"To marry him?": When a second class of students at an autism base met Hercules...

In the previous posting, I ran through what happened at a session on “Meeting Hercules” at a primary school’s autism base a couple of years ago. Now, as promised, I am going to turn to the second of the two lessons that took place om the same day. 

The first lesson had been observed by the then researcher, Effie Kostara, alone. I joined Effie for this second lesson, again for students between 8 and 11. To give some brief background, classes at the school are taught following a four-fold pattern which combines being given initial information, brainstorming opportunities, hands-on activities and opportunities for in-depth engagement with a given topic. Classes are small in size, led by a class teacher, with teaching assistants to support the students further.

“Meeting Hercules” formed the Topic lesson for the day. The teacher started the lesson, like all her lessons, by picking up a bucket and taking out of it something relevant to the session. This time, she had but in a card with the word “video” on it. Showing this led into the second, “Talk about…”, part of the lesson, which began with an introduction to Hercules via the trailer for the Disney Hercules – which the children looked entranced by. 

The teacher then showed this picture of a statue of Hercules, and asked the students to discuss what they saw:

They rose to this task, making lots of comments including about the lion on his head, and his eyes, which one student found ”scary.”

Then the teacher introduced the chimneypiece panel which produced a response of “wow” from one of the children. It was the women that especially interested them. They were full of ideas as to how the women are reacting to Hercules. One said “they both want his attention.” Another suggested that they both want to marry him.

As for Hercules, one student thought that he might be bored, another that he looked like he is flirting. Others thought that he might not be paying any attention to the women with one student wondering whether he was looking up at the sky to find a planet, and another commenting that he could be looking at the sea.

When it was time for the next stage of the class, called “your turn,” the students coloured in a picture of Hercules: the same one that the previous class had coloured in:

As they did the task, the students kept asking questions. There was a lot of working together and sharing of ideas as well as sharing their colours and looking at what others were drawing.

For the final stage of the lesson, the teacher asked the children which picture of Hercules they liked better. They all said that they preferred the picture of Hercules alone to the one of him with the women.

Then – because the teacher invited me to – I told them the story that is being depicted on the panel. The children listened carefully to the story about the choice that the women asked Hercules to make. They said that they thought that Hercules looked scared. One of the children impersonated his pose.

I asked them what they thought he should chose: the easy life or the life of adventures. They all said: the easy life.

Here are some thoughts on what took place and how what came up in the class is shaping what I am now doing,

With the class teacher present along with two teaching assistants, Effie and myself, there must have been as many adults as children in the room. Yet my memory is that there were more children present than adults. That I remember there being more students that adults testifies perhaps to how student-centred the class felt.

I was struck by just how much the children liked hearing about Hercules, and how proactive they were in coming up with their responses to what he looked like, what he might be feeling and how he was interacting with others. Likewise, I was struck by just how much the children engaged with what was going on in the scene – not only with Hercules but with how the women were responding to Hercules.

The children’s responses showed just how many ways there can be of making sense of Hercules. Like the children suggested, he might be ignoring the women for instance, or he might be flirting with them. Or his attention might be elsewhere – he might be looking at the sky, or at the sea. 

The activity also showed just how much colouring in is something worth doing as an activity. After the session, I learned how controversial colouring in is in children’s education, with some arguing that it is often done in place of teaching students and that, as an activity, colouring might go so far as to impede student learning. But what I saw were students turning with enthusiasm to the task, looking thoughtfully at the image, noticing new things and – all the time – reflecting on what they responses to Hercules and to the scene on the panel.

Had the session ended with the final task planned by the teacher – the comparison between two depictions of Hercules – it would have achieved some useful things. For example, the students would have had opportunities to think about Hercules and about feelings and about how he communications with others.

But due to what happened in the closing minutes – where I outlined to the students what mythological episode is being depicted on the panel –  I gained a sense of the potential for this aspect of the panel too. As I only told the story close to the end of the class, there wasn’t much time for thinking about choices, let alone causality. However, there was enough time for a brief chat about how the students thought about what Hercules might be feeling. The students were very willing to think about what they themselves would choose faced with comparable options.

Indeed, one thing I took from the session is that Hercules’s choice can be introduced in a single lesson. I am now thinking about a way to make this the focus of a discrete session – one where students get an opportunity to think about choices and about the implications of what they choose for the future.

More soon…!