The Te Rito Toi Mission
TE RITO TOI HELPS TEACHERS reconnect with children when they return to school following major traumatic or life changing events. Te Rito Toi provides research and trauma informed, practical learning experiences and activities to help children better understand their changed world and to begin to see themselves as being part of the promise of new and better futures. Te Rito Toi seeks to imbue this return with the joy, possibility, and beauty of the arts to re-engage children with the wonder of learning. Te Rito Toi is based on research confirming that the arts are uniquely placed to lead a return to productive learning after crisis.
Te Rito Toi Philosophy
AT THE HEART OF TE RITO TOI is the understanding that education must help children make sense of the present while also giving them tools to imagine a better future. After disasters and crises, schools and Early Childhood Centres should, as a first priority, help learners safely explore the changed world in which they live by addressing the stories, concerns, and questions they have. Based on international research that confirms the central role of the arts in meaning making and the renewing of hope, Te Rito Toi positions the arts at the centre of children’s return to education following traumatic events.
Contributors to Te Rito Toi
Te Rito Toi is made possible by its wonderful contributors. Individual lesson plans remain the intellectual property of their authors.
Professor O’Connor is an internationally recognised expert in making and researching applied theatre and drama education. He has made theatre in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, earthquake zones and with the homeless. He is the Academic Director of the Creative Thinking Project,a multi and cross disciplinary research programme that investigates the nature and application of creativity in everyday life. His work in Christchurch schools following the series of earthquakes lead to UNESCO funded research and programme development and the development of the Teaspoon of Light Theatre Company. Peter’s most recent research includes multi and interdisciplinary studies on the creative pedagogies and the arts, the nature of embodied learning and the pedagogy of surprise.
Professor Mutch is a professor of Critical Studies in Education in the Faculty of Education and Social Work and focuses her research on disaster response and recovery. She is also the Education Commissioner for UNESCO New Zealand. Dr Mutch came to The University of Auckland following many years as a primary teacher, teacher educator and policy advisor. Her teaching and research interests are in research methods, education policy, curriculum development and social education. She has published in scholarly books and journals on qualitative and mixed methods research, social studies and citizenship education, education history and policy, curriculum and evaluation theory, and the peer review process. Most recently, following the Canterbury earthquakes, she has focused on the role of schools in disaster response and recovery. Her disaster-related research has taken her to Australia, Japan, Samoa, Vanuatu, Nepal and China.
Professor Dunn’s research interests are diverse but connected – linked by a passion for the Arts, applied theatre, drama, play, and playfulness. Across these fields she has engaged with young children, secondary students, adult drama learners, young people from refugee backgrounds and people living with dementia. Within the context of early childhood education, Julie has investigated connections between child-structured dramatic play and adult-structured drama education, with a major component of this work being the possibilities these approaches offer for the development of children’s language and literacy. Julie is particularly interested in the role of the adult in children’s play, and in extending teacher and parent understanding of the vocabularies of play.
Professor O’Toole is the Foundation Chair of Arts Education at the University of Melbourne (and also Australia’s first professor or chair of Arts Education). He was formerly Professor of Drama Education and Applied Theatre at Griffith University. He spent twelve years teaching in secondary schools, becoming a Senior Teacher and Head of Curriculum, and also worked in theatre-in-education and community theatre companies as writer, education officer and director. For over thirty years he has been teaching and researching in Colleges of Advanced Education and Universities, and has taught and demonstrated arts pedagogy and curriculum at all levels from pre-school to adult, and on all continents.
Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is an Auckland-based Pacific poet and scholar of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first person of Pacific descent to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland, where she now lectures in both creative writing and Māori and Pacific literary studies. Selina’s work has been widely published and has appeared in a range of online and hardcopy literary journals and anthologies including Blackmail Press, Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English, Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English–Whetu Moana II (Auckland University Press/UHP), Best New Zealand Poems 2006, Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1 and The Contemporary Pacific (UHP). Tusitala Marsh was named the Commonwealth Poet for 2016. In August 2017 Marsh was awarded the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019.
Poutokomanawa is a bicultural collaboration that supports Māori voice, leadership and decision making in the growth and development of arts based pedagogy in New Zealand schools. The work aims to acknowledge and support those working in Māori immersion settings and to honour the expertise and pedagogical knowledge being developed in these contexts. Our collective advocates for learning that is grounded in: creativity, artistry, wellbeing, child-led exploration and play, the natural environment and local place-based curriculum.
Poutokomanawa is the central pole of a wharenui (meeting house). It is the heart of the wharenui, supporting the whole house and connecting earth and sky. It is a piece of art, representing ancestry and story. As a name for our collective it signifies the aim we have for our mahi: to create a space for creativity, growth and learning that supports the heart of the child.
Ginnie Thorner has loved working in drama education for 29 years. She is a specialist dance and drama teacher in Christchurch working with students aged 5 – 18yrs and also works with teacher trainees. Most of her work is focused on drama for inquiry – usually in science, humanities and hope. She has a real passion for student voice and student devised work, and helps students use theatre to express their thinking around issues that they experience in their world.
Darren Powell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education and Social Work. Darren’s previous career was as a primary and intermediate school teacher. Over an eleven year period he taught students across all year levels (Year One – Eight) in schools in Auckland, Glasgow, London and Nottingham. Based on his work with children, Darren developed an interest in children’s experiences of health and physical education and conducted research that explored children’s understanding of concepts such as ‘health’, ‘fitness’ and ‘fatness’. Darren is also a recent recipient of a Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant and is conducting a research project about the impact of marketing health to children in New Zealand.
Briar O’Connor completed her PhD at the School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work, University of Auckland in 2021. Briar does research in Community Empowerment, Teacher Education, and Primary Education. Her PhD is a case study of how child protection policies become implemented, embedded and integrated (Normalization Process Theory) in a school.
Emily Gibson, MEd, (she/her) is a well-being and trauma-informed practice educator and consultant. She has over 20 years of community development experience providing leadership and support to Indigenous communities, not-for-profit organisations, schools, and businesses in Canada, New Zealand, and Central America. Before founding Emily Gibson Consulting in 2021, Emily was the Program Director for Right To Play Canada’s national Indigenous youth life-skill and suicide prevention program. Emily completed her Masters of Education at the University of Auckland. Her thesis explores Māori approaches to trauma-informed practices in arts-based mental health education. Emily divides her time between Canada and Aotearoa.
Katy Pérez works at the University of Auckland’s Centre for the Arts and Social Transformation. She has worked using applied theatre in national and international disaster zones, youth justice centres, teen-pregnancy units, anger management courses, and spent 8 years delivering family violence prevention workshops in low decile schools across Aotearoa New Zealand. Katy currently specialises in both research and facilitation of arts post-disaster practice and believes the arts are a perfect way to restore hope and inspire revolution.
Logo Designs – Nikora Ngaropo, Motion and Design https://www.nnmd.co/
Website Management – Alex Harvey and Tahnee Vo, Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, The University of Auckland
Website by Jenny Keate
