she wrote about in her 1963 treatise Teacher and in the various volumes of her autobiography. Her success derived from a commitment to "releasing the native imagery and using it for working material" and her belief that communication must produce a mutual response in order to effect a lasting change. As a novelist, she produced several works mostly centred on strong female characters. Her novel Spinster (1958) was made into the 1961 film Two Loves (also known as The Spinster) starring Shirley MacLaine. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to education and literature in the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Ashton-Warner died on 28 April 1984, in Tauranga. Her life story was adapted for the 1985 biographical film Sylvia, based on her work and writings.

The Faculty of Education library at The University of Auckland—the institution at which Ashton-Warner trained between 1928 and 1929— was named the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Library in 1987 and includes the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Collection.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Sarah Shoenberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second I finished this book. I returned to the first page and began again. This book is poetry, passion and mentorship.

[Pankaj Suneja · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Children have two visions, the inner and the outer of the two, the inner vision is brighter"
- Sylvia, Pg 38

Sylvia Ashton Warner, author of Teacher, shares her method of teaching that stresses on the inner vision. The output resulting from inner vision is said to be organic. The output can be a word (Key Vocabulary) , a sentence (Creative/organic writing). Each word coming from inner live of child has significance and personal meaning for a child. This emotional significance attached with the word makes reading and writing- a genuine and authentic experience and learning. Following are the steps in Warner's literary method:
1) Ask the child for a word
2) Write the word in the card and give it back to the child
3) The child writes on his notebook, and then write it on the board and describes the personal significance of the word.
4) After collection of many such words, child writes them in sentences and construct stories.
5) The child read the words, sentences and story that he/she has written (Organic reading)

The Indian edition I read has foreword by Arvind Gupta. He is scientist, educator and passionate about teaching children. His website arvindguptatoys.com has amazing collection of science projects created from waste products, and has resources on education. He mentions about Paulo friera who used similar method as Sylvia's, but to grown up adults. Because of which he was thrown out from Brazil. This implies that no government wants its people to really be educated. This is actually quite true. we see so much development, and being spent on statues and superfast bullet train, but not much being spend on education and living condition of poor. Mr. Gupta summarizes the methodology of Teacher by comparing it to Gandhian practice:
Go to the People
Live with them
Love them
Start on what they know
Build on what they have
"We should not ignore her method because it is so unassuming, so unpretentious" - Herbert Read

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an inspiration for anyone who cares about early childhood, multicultural, or ESL education. It's essentially Sylvia Ashton Warner's diary from the many years that she spent teaching Maori children. She was an incredibly innovative woman who cared deeply about the well-being of her disadvantaged students and who did her best to tailor education individually to the needs of each child. Her ideas were unfortunately not only ahead of her time, but still ahead of ours.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about teaching. It is ultimately a diary; kind of disjointed and not always the easiest to follow. I found the comparison to marriage and intimacy at the end to be too much. But I do like the idea of giving children words to learn that already exist in their own minds and think that makes a lot of sense, rather than a one size fits all solution for teaching. This was introduced early in the text. I already do that so I thought it was neat, though I think using other texts that children are interested in can be helpful too. Of course there is a lot more available today in the way of books that might capture a child's interest effectively than there were at the time the author wrote this.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mrs. Ashton-Warner is responsible for inspiring and igniting my teaching philosophy. She was the first teacher I came across with whom I could connect. Her passion for creating a child-center atmosphere has driven me to enact my own educational dreams.

[Tonya Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd forgotten how this book brings you into her classroom. my favorite part of this book is that she asks the students to tell her the words that they want and that is how they create their beginning written vocabulary.

[Daniel S · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For it is not so much the content of what one says as the way in which one says it. However important the thing you say, what’s the good of it if not heard, or being heard, not felt? To feel as well as hear what someone says requires whole attention. And that’s what the master’s command gave me- it gave me whole attention.” (17)
“It’s the bridge from the know to the unknown; from a native culture to a new; and, universally speaking, from the inner man out.” (28)

“The teacher considered it his duty to assist the children in their search for knowledge by adjusting his method of approach of the individual child, and by finding the best way of proffering assistance in each other.” (30)

“First words must mean something to a child. First words must have intense meaning for a child. They must be part of his being. How much hangs on the love of reading, the instinctive inclination to hold a book! Instinctive. That’s what it must be. The reaching out for a book needs to become an organic action, which can happen at this yet formative age” (33)

“It’s not beauty to abruptly halt the growth of a young mind and to overlay it with the frame of an imposed culture. There are ways of training and grafting young growth. The true conception of beauty is the shape of organic life and that is the very thing at stake in the the transition from one culture to another.” (34)

“For it’s here, right in this first word, that the love of reading is born, and the loner his reading is organic the stronger it becomes, until by the times he arrives at the books of the new culture, he receives them as another joy rather than as a labour.” (34)

“The length of a ord has not relation to the power content.” (42)

“No time is too long spent talking to a child to find out his key words, the key that unlocks himself, for in them is the secret of reading, the realisation that words can have intense meaning. Words having no emotional significance to him, no distinctive meaning, could be an imposition, doing him more harm than not teaching him at all. They may teach him that words mean nothing and that reading is undesirable.” (44)

“There is all the difference between something that comes through the creative vent and something that approaches from the outside. Which is the difference between the organic and the organic vocabulary.” (46)

“They are teaching each other, far more effectively than I could teach them myself.” (47)

“Life as a whole is too complicated to teach to children. The minute it is cut up they can understand it, but you are liable to kill it in cutting it up.” (51)

“I never teach a child something and then get him to write about it. It would be an imposition in the way that it is in art. I child’s writing is his own affair and is an exercise in integration which makes for better work. The more it means to him the more value it is to him. And it means everything to him. It is part of him as an arranged subject could never be.” (54)

“What I feel about their work has nothing to do with it. The thing is for them to write what is on their minds and if they do or do not accomplish that, it is you who are good or bad.” (58)

“I don’t require that they should all be learned and remembered. If they are important enough they will stay, all right, whatever the length.” (60)

“They master their own story first, then tackle someone else’s.” (61)

“as a child rises though the infant room, reaching further and further out to the inorganic and standard reading, there is a comfortable movement from the inner man outward, from the know the the unknown, form the organic to the inorganic.” (62)

“All art is communication. We never really make things for ourselves. The books are to be read to another.” (64)

“But, beyond a normal show of interest, you don’t comment. You neither praise nor blame; you observe. You let everything come out, uncensured; otherwise, why do it at all?” (66)

“so if I am charged with riot in colour it’s the company I keep. How they draw I draw and what they write I write.” (73)

“A this time, when a mind is setting into its permanent future pattern, it might just as well set into a pattern akin to nature.” (79)

“Tone belongs to order and can be won.” (84)

“When we track tone to its source we find that it inhabits the temperament area. We find that the person with tone is not badly disturbed by passions. Following it further beyond temperament it turns out to be, to a large extent, a particular climate of the soul.” (85)

“When we trace tone beyond the area of temperament and beyond the climate of the personality to its origin, we find that it is simply this order. The true order in the depths. The “still centre.” (87)

“Wherever there’s creativity on a large scale there’s life, and I anyway, can’t plot life. I just join in.” (90)

“Why conceive anything of their own?There has not been the need. The capacity to do so has been atrophied and now there is nothing there. The vast expanses of the mind that could have been alive with creative activity are now no more.” (97)

“The amount of destructiveness in a child is proportionate to the amount to which the expansiveness of his life has been curtailed. Destructiveness is the outcome of the unlived life.” (100)

“If only they’d stop talking to each other, playing with each other, fighting with each other and loving each other. This unseemingly and unlawful communication! In self-defence I’ve got to us the damn thing. So I harness the communication, since I can’t control it, and base my method on it… And between them all the time is this togetherness, so that learning is so mixed up with relationship that it becomes part of it. What an unsung creative medium is relationship.” (104)

“I say the more material there is for a child, the less pull there is on his own resources.” (118)

“There’s discipline all right. But it’s the inner, instinctive discipline that obliterates the external, the imposed the brand.” (132)

“If only I had all the confidence of being a good teacher. But I’m not even an appalling teacher. I don’t even claim to be a teacher at all. I’m just a nitwit somehow let loose among children.” (198)

“I see life sometimes as a bird flying. I see a soul on the wing through a trackless storm, and every now and again there is a lull and the bird comes to rest on land. Those contacts with the earth before departing into the storm again I see as the moments in life when I knew the meaning. And even though between them I have my share of storm with everyone else, I am comforted always by the knowledge that there is land below, because I have seen. I am inspired to go on because I have seen the meaning myself.” (201)

“So many teachers put the emphasis on appearance while the meaning is atrophied.” (206)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, I am not sure how applicable it is to schools or how I personally feel about children writing about beatings, I like the concept but I have a hard time figuring how it could work in a public school without the teacher getting into trouble. I will keep this in mind as I teach but I am not sure if it can be a reality.

[shar · Rating 5 out of 5]

No other book influenced my imagination and practice of teaching than this book. It inspired me to forego the boilerplate as much as possible and keep reinventing each course, each semester, each year.

[Ange · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's about her work with the Mauri children in New Zealand. She's for the child.

[Libbycohenimrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most inspiring books I have ever read...I recommend it to anyone who loves children.

[Cherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read for anybody interested in teaching young learners.

[Andrea Gustafson]

Wow...I learned alot from this book. True story.

[Liz Rex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read before heading back to my energetic,young, middle school students.

[Peter G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until 2023, any university students training to become teachers at the University of Auckland did their homework within the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Library without, in many cases, knowing anything about the person who had given it their name. Ashton-Warner was an iconoclast proto-feminist and a self-proclaimed difficult woman within the within the staid conformist culture of colonial New Zealand: a woman who publicly smoked at a time this was thought scandalous for women; someone who left the drudgery of housework to her husband and practiced piano sometimes five hours a day; someone who could convince her family to move to small dead-end towns to teach in the much-maligned and derided ‘Native Schools’ of that era — places staffed largely by unqualified teachers separated from their majority Māori students by the inseparable gulf of the colonised and colonisers. After reinventing herself mid-life as a successful novelist, she re-introduced this particular book back to the publishers after its initial rejection some seven years earlier. Part polemic, part memoir, and written with the fluid sense of expression and eye for detail of a novelist, Teacher is a particularly unique document that, along with Elwyn Richardson’s In the Early World and the Department of Education’s pioneering Ready to Read series, gave a grounding for a remarkable couple of decades in literary achievement within Aotearoa New Zealand.

The first half of the text, really the far better part, lays out Ashton-Warner’s approach to education. She emphasises throughout the ‘organic’ nature of curriculum: an approach based on Freud’s notion, filtered through Erich Fromm judging by the references, about the linkage within the psychic drives between creation on the one hand and destruction on the other. With a faint whiff of the well-meaning but paternalistic bias of her time, she declares her Māori students as bearing a surplus amount of libidinal energy that she, as a teacher, needs to channel into the constructive side of the ledger. The Key Vocabulary involves giving students possession of words important and meaningful to them; from that, organic writing is the development of personal narratives drawn from their lives; organic reading is the dispersion and discussion of the student-written stories within the community of the classroom. Overall, Ashton-Warner’s major contribution is towards what we might now call ‘student-centred’ education — an approach that fronts a flexible enough approach to curriculum to allow it to be tailored towards the individual interests of the actual students in the class.

Although her attempts to convert these insights into a systematic pedagogy can seem crude — the stiff handwritten cards of words important to students, the self-written books that students share, the central place as ‘meaning’ over strict correctness as the purpose of reading and writing; but Ashton-Warner was very much working on instincts here. In this regard, Ashton-Warner both anticipates and pre-figures ideas that would enter mainstream discourse over the following decade through towering figures of liberatory education like Paulo Freire. As someone working quite far away from the wider discourse around education, it is a remarkable feat really.

The book is, in many ways, a product of its time and place, and Ashton-Warner’s descriptions of Māori in the text do sometimes strike an odd note. There is more than a hint of the old ‘noble savage’ type subtext within this work. Not enough to be actually repellent but definitely noticeable to someone reading carefully. I don’t think this takes too much away from an interesting look at the historical development of literacy education in New Zealand.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this was a book published in 1986, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Ashton-Warner's dedication to serving her Maori students was unmatched and fervent to say the least. The book reads like a journal written by a feverish teacher finding any intuitive way to connect her students to academia in authentic and meaningful ways. It was evident that Ashton-Warner was not a fan of government's interference with education, mentioning several times throughout that children learn better when they are focusing on what is meaningful to them and can make connections to vocabulary in their own life. This sort of innate learning style is brilliant, and I wish that the US education system would take note for some of our young ones. Yes, children need to develop academic skills that allow them to succeed and thrive as they move onto secondary and post-secondary education...but when they are in preschool and early elementary, they could very easily learn their pre-academic and academic skills without rigid common core guidelines, worksheets, and workbooks.

I am glad that I read this book. I felt more successful when I designed creativity-based curriculum, and I appreciated most of all Ashton-Warner's advice for educators to embrace the chaos of the classroom. In embracing chaos, their true creative and original thought can shine through - this is where innovation and art are born from. Brava to Ashton-Warner holding relevance decades later.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

An great look into the pedagogical approaches and life of a teacher of the past. Some racism and phrases which would certainly not be applicable in modern society as well as corporal punishment references such as Phunket child rearing.

It highlights the need to have valid representation of the whole class. For instance despite it being a mostly Maori school the beginning reader materials were American made stories about white, middle to upper class children which had absolutely no relevance to the children. Thus having no relevance to themselves means that there is also no motivation and therefor the beginning reading development suffered or stopped.

In addition to this at the end of the book Ashton-Warner states that the new teacher put up pictures of children above the bag racks so that the children would know where to put their belongings. Fine in theory until it's pointed out that ALL of said pictures were little white children (again in a Maori based school there should be relevance to self and representation)

Part diary in her life as a teacher (the second section) and part methodology for the creation of the Ikhara primer readers which was really interesting. I plan on buying my own copy of this book at some point as this was a library copy from uni and I would be interested in reading it again.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in detail the first 100 pages, after that I had to skim it. It is a good book but I felt like I knew where the book was going and I was getting bored. Sylvia Ashton Warner was a teacher in New Zealand. She taught Maori children in manner that started from them, their world, their lives. European methods did not work with them. Later in the book, young teachers fresh out of college trained in British methods tried to come in to teach, and they couldn't reach the children like Mrs. Henderson did.

The book proves that when we start where children are, we can move them forward at a pace that matches their needs.

[Saurav Durgekar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the Marathi translation of this book, and I loved it.
This book is the narration by the author about how she teach to her students in her own way, she had to do this because books was designed by keeping only white people in mind. Which was not heart touching for dark children’s. So she decided to design special books for her class. And she didinot do this work lonely but do it by the hand of her small students.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

p. 44 "bloodless words" e.g., come, look
p.45 powerful words = ghost, kiss
Key vocabulary approach teaches kids that reading MEANS something
Wouldn't want to copy her practice, but to use her principle: What words do you want?
35-51 are key pages
p.44 Word having no emotional significance to him, no instinctive meaning, could be an imposition, doing him more harm than not teaching him at all. They may teach him that words mean nothing and that reading is undesirable.

[Desi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Challenging to follow and it seems like it jumps around. She makes some great points, especially with key vocabulary and organic reading and writing. She also hits on the importance of noise in a classroom, understanding cultures of your students and being outside.

[Sarah Dann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome

[Natalie J A Greenly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrator is clearly unreliable but the language and images she evokes are irresistible,

[Christina Rama · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting teaching style. Latter half is more of a diary. She spills out anecdotes in mourning. The death? The creativity of her teaching.

[Mandi Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Heading of this Book page is Spearpoint-Teacher in America. It is about Sylvia Ashton Warner coming to a progressive school in Colorado to teach her methods. It is being reviewed by all as if it was Teacher, her first book about the teaching and developing her method in Maori Schools in New Zealand. I believe that Spearpoint never saw the distribution or the attention of the Key book on her method, and it was clear that the Main description on the goodreads page was referring to the content of the original book-Teacher
What was paramount about her account of her experience in America was the overwhelming evidence of the surge in the "hang loose" generation of parents, and the rise of what Ms Ashton Warner called the "wanna-dowannas". The children in the clearly "free" type school didn't want to do things, and they were richly indulged in their "freedom". It was frustrating, and harmful to the efficacy of the teaching methods she had developed. But- the differences in the way the American children responded to the method were also illuminating. It was fascinating to see the totally unique differences in the tone, content, emotion, of the input between the two cultural groups. This was personally interesting to me in my study of human development and sociology, but it rang some loud alarm bells about the nature of rising generations academic and emotional development.
I first read it many years ago, and had re read several times. In the past few years though, the forebodings have been so obviously played out that I'm afraid it would be too sad.

[Caffeinated Weka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teacher is a great read for New Zealand teachers and educators. The methods and philosophies about organic reading, writing and vocabulary, particularly for Maori children, were revolutionary at the time and some still stand strong today. Others are dated now but Ashton-Warner's recognition of the effect constructivism and cultural capital has on a child's learning is an important precursor to personalised and learner-centred learning and teaching today. The second half of the book is a series of diary entries from Ashton-Warner's infant classroom teaching experience. The writing is anecdotal and often disjointed but hints at the many unexpected delights and dramas teachers face every day of their career.

[Jan Sheely · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a a book I read long ago and remember how much I enjoyed it. It is the story of a teacher and her principal husband who were sent to teach the Maori children of New Zealand and Austalia. She discovers that the British textbooks and materials mean nothing to the children. She devises her own materials, field trips and fun to teach the children using their own environment as the curriculum.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very applicable to any teacher working in a classroom of children that are part of a minority culture. I really liked the New Vocabulary system described in the book, but I found the second half hard to get through.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this teacher. Good documentation of her experiences trying to teach at a "free" school in America. I love her honest approach.

[Thom Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recall reading this when it came out and thinking, "Sylvia, any one of us Americans coulda told ya...."