Sylvia Ashton-Warner

Sylvia Ashton-Warner is the teacher of five-year-old Maori children who are students at Fernhill School in Omahu, New Zealand. The children are placed in Infant Reading Rooms where Sylvia determines that the traditional approach to learning to read English will not work with these children. Instead, Sylvia adopts an innovative teaching approach, termed organic teaching, which is based on the child's inner vision, which develops from his own experience and culture. Throughout this account, Sylvia remains a strong advocate of the children and this method of teaching them. She has an emotional attachment to the children and expresses great concern for their potential in the future.

Sylvia goes to great lengths to accommodate the needs of the child. She abandons traditional methods and reading primers that she deems not appropriate nor effective in teaching the Maori children who are only superficially familiar with proper English. In applying...