The HeART of the Matter - the Gordon Tovey Experiment.

On Friday I went to see a New Zealand Film Festival film at the Lido in Hamilton called The HeART of the Matter.  It was an afternoon showing, and I expected that I would be one of a very few members of an audience, but there were heaps of people there - probably reliving their long ago school days.  I had heard about the film while at the #edchatnz Conference the other weekend and as I am currently studying education policy, I thought this was worthy of seeing.

The film was about the programmes Gordon Tovey implemented, while under CE Beeby, as the head of Arts and Crafts in the Department of Education from 1946 until 1966.  You may be familiar with the work of Elwyn Richardson at the Far North school Orauti, which was part of what was known as the Far North project or experiment.

Part of the essence of the experiment was to nurture the creativity of children and allow them to explore and express themselves.  It was part of the child centred driven philosophy that emerged from the First World War and the Depression in the first Labour government's education policy to give children better opportunities.

This is from the New Zealand Film Festival website (see sources for links):

Luit Bieringa’s richly archived documentary examines the legacy of Gordon Tovey and the post-war education programmes that put art, artists, and Māori arts in particular, into the New Zealand classroom.

Under the leadership of a legendary director general of education, Clarence Beeby, the years immediately after World War II saw the most remarkable shifts in educational philosophy New Zealand had ever experienced.

Luit Bieringa’s documentary traces those changes and the army of men and women who worked to establish a thoroughly bicultural and arts-centred education system. Gordon Tovey, national supervisor of arts and crafts, and his team of artists and art specialists fostered the lively and colourful classrooms that New Zealand is familiar with today, in stark contrast to the rote-learning environments preceding them. Contributing art specialists included Cliff Whiting, Para Matchitt and Ralph Hotere. Critically, they ensured that aspects of Māori art such as kōwhaiwhai, kapa haka and waiata had a central place in our mainstream classrooms through in-depth consultation with Ngāti Porou kaumātua Pine Taiapa. Replete with archival interviews and little-seen footage, this film is likely to transport any Kiwi-educated boomer back to school, but its richly storied excavation of the past is as clearly pointed towards the future as once were its public-servant heroes.

“Given current challenges in education, and because this rich history is beginning to fade from living memory, ‘Tovey era’ stories need revisiting now more than ever… New Zealand needs a strong story that challenges the notion of the arts as a ‘frill’ in the educational process. Not arts or science – but both taught creatively for our children, students of all cultures, and the public at large to enhance and partake of the challenging future.” — Jan Bieringa

Gordon Tovey with his Art Specialists.  This photo is shown in
the film The HeART of the Matter.  See sources.

Tovey himself never trained as a teacher.  In his words, in the film, his teacher said he had "two options in life: become an author or become an artist; since your spelling is so poor, you'll have to be an artist."  So he did, and he was a good one.  He went to art school, after prompting from his aunt who was an artist, with Len Lye.  He also was a commercial artist, working for the railways in Britain to produce advertising posters and the like.

'Mitre Peak' from 1966 by Gordon Tovey  See sources.

It was in England where he met his wife, Heather, whom he married in 1930 and returned to New Zealand with.  Once back in New Zealand he became a tutor at Dunedin School of Art at King Edward Technical College in art, where he began to develop his own style of teaching.  In 1937 he was appointed as the head of the Art School at its new location where he pioneered programmes integrating art, music, movement and drama. 

When World War II broke out, his flat feet prevented Tovey from service overseas, so he insisted on painting camouflage for the army and was made an Intelligence Officer.  He was also appointed as a lecturer at the Dunedin Teacher Training College, but it was several years before he could be in this role full time.  While in this role he introduced programmes to "encourage the expression of creative imagination, which he believed held the key to both children and society fulfilling their potential."

These ideas caught the eye of the Director of the Department of Education, CE Beeby, who was revolutionising the New Zealand education system.  Beeby had become the Director of the Department of Education in 1940.  This was Beeby's belief for the New Zealand education system:

“Every person whatever his able ability, whether be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right as a citizen to a free education, of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his power... That idea was deep in the public consciousness, deep in the public aspirations, and deeper still after the war. When again, like after the Depression, the country felt a sense of guilt for what they'd done for the young. And nobody! nobody! nobody would challenge that.” – Clarence E. Beeby, Director of Education 1940 - 1960

In 1946 Beeby appointed Tovey as the first head of the Arts and Crafts department in the Department of Education.  The seeds were sewn for Tovey's experiment in Northland.

The film explains how Tovey hand picked high performing students from various teacher training colleges, invited them to an interview and then had conversations with them about what they liked doing artwise.  He then selected a group to take to Dunedin to train as Art Specialists.

These Art Specialists were then sent all over the country to run workshops for teachers and do demonstrations in classrooms to encourage teachers to have the confidence to teach art.  This was part of Beeby's plan to change the appearance of classrooms in accordance with his modernisation of the education system.  Among these Art Specialists were people who came to prominence in New Zealand as artists in a variety of genre and media: Ralph Hotere, Katarina Mataire,

A still from a video in the film of students from the Far North with
instruments they have made, making their music.  See sources.

The film has these Art Specialists talking about their selection, training, work and relationships with Tovey.  They spoke of the high energy and the creativity that was demanded of them, the opportunity to explore their own art interests and develop their skills.  After their training they were sent around the country to devolve all they had learned to classroom teachers and students.

Students from schools in the Far North and the son of a set of teachers talk about their learning experiences as children involved in the project.  One gentleman is shown turning the pages of the infamous Elwyn Richardson book In the Early World identifying his classmates and discussing the creations in the pictures.  This brings in the student voice, maybe sixty years after the event, but these experiences stayed with the students of the schools involve in the Far North.

It also discusses how Tovey travelled to countries in the South Pacific to learn about their arts and crafts and institute similar programmes too.  It invigorated his desire to have more Mäori arts and crafts in schools as well.  Art and Craft for the South Pacific (1959) and The Arts of the Mäori (1961)were two books to come out of this.

A collaboration with celebrated Ngati Porou carver Pineamine Taiapa (above) was instrumental in getting Mäori arts and crafts into the arts syllabus.  Initially he faced some opposition.  Sir Apirana Ngata was opposed to promoting the arts of the Mäori, believing they should be learning to live, be educated and work in the Päkehä world.  But after Ngata's death, Tovey began to gain more traction with including the arts and crafts of the Mäori tradition into the art syllabus.

How did this film speak to me?

There were certain quotes and ideas in the film that spoke to me as I watched and listened, fascinated with how innovative it was for the age and wishing we had a similar freedom today.... lamenting what National Standards, standardisation and GERM has done to our classrooms and freedom as a teacher today.... remembering how this approach was still in vogue when I was at primary school and disappointed my nieces and nephews will not be experiencing this is the same way wee did.  So I did a wee bit of sneaky tweeting during the film (which was hard because heaps of people got there earlier than me and took up the back seats) and I a Storify:

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

A speech or lecture by Gordon Tovey is in the film, where he says "Unless a person has abrasiveness in their personality, they only have complacency" and that spoke to me.  Probably because I can be rather abrasive.  But it also spoke to me because I can not be complacent about the current state of our education system or education policy, which is why my Masters is specialising in Global Education Policy.  As a teacher, there are things I do and the way I achieve them I know work, but when they don't I know I have to find a better way to do it or that I need to approach it from a different angle.

An old interview with Beeby conducted by Ian Fraser was also included in the film to set the scene on education policy of the day.  Beeby talked about how determined the first Labour Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, was to have a quality education system for everyone.  Beeby talked about how education for the masses scares the Tories (National) and is the first item to be cut.  Well, for all the current Prime Minister and Minister of Education say that they have put more money into education than every before, it is the cuts you can not see due to inflation and regulation that inflict a lot of damage currently.

"As a teacher you are an enabler, not a doer."  How often do we see parents and teachers doing it for the children nowadays?  I am a strong believer in demonstrating and then getting the kids to do it themselves.  And I could see this was the philosophy around training the Art Specialists so they could enable teachers to create and then teachers could enable students to create.  This is something I do a lot in my own class.  I demonstrate.  I train up certain students to be 'consultants' who 'boss' the others around so they can do it themselves.

The observation of one of the Art Specialists in the film that the advent of Tomorrow's Schools changed the Department of Education being dedicated to the needs of the children into the Ministry of Education which is dedicated to the whims of the Minster of Education educating children for an unknown future.  He lamented the role of Art Specialist evolving into being an advisor which then has disappeared into trying to win a contract.  Support and guidance for classroom teachers has evaporated.

Another Art Specialist felt the project was worth doing and if they had the choice to do it over again they would.  I feel that they were pioneers and our education system was the better for it.  I believe that this project enabled the children of the time to have that No.8 wire mentality that New Zealand became known for.

What does this mean going forward?

But I do feel we still have some of these pioneers in our education system today, people who are taking the values and essence of creativity and self expression of the Tovey era and taking it in a new direction:  Makerspace and Genius Hour. 

According to one definition, Makerspace is this:

Makerspaces, sometimes also referred to as hackerspaces, hackspaces, and fablabs are creative, DIY spaces where people can gather to create, invent, and learn. In libraries they often have 3D printers, software, electronics, craft and hardware supplies and tools, and more.

Genius Hour can be described as:

Genius hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom.  It provides students a choice in what they learn during a set period of time during school.

Essentially these ideas are reboots of what Tovey achieved in his time as the head of the Arts and Crafts Unit of the Department of Education with the support of Beeby.  Tovey empowered teachers, who in turn empowered students, to unleash their creativity.

My desire is to have the freedom that Tovey and Beeby empowered teachers with.  But with the National Standards as the Harry Potter Dementors spreading doom over our enabling New Zealand Curriculum many teachers do not have that empowerments.  Rather they are the slave of a data gathering machine - pretty much what Beeby was trying to move away from when he wrenched the education system out of the traditional British model of schooling.

Sources:

• Arthur Gordon Tovey's biography on Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
• The heART of the Matter - 2016 New Zealand Film Festival
• Painting of Mitre Peak can be seen at the Christchurch Art Gallary Te Puna o Waiwhetu
• Clarence Edward Beeby's biography on Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
• Pineamine Taiapa's biography on Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
• Source for Makerspace definition
• Source for Genius Hour definition
• And a blog post about music at Ngataki School in the Far North I accidentally came across: The importance of music at school: lessons from Ngataki

The Reading Tumble

Back in the day, when I first started teaching, when it came to reading time, the best I knew was do a story with a group of kids, then send them off with a worksheet.  Sometimes I was lucky enough to have a worksheet out of a book that went with the series.  Sometimes I hated that worksheet and made my own.  Sometimes I had to make the worksheet because there was none.  It used to take me hours on a Monday to set up my reading programme for the next week!!  And the programme was boring with kids finishing at different times and not enough to keep them busy that meant any good learning was taking place.

The great thing about teaching is that it is an evolving thing.  We don't just go to training college and come out knowing everything.  In fact, most of us are pretty clueless when we first come out, and we learn from our more experienced colleagues, on the job and from the kids themselves.

So I had been out a while in the real teaching world.  I'd tried changing my approach to reading a few times, but it still wasn't going the way I'd like, especially for the kids in my class that struggled with learning compared to the majority.  Then I had this RTLB who said, "Hey, I'd like you to visit a class at a nearby school that is doing something called the Reading Tumble."  And then that RTLB helped me implement it into my class!!  Awesome.

I think this is suitable up to Year 5, but if I have a Year 5/6 or higher class, I tend to go into a contract type system to give them more responsibility and autonomy over their learning.  The Reading Tumble gives the students a chance to practise their social graces such as sharing, compromise, helping and leadership.  Each time the whole Tumble changes focus we have new groups, new leaders.

Having the Reading Tumble does not mean that I don't necessarily not give out a worksheet or a follow up activity, but it means that if I do or if they have finished that work, they have meaningful literacy work to carry on with.  And often I do not have a follow up activity because we have covered that possible focus together in the modelling book during our guided reading time.

So I'm going to attempt to explain how I run the Reading Tumble in my class in this post.

While I am very busy with my guided reading groups, the rest of the class will be engaged in meaningful activities planned to enhance their literacy learning.  The class is divided into five multi-levelled groups, allowing the students to support each other as they do their activities on the Reading Tumble board. 

Each group has a leader who is responsible for ensuring the group stays on task; that the equipment for the activity is collected, packed up and put away; and to be the liaison for me to alert to any issues.

My guided reading groups are ability grouped, but my Tumble groups comprise of students in a multi ability for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the more capable can help out those who need help.  When someone comes to me for reading I haven't gutted a whole group of everyone, so there should still be someone for them to work with.

Above is a picture of my Reading Tumble board.  The Tumble groups are down the left side with three activities going across from each name.  Each day I change the group position, so the top group will go to the bottom and each group moves up (or you could go the other way ;-) ).  Below I usually have a table showing who is in each group (because my brain can't always remember) and usually a table showing my guided reading groups too.

The names of my groups are usually based on the theme of our unit or class wide reading topic at the time.

       

So these first three are for three of my favourite science units on New Zealand endangered birds, the life cycle of a butterfly, focusing on monarch butterflies and space.

I also do a focus on Anzac Day each year, so the groups are named after companies that served in WWI.

I have more than five group names for each group, usually eight or more, which means I can lay the cards out and let the groups negotiate which name they prefer.

I try to make the cards inviting and colourful.  They also have to be read from a distance, so they are big, 10 to an A4 sized paper.  They are laminated, cut out, Velcro dot on the back to attach to the fuzzy Velcro dot on the Tumble board, therefore easy to move.

The pictures are for the kids who are more visual in their learning and can't read the label.

I have these for a variety of topics such as sporting events, animal
topics, health, or some generics for when having specific topics doesn't work.  One set I have doesn't have names written on them, so each group can choose their own name and I can wipe them off with meths and change the names.

Many of the activities on the Reading Tumble board will be themed around the inquiry or book focus that the class may have at the time.  I will have some activities that run consistently through, such as handwristing, editing skills, spelling, etc.

I also choose activities that will enhance their reading, writing, oral language and thinking skills.  There has to be some challenge, some fun, some creativity.  I try to keep it fresh.  Some activities may need to change focus weekly, some may come off in favour of others.

The students, well the younger ones at least, get quite excited about seeing what their next actities for the day are. 


I will now explain some of the activities I use on the Reading Tumble.

This is a fairly obvious one, Handwriting.  But at the beginning of the week I hand out all my worksheets and go through them with the students.  So I demonstrate the letters that are on the focus.  I use Start Right Junior and Senior Handwriting books published by ESA because they are aligned with the NZ curriculum and they are so straight forward.

I like these junior ones because the focus is on just two letters per page.  There are also numbers in the book.  I always go through drawing with your finger first on different surfaces (desk, carpet, skin, fabric) to get the kinesthetic going before picking up the pen to trace (I don't do pencil - broken pencils do my head in, and pencils are for maths and drawing).  I am big on kids starting letters in the right place and these books really reinforce that.

The senior book starts with printing, moves on to flicking and then linking.  There is also a focus on signs and addressing envelopes.  It has assessment stops on the way and a page of tips to do your best writing posture.  I also school my lefties on some tips to make things easier, and all of them on how to do slope.

I also have another book for kids who are not ready for the senior book and some cards I have created myself for printing, flicking and linking to carry on with when the sheets are finished for the week but they still have handwriting time.

I also have it so I can use it on a Smartboard or ActivBoard or Mimio.  I usually leave examples of the letter expectations on the board during the week.

Success Sheets is from a book I came across in my first year called Success that in the odd school may be on a dusty shelf in the Teacher Resource Room.  It covers alphabetical order, vowels and consonants, dictionary skills, phonics for long and short vowels, phonics for vowel combination, blends and dipgraphs, prefixes and suffixes, various spelling rules, punctuation rules, editing.....  It has four levels and combines puzzles and colouring activities as well.  It was developed by former principal Murray Meecham (not sure of the correct spelling) and I do not know if it is still in print or available, but I think they are great.  We mark as a group using the interactive board so the kids can come up and write things too and we can discuss the challenges and successes we had together.

Word Families is pretty much doing activities focused on word families in the traditional sense.  It many involve games, brainstorming.... I kind of based it loosely on Chunk, Check, Cheer.

Poet's Patch is a box of poems, usually on the theme, but can be a mixed box, available for independent reading and practising the performance of delivering an oral presentation.  I also introduce other activities such as these on occasion:



Chunks is fairly similar to Word Families.  You can google for endless activities for this.  I do have a magnetic set of word families that are fun.  But I prefer that activity done under teacher aide supervision otherwise the magnets end up everywhere but where they should be when packed up.

You Must Be Joking is where I have jokes. The "question" part of the joke is written on one card, the "answer" part of the joke is on another card. They have to match the two to each other. When they do, they write the joke on a piece of paper, date and sign it and glue it into the "You Must Be Joking" book. Good for middle primary, Years 3-5.  The jokes are usually based on the theme, like I have heaps of space jokes, animal jokes, sports jokes, and lots of school jokes for the beginning of the year.



Punctuation is pretty worksheet based.  There are a lot of books out there that you can use to teach how to use punctuation and do editing.  I have worksheets from various books that I use for this. 

Here is an example of a worksheet I use mostly with younger students and we mark together using the interactive board as with the Success Sheets.

Even though it is a sheet I would use with younger students, it never ceases to amaze me how many times I have to use this with older students to reinforce that all teachers expect them to be using these and correctly.

For Antonyms I have a book with worksheets, but there are also some cool games out there that the kids can play.  I would also use brainstorming and illustrating for this, and matching the antonyms on a wall display or in a game.

Research would give the students the opportunity to take time to research independently for the topic study.

Make It is when I want the students to make something.  When we did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Make It activities included making a golden ticket using gold paper (that is like gold to get!), the boat from the chocolate river out of pink play dough, and constructing a factory from boxes.  When we do the Rugby World Cup, Olympics or the Commonwealth Games it could mean making medals, flags, national costumes, etc.

You Choose allows the children to choose which piece of work they want to work on.  It may be something they are close to finishing and want done, or it maybe something they are far behind on, or something in between.  The purpose is to instill some personal responsibility.

Sometimes I use You Choose to have a variety of activities in the box to choose from to complete to do with the topic.



Puzzles can mean jigsaw puzzles (great for younger students) or things like crosswords, wordfinds, mazes, brainteasers, wordplay, what is different in these pictures, kims game, matching games etc.  I usually have it topic based.

Life Education Books is for when Harold and the Life Education team is part of our learning programme.

NIE is for Newspapers in Education from Fairfax newspapers like the Waikato Times which I sometimes get to support a topic.  Occasionally we got newspapers focused on road safety, so I worked Road Safety in to the Tumble at that time.



Fluency Boxes is for when I want them to read for practise using books we have already used in guided reading and a reading level or so below.

Fantastic Facts is kind of a fun research thing.  They use the books for the topic and find an interesting fact that stands out for them.  They write it on a piece of paper, date and sign it and glue it into the Fantastic Facts book.  It is hilarious to go through and see what they have written at the end of the topic.

Poster is obviously about making a poster.  If you have an activity that requires them to make a poster for any topic, they can spend some of their Tumble time doing it.

Several of my topic units include a Postcard writing activity.  My space unit has them writing as though they are a tourist on the planet of their choice.  My Anzac unit asks them to write a postcard from Gallipoli explaining to their parents the conditions they are experiencing.

Advertise It! is where I want the students to come up with an advertising campaign for some aspect of our topic.  It may mean a Wanted poster for a character.  It could be a menu for Mr Fox's feast.  It may be an advertisement for tourism to a planet.

Ad-ing Words is about focusing on adjectives and adverbs.  The card is laminated and the chidren use whiteboard markers to brainstorm words that describe what the character looks like and how the character moves in the bubbles.  They then use the brainstormed words to write a sentence or paragraph about the character on a slip of paper which they then date and sign and glue into the Ad-ing Book.

Crafts is for if we were making some craft like activities.  My class made these pom pom birds for our New Zealand endangered native bird study.  We were wrapping that wool around two cardboard discs at every opportunity.  It's great for keeping them still during a read to session too (with guidelines).

Tell Me! is when the kids record orally an explanation or opinion about something they have read or discovered.  There are lots of great apps and programs on iPads, tablets and laptops to do this, or you can use one of those microphones that then connects through a USB cable to download to a computer.  Seesaw would be a great app to apply this to as well.

One of the biggest deficits our students have is vocabulary.  So I do the Vocabulary Expander to give children the opportunity to expand their vocabulary and to learn words specific to our topic.  I type up the words, print, laminate, cut out, stick a velcro dot on the back and stick it on the wall.  The kinesthetic part of taking it off the wall, putting their name on the back to claim it and putting it back on the wall at the end of the session is important.  If there is a name on it already, they have to choose an alternative word.  You can "ring fence" a group of words for less or more able students exclusive use. 

So once they have chosen the word they have to use a real dictionary to find the appropriate meaning for the topic.  They can only go digital to find the meaning of the word if none of the classroom dictionaries contain the word (it does happen).  They have to write out the meaning, preferably in their own words, but also show that they understand how the word can be used by writing it in a sentence of their own.  They then present it on A4 paper (or use the computer to present it and print) with the word as the title and including an illustration.  It then goes into a class book for all to refer to.

Below is one I prepared for the Waitangi Day unit I did in Term 1 2014.

Thesaurus Rex is when they have to find all the synonyms for a set word, then they are recorded for all the class to use.

Similes is where I want to to investigate and write similes.  And the same for Alliteration.  I have used this as an opportunity to decorate our class with examples.  Here are some similes my class didd last year.

Some topics and books lend themselves to maps, so I thought Map It! would be a great way for the children to be creative in a slightly different way.

Draw It! is the same kind of idea.  Sometimes getting the kids to draw for a topic or a book is a great way to get perspective.  I also have some cards with drawing activities and cartoons that I can use for this.

Topic would be used to work on any area of the topic the student chooses.

I could use Read It! for the children to read from the books in the topic section of our library or I could use this for the children to read what they want to read.

Computer - I may have specific websites or programs I want the students to use.  On occasion I will let them choose the activity on the computer (within reason).

Re-mix is where they may take an object from the topic and recreate it.  For example, when we did a Dr Suess unit and read If I Ran the Zoo, we "re-mixed" a whole lot of zoo animals to create new animals altogethre.

Some of us a still lucky enough to have a listening post or some variation of it.  One class I had had lots of laptops and we could use those to listen to stories too.  So that's the idea behind Listening Post.

And Publishing gives kids a chance to do the publishing of their stories during the Tumble time.

I had a class with iPads so I put I-Pad in the tumble.  I may specify particular apps I want them to use.  Or I may not.

Play It! is when they play games like Snakes and Ladders, Connect Four, Guess Who, Jenga, Battleships, Ludo, some card games, some word games.... now you may be thinking some of these things are not really literacy, but it is.  Oral literacy.  Oral language needs practising.  And during Play It! they're doing it without realising.  There is also co-operation, fair play, negotiation, and all those other social skills in play.

Record It gives the children an opportunity to record a poem or a passage of a book.  Some of my struggling readers I would get them to record reading their reader independently as a check on how they were going.  They can record Readers' Theatre.

Film It! is when they video something.  For the Rugby World Cup I had my class research famous parts of rugby games, re-enact it on video and edit it together with commentary.  It was a lot of fun.  We also had a go at the Fair Go Ad Awards one year.

So that's a snapshot of what my taskboard labels are about, but I have done so much more within this format than I can possibly explain, and I've spent long enough on this post today! 

I would love to hear from you in the comments section about some ideas you have from your class.  Thanks for reading to the end and I hope there is some inspiration for you.