Reflections and recap
There have been times since I began this blog when months
have gone by between postings. This is because, for the first few years, I was
balancing developing my autism and myth work against other duties. Indeed, as I
have said previously, I started the blog precisely because it would give me an
opportunity to reflect on and share my progress – progress which I did
initially expect to be sporadic. Things changed
with the start of the ERC-funded Our Mythical Childhood project of which my
work now forms part. And – in the most striking contrast since I began to blog
in terms of quantity of output – yesterday I published *four* new postings:
Activities 1-4 concerning the Choice of Hercules.
I introduced Hercules (Activity 1), then the landscape
(Activity 2), then I put Hercules into the landscape (Activity 3), and then I
outlined a set of tasks connected with the abundant fruit and foliage that
Hercules finds in one half of the landscape (Activity 4). In these activities,
the users are encouraged about how Hercules might be responding to the location
and also, potentially, to think about how they themselves are responding to it.
This takes me to one of the reasons why classical myth has such potential in
work with autistic children – it opens up a fantasy world, but it also offers
an opportunity to think in a new way on how, as individuals, we engaged with
our surroundings and with social situations.
Since I started posting these activities, I have had some
feedback for which I am grateful – including overnight UK time from readers in different
time zones. One thing I have been asked concerns the age range I am envisaging
these activities being useful for. My answer is that I am striving to design
activities that can be used with children of various ages. Then, when I have
sought feedback from professionals, if appropriate, I shall reshape the
activities for specific age groups. For instance, I can see particular resonance
– in light of the choice that Hercules is going to make between two paths in life
– for those who are negotiating the particular challenges on their journey to adulthood
as teenagers.
Leading
in to Activity 5
The activities have not been concerned, yet, with a social situation.
This will come with Activity 6, where Hercules encounters the first of two
other people.
The current activity follows on from Activity 4 – indeed the
two form a pair. There Hercules/the group encounters food and drink and
vegetation in abundance. And, hopefully, this abundance has been complemented
through the colouring in and other activities which create a scene rich in
bright colour. Now, meanwhile, the students are introduced to very different
objects – those found in the other half of the scene. I am hoping that the activity
will further help stimulate vocalisation and anticipation. Both of these are commensurate
with areas that Grove and Park’s activities concerned with Odysseus are also aiming
to stimulate. There is a third, too, which has particular resonance with the stage
I have reached in the activities, namely ‘elicitation of states of feeling which
contrast with one another.’[1]
This activity will, I hope, help the users to respond to
one of the challenges that autistic people often face - of transitioning from
one scenario to another and of understanding the range of potential ways of
responding to a given scenario. These difficulties are articulated as one of
the “triad of impairments” identified by Lorna Wing, namely a lack of flexibility
in thinking and behaviour (along with these being: difficulties in social and
emotional understanding, and difficulties in all aspects of communication: I
shall address these in due course).[2] In this current activity,
the students turn from the pleasant landscape on the right to the very
different terrain on the left. Here Hercules notices that the rocky terrain
also includes an object, a helmet, with a snake on top of it.
The
Activity
First the facilitator points out the helmet and the snake:
These
are on the ground on one of the rocks. The snake is on top of the helmet. As with
Activity 4, the facilitator might ask the children to say words suitable to the
objects – perhaps from a set provided by the facilitator (e.g. ‘hat,’ ‘helmet,’
‘soldier,’ ‘snake,’ ‘scaly’). They might also be encouraged to make hissing sounds
relevant to the snake or even to imitate the movement of a snake.
To help the students engage with the activity, this
activity, like Activity 4 could be accompanied with pictures of helmets or
serpents, including as they appear in ancient art. Indeed, ancient Greek helmets
sometimes contain serpents – like this one does. I am planning an
information/worksheet on ancient helmets including how they figure in
mythological scenes. I shall do the same in relation to snakes – indeed, as
there is a rich range of myths which include snakes, there is particular potential
here for building up the students’ engagement with classical culture. What is
more – and this makes the accompanying worksheet a must – snakes form a key
part of the myth of Hercules. And – there is also a good fit with snakes and
one of the women that Hercules will encounter soon – the one who owns/gives him
the helmet (more on this later).
For those students who engaged in the preliminary activity,
the facilitator might encourage making links between the snake in the scene
and the snakes encountered on their reading about Hercules.
Further to help the students engage with the scene, the
activity could be accompanied with models – perhaps those that they make
themselves out of play-dough or by using models of serpents and helmets. I would
especially suggest her the playmobil Athena which as I have mentioned earlier
comes with a detachable helmet and a snake.
To help stress the contrast between this part of the scene
and the one explored in Activity 4, this students could bring the helmet/snake
in contact with the fruit. This could include moving the snake though the foliage
or crawling over the fruit – would the serpent event eat the fruit? Another
possibility would be for the facilitator to provide a full-size toy helmet that
the children can put on. If the facilitator is making use of the Olympian pillow-fight set, the objects from this could be reintroduced at this stage.
Next – although the order of the activities can be flexible
– the students colour in the snake and the helmet – perhaps half of the group
colours in the snake while the others colour in the helmet.
The students could then be encouraged to engage with the
cut-out of Hercules, and to move it to where the helmet and the snake are. The students could be asked to think about what Hercules feels about these new things that he is encountering. What do they make him feel? Is he, for example, apprehensive, or afraid, or angry, or is he intrigued or excited? As previously, the facilitator could make use of a prepared set of words - or, as previously, the facilitator could provide a set of emojis. Where appropriate, the student could copy the emotion conveyed by the emoji - this might be something for users to do in pairs.
If the students are able to apply a knowledge of Hercules’
other snake encounters then this can be encouraged.
Then return Hercules to the middle of the scene. Take a break
before the next activity, because here, Hercules is going to experience something different
from objects, or from an animal – namely a person.
No comments:
Post a Comment