Meeting Hercules: with students at a primary school's Autism Base

A couple of years ago, I experienced for the first time something key for the classical myth-themed resources I have been designing for autistic children. This was when Effie Kostara and I visited a local primary school with an autism base while Effie was working at Roehampton as a Researcher for the autism project. 

Two classes, each comprised of students aged between 8 and 11, took part in a lesson called “Meeting Hercules.” Each lesson was based on the first of a set of activities I had developed several months earlier and for which Effie had written a Teachers’ Guide. Effie observed both of the sessions, and I observed the second one and ended up taking part as well. I hadn’t planned this but did so on the teacher’s invitation.

Right now, I am revisiting the report that Effie wrote afterwards as I prepare the activities for a book I am writing. I am now going to run though what happened in the first of the lessons. I’ll follow this with some reflections what happened and the implications for my project. Then, in the next posting, I’ll share what happened in the other lesson.

The focus was different in some respects from what I had been envisaging. What I had designed was a set of activities where, starting with “Meeting Hercules”, students would go increasingly deeply into a particular mythological encounter where – at a curious place – Hercules meets two women who task him with making a choice between two distinct ways of life. 

But what happened at the school were two stand-alone, one-off lessons. Both of these lessons followed the standard four-part structure for lessons at the school: introduction, discussion, activity, more complex activity.

The first lesson – for a class of 5 children, all boys – formed the History lesson of the day. The teacher began by showing the class a photo of the chimneypiece panel – the artwork on which the activities are based.

Choice of Hercules chimneypiece panel, Adam Room, Grove House, Roehampton.
Photo by Marina Vorobieva

Without saying anything about classical myth or about the kind of artwork the panel is, the teacher asked who the people in the scene might be. Straightaway, the children became super animated and came up with all sorts of possibilities as to who the figures are and how they are interacting with one another. They were especially interested in the woman on the right – asking, for example, whether she is a servant, and wondering if she is saying “help!” 

After that, the teacher introduced Hercules – as someone who is always taking part in adventures. She showed them a picture of Hercules wearing the lionskin and wielding his club.

Hercules wearing lionskin -
from image shown to children during
 "Meeting Hercules" lesson

The teacher asked the students what they thought now about Hercules on the picture of the panel. What especially interested them was how adventurous they thought Hercules was. They said that he looked like an adventurous person but the he wasn’t being very active here. One pupil commented that he looks like he is thinking. Another commented that he looks like he is sleeping. Another said that he looks to be thinking about his next adventure.

When the teacher asked what he was holding, they got very interested in his club and how it could function as a weapon.

The teacher asked next what kind of adventure Hercules might be going to face. Among the responses was that he was going to rescue someone; meanwhile, another pupil said that Hercules was going to look for a lost temple.

The teacher then told the students about one of the labours performed by Hercules – his encounter with the Lernean Hydra. The children loved hearing about this encounter, and asked for more monster stories in the future. 

Then the children were given a picture of Hercules: the very provisional one I had created before Steve Simons created the high-quality vector drawings of the panel.

Hercules drawing used during the class

Hercules drawing created since the class took place by Steve Simons

The students were set a task – of colour in Hercules. A lot of thought went into which colours to choose and which colours to use for different parts of the drawing.

For the final part of the lesson, the students were asked to look again at the two picture of Hercules and compare and contrast them. They were asked to write down the words they were thinking of to describe Hercules. As they did this, the students continued to talk about the hero and how adventurous he is. They wanted to learn more about his labours.

I’ll end with a few things that especially struck me about the lesson. One was that knowing who Hercules is isn’t vital: the students made some thoughtful observations about the panel, and the communications between the three people, before they found out who Hercules is and who the women might be.

But what the lesson also showed is just how much the students enjoyed finding out about Hercules, especially as someone who performed tasks, particular tasks involving monsters. The word “adventurous” is one that kept coming up. As a result, I am planning more than I had initially intended around different aspects of Hercules, and how these form a backdrop to what is taking place on the panel. Indeed, what is taking place on the panel can itself count as an adventure.

The session has also shown me that, as we well as producing a series of lessons about Hercules, it is worth developing standalone sessions. I’ll say more about this in due course.

In the next posing, I shall turn to the second session which followed the same broad structure but took some distinctive turns…