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While many veteran teachers hobble toward retirement, Rita Davies seems to be sprinting — and she is still vigorously devoted to her teaching career. Known in and around the Berkeley Unified School District as an advocate of the arts, Davies focus in teaching goes, like art, straight to the heart.  

Davies says she is intent on providing a “family place” for children at school.  

The deeper the sense of community the classroom can build, the more potential there is for learning, she says. 

Throughout her adolescence, she carried heavy responsibilities because her mother was severely ill. But there was a teacher who kept constant watch over her — and she remembers the sound of that teacher’s cane and step, cane and step, as she approached to offer supports.  

It is this kind of caring that Davies says she attempts to duplicate in her work.  

“Love is essential,” she says. “It’s the core of my curriculum.”  

Davies does not mean being sweet, instead she means being open, honest and nurturing, being ‘right there’ for the child and the child’s family. 

Born in Wales, Davies moved as a child to London where her father worked as an electrical engineer. The only one of his family who wasn’t a coal miner, he passed on his ability to think ‘out of the mold’ to his daughter.  

She earned her college degree from London University, then worked in London under Henry Pluckrose at an “Open Plan” school. Pluckrose’s educational practice revolved around providing all the arts to children, painting, music, drama, poetry – all creative things as a way to deeply involve children in their own education. With Pluckrose there was a “god forbid” attitude if you didn’t teach the arts. 

Davies initiated and organized an integrated studies program that covered not just traditional “academic” subjects but the arts as well, organized around a common theme.  

“I didn’t know how to do it any other way,” Davies says. She used her environment, including St. Paul’s Cathedral and the London Tower for study focuses.  

In the ‘60s when teachers in California were studying British Infant Schools, Davies was invited to the States to demonstrate how integrated curriculum instruction worked. She liked it so much in California that she came back to work. Herb Kohl, author of books about teaching, including Thirty Six Children, helped her locate in the Mendocino County Schools.  

For six years, she worked at the Mendocino Grammar School teaching fourth and fifth grades. Her principal, Dick Jaulus, supported the development of curriculum that made everything connect for the kids. 

Luckily for Berkeley, Davies eventually moved here and was hired by Frank Fischer, a progressive Berkeley principal. 

Davies has been in the Berkeley schools ever since.  

But the emphasis on integrated curriculum shifted in California schools to a greater push for skills. Bitter debates raged through educational circles and many California teachers have been cautioned against using integrated theme approaches to teaching.  

Davies feels a “just the skills” route is detrimental to the education of the whole child. She quotes a character from Charles Dickens who emphasized “Facts, Facts, Facts” as the best approach to education and who had students memorize and quote all the facts about a horse.  

“If we don’t reach children,” Davies says, “if the curriculum is not part of their soul, it will just drift away.” 

Davies capitalizes on both love for information and a love for the arts.  

Her work, focused on themes and integrated curriculum, includes skill instruction as a part of a comprehensible whole. Right now, she and educator-parents from the Lawrence Hall of Science develop thematic units collaboratively. Her ideas of collaboration envelop parents and colleagues alike.  

Davies and other teachers at Oxford school are involved in a “Lesson Study” method based on a Japanese model of collaborative exploration of teaching processes. It involves planning together, observing lessons in each other’s rooms and holding discussions that focus on what the teachers want to accomplish and ways of doing it. 

Davies, never content to work just at the classroom level, has given leadership to the District developing district wide Family Art Nights. With the help of several teachers, she arranged a variety of art projects for families to participate in. There were, for example, tin foil sculptures, doll making, calligraphy and always a giant mural down the middle of the cafeteria where parents, grandparents and children painted to their hearts content. Arts nights were mobbed by Berkeley families who loved creating together. 

Davies roots are now firmly planted in Berkeley. She and her partner, Barbara Phillips, have bought a house in the Westbrae area. Her next goal is to study art full time.