In conversation: Helen Smee and Lorna Robinson (podcast)
Two educators whose students were central to the workshop ‘I am Penelope!’ share their insights based on years of creative work with young people. By Emily Pillinger.
Early on a Saturday morning in June I headed to Christ Church, Oxford, where I sat down in a magnificent drawing room to talk with two of the most inspiring educators I know. Helen Smee is the director of the Frideswide Voices, the girl choristers of Christ Church cathedral; Helen coached the girls as they stepped out of their normal cathedral singing roles in order to play the part of Penelope’s enslaved maidservants in the ‘Penelope’s Web’ workshop in Oxford a month earlier. Dr Lorna Robinson is the founder and director of Cheney School’s Rumble Museum, and the director of the school’s Iris Centre where she not only teaches classics to the school students but also runs a wide array of creative educational events for the community. Her students attended the same Oxford workshop and produced their own beautiful responses to the story.
Over coffee, while I fumbled with my new recording technology, Helen and Lorna launched into a conversation that ended up ranging across several important issues brought up by their roles as educators and by their students’ participation in the ‘Penelope’s Web’ project. They reflected on the educational cultures and institutional structures in which they work, and on how training in music and classics allows the technical ‘nitty gritty’ of linguistic and musical grammars to be learned alongside more abstract discussions of stories, ideas, and values.
In their conversation Lorna and Helen echoed each other’s belief in the importance of making space for young people to engage in difficult conversations, and in respecting their intelligence, sensitivity, personal beliefs, and developing sense of agency. All three of us ended up reflecting on our own experiences of not just teaching myth but also participating in ritual storytelling. As we have explored our own spirituality (or lack of it) through ancient and modern myth-making, we have all confronted the rich complications and contradictions involved in the crossover between education, performance, and belief.
Some listeners may like an explanation of a few acronyms. Lorna refers to the demographics of her school with reference to 'PP students’: students whose school receives a small funding boost known as a ‘Pupil Premium’ that is designed to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. She also mentions ‘EAL students’: students for whom English is not their first language. Helen refers to the ‘BCP’: the Book of Common Prayer, which has defined the liturgy of Anglican church services for 500 years.