Choice Activity 3: HERCULES REACHES THE STRANGE PLACE

Activity 1 introduced Hercules. Activity 2 introduced the strange place. With this third activity, Hercules arrives at the strange place. With this activity, I aim to respond to one of the challenges that Rita Jordan sets out for those working with autistic people. This is around enabling autistic people to pick up with others are able to do instinctively. Autistic practice should be supporting distinctively autistic ways of thinking and behaving, while finding ways for autistic people to operate in a “non-autistic world.”[1]

I would like the facilitator to encourage the children to place Hercules in the middle of the scene. But I would also like there to be opportunities for Hercules, first, to explore his surroundings. As Hercules is a hero who rarely stays long in any one place, this would be in keeping with the myth of Hercules, including with how this myth is presented in the works that students may have used for the optional initial activity. This would also enable the students to think further about the landscape and the part of the landscape that they would prefer to occupy. Would it be the lush, green part? Would it be the rocky half?

This will be even more something to consider when, at a later point, I develop activities where, in their classroom, the children create the landscape. They might do this with blocks for the rocks in the foreground, and with piled up blocks for the mountain. Meanwhile a mat could be used to denote the flat, more comfortable landscape on the other side. In this later activity, the children will dress up as Hercules. As Hercules they will walk around the locality to explore it. Then they will move the centre of the scene and copy the pose of Hercules leaning on his club, turning his body one way and his head the other.

But, for now, here is the situation I would like the facilitator to create – and I plan to liaise with potential users of these resources over how best to effect this:

Hercules arrives at the scene. The cut-out, coloured in Hercules is placed in the middle of the picture. That way, Hercules can look at both halves of the landscape. 

Hercules pauses at this strange place. He puts his feet on two of the rocks. He puts down his club and leans on it. Thus, he is positioned between the flat, green landscape on the one side and a rocky landscape on the other. His feet are in the rocky landscape while the club he is leaning on is in the flat landscape, but on a larger rock. 

Next, the facilitator encourages the students to think about how Hercules is feeling. Is he, for instance, happy? or nervous? or relaxed? or worried? or lonely? or more than one of these? The students could be offered a list of words to choose from. Or they could be asked to pick a relevant emoji, for example:

😃 happy
😐 neutral
😕 confused
😟 worried

Or these more complex ones where suitable:

😓 cold sweat 

😅 smiling and sweating

Next – for those with more advanced levels of communication can be encouraged to ask the following questions: What can he see? What might he be able to hear? Is he happy to be in the place? What does he think about the landscape? What does he think about the flat, colourful landscape on one side? What does he think about the rocky terrain on the other side?

Having reflected on what Hercules is feeling at this stage, the students move to Activity 4 - which will follow soon.

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[1] Rita Jordan, “Preface,” in eadem and Stuart Powell, eds., Autism and Learning: A Guide to Good Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2012; updated edition, originally published 1997): viii-x.