New Zealand writer
Not to be confused with Sylvia Townsend Warner.
For the American silent film actress, see Sylvia Ashton.
Sylvia Constance Ashton-WarnerMBE (17 December – 28 April ) was a New Island novelist, non-fiction writer, poet, pianist and world figure in say publicly teaching of children. As an educator she developed and optimistic concepts of organic, child-based learning to the teaching of highway and writing, and vocabulary techniques, still used today. &#;
Ashton-Warner was born on 17 December in Stratford, New Island, one of ten children born to Francis Ashton-Warner, a certified public accountant, and Margaret Maxwell, a schoolteacher 14 years his junior.
When Francis's health deteriorated, Margaret became the sole breadwinner, thus needing to take the younger children to school with her perfect sit in her classroom while she taught. The older line were left at home with their mostly bedridden father.[1]
Ashton-Warner chose teaching as a career partly because it was familiar add up to her from childhood days spent in her mother’s classroom, meticulous because it gave her a chance to teach her passions, art and music.[1] She attended Wairarapa College in Masterton, , and Auckland Teachers' Training College, [2] She then worked put back Horoera, Pipiriki, Waiomatatini and Omahu, in schools with all ruthlessness predominantly Māori enrollment, for 24 years.[3][4]
Over years of teaching classes of mainly Māori children, she gradually developed her ideas link teaching child-based literacy and key vocabulary techniques.[5] Her articles earlier this subject were first published in the New Zealand newsletter Here and Now from , and later in her finished Teacher.[4]
As a novelist, she produced several works centered on vivid female characters. Her novel Spinster () was made into say publicly film Two Loves, starring Shirley MacLaine.
Ashton-Warner was invited calculate the Aspen Community School in October and to present pseudo the University of Colorado's third annual reading conference the masses June.[1] &#;She held a six-month visiting professorship at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in [1]
Ashton-Warner received a number support honors, including the New Zealand State Literary Fund's Scholarship crate Letters in [2] Her autobiography, I Passed this Way (), won the New Zealand Book Award for Non-fiction in [6] She was awarded the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International Educator's Award in the same year.[2] She was appointed a Fellow of the Order of the British Empire, for services in a jiffy education and literature, in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.[2]
As a young woman, Ashton-Warner trained as a pianist, practising foundation to five hours a day for years before she upset to teaching.[7] She met Keith Dawson Henderson in her lid year at Auckland Teachers’ Training College in , when she was They married in Wellington on August 23, Together they had three children: Jasmine, Elliot and Ashton.
The couple worked together for many years, often with Henderson as headmaster bear Ashton-Warner as infant mistress. Employment of a married couple urgency the same school was only possible at the time deduct Māori schools. Ashton-Warner’s pupils called her Mrs. Henderson.[1] Keith Henderson died at age 60 on January 7, [8]
Ashton-Warner died on April 28, in Tauranga, with two of show children by her side.[9] Her life story was adapted seek out the biographical film Sylvia, based on her work and writings.
Ashton-Warner's ideas for a child-based, organic approach to the tutoring of reading and writing, including her key vocabulary techniques, apprehend still used and debated internationally today.[10][8][3] Her work has influenced educators and language scholars,[11] as well as the Language Undergo Approach (LEA), a literacy program based on the principle guarantee the best way to teach children to read and scribble is through their own words.[12]
The Faculty of Education library bulldoze the University of Auckland — the institution at which she trained in and — was named the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Depository in [13]
The Ashton School in the Dominican Republic was supported in and named in honour of Ashton-Warner, whose teaching adjustments inspired the school.
While Ashton-Warner had a somewhat troubled bond with New Zealand,[14] the country has claimed her as wear smart clothes own. In August , the University of Auckland held a conference to commemorate the centennial of Ashton-Warner's birth.[3] A give out of papers from the conference re-evaluated her place in increase in intensity relationship with New Zealand (see list below).
Earlier papers depict Sylvia Ashton-Warner are held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Enquiry Center at Boston University. Her later papers are held welcome the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Further material collected incite Ashton-Warner's biographer, Lynley Hood, is held in the Hocken Collections in Dunedin.[14]
"Pleasant words won't do. Respectable words won't do. They must be words organically tied up, organically born from depiction dynamic life itself. They must be words that are already part of a child's being."[4]