Messages about Dorothy Heathcote
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Dorothy Heathcote - A celebration of life
My tribute to Dorothy
I have never been a person to “study” in a formal sense. As a child I “studied” the football league tables on a weekly basis. As a teenager I “studied” the pop charts and can still recite many of the top ten hits from the period 1971-1973 and all of the tracks on David Bowie albums from 1969 – 1975 (in album release and tracklisting order!).
I did the odd bit of revision for exams. The only exam that really took my interest was CSE English Lit where I was allowed to study a book of my choice. I chose George Orwell’s 1984 mostly because David Bowie was working on a Rock Opera adaptation of it which was eventually prohibited by the Orwell estate. I studied this to the extent of writing my own Rock Opera adaptation (which was dreadful) but took ages over the fifteen or so songs I composed.
I went to college and spent 3 years succeeding to hoodwink my tutors into believing that I had studied Piaget etc and on the Drama side Shakespeare etc. None of this ever really interested me. I really don’t know how I got by but I did! When I was given my first job as a teacher (instead of staying on for a third year “studying” for a degree conversion of my humble Cert Ed qualification) it was suggested by Luke Abbott my first Head of Department that I read a book – “Drama as a Learning Medium” by Betty Jane Wagner. Eager to please I bought the book and settled to read it somewhat fearful that I would actually have to read the WHOLE book!!!
In the event this wonderfully clear sighted book opened the door to a way of teaching that my own college (Goldsmiths’) had failed to mention in their “training”. In my early years as a teacher I tried to “be” Dorothy in my teaching through the filter of Betty J’s book. I immersed myself in it. I read it over and over again and was even able to adapt and develop my own original work from my understanding of her ideology. There was no prissy changing into gym costumes and pumps and warm ups. It was straight into “man in a mess” as she used to say. Straight to the heart of an irresistible drama.
A few years later I saw Dorothy teach a lesson I have later written up called Warden X. Here she captured a class, who on arrival looked like no one could ever get them to do any Drama. All of this in front of a large audience of Drama teachers at the Cockpit Theatre in Greenwich. It was a most electrifying “performance” yet none of it had been rehearsed. It was a masterclass in teaching.
Soon after that I enrolled onto a course run by Dorothy sponsored by the British Council. I worked with her every day for two weeks. I was so eager to learn all I could that I spent the evenings “studying” old video tapes that were made available to us of lessons she had taught over the years. I returned to my school inspired.
As the years rolled on the focus of Drama teaching and exam requirements seemed to move towards a more Theatre based training. I went with this but always at the heart of my beliefs about Drama teaching was the work of Dorothy Heathcote. As my own plays became known people who meet or work with me are often surprised to learn what a fan of Dorothy (and Gavin’s) work I am. If they see me teach a KS 3 class it will invariably have more than a nod to Dorothy.
A few years afterwards I met up with my old friend Luke Abbott again, and became involved in his Mantle of the Expert work. This has been a further revolution to my teaching as it is the first way of using Drama in a classroom setting (as opposed to a studio or Theatre) that has actually worked for me in invigorating the teaching of other curriculum areas. That same year I also participated in a National Drama event and participated in a session by Patrice Baldwin using the wonderful “The Arrival” book by Shaun Tan. Both of these teachers had done Dorothy’s M Ed course. As I watch Luke and Patrice spinning their web of Drama over their classes I remember the words of more cynical Drama teachers who would say to me:
“Only Dorothy Heathcote can teach like that.”
To dismiss her techniques as being exclusively usable by one person is ridiculous. Dorothy was never precious about what she did. She was always keen to discuss her new ideas. She would look at ideas I might have and offer a detailed (beautifully handwritten) critique on them. Dorothy’s methodology should be in a more widespread manner to make our classrooms more exciting places. Luke and Patrice can do it and so can many, many others. There is no mystique about her work. It is there to be used and I am proud to say I have enjoyed “studying” her ideas. Her work gave me confidence to teach. Her work continues to inspire my development and enjoyment of being a teacher.
Last year I wrote my first book about my own development as a drama teacher. The publisher was keen to get endorsements for the book from more well known practitioners. They asked who I knew and wondered if I knew Dorothy. I said yes, but not that well. I added that I really didn’t think she’d have the time to look at my efforts. The truth was I was fearful she may not fully approve of what I’d written. They pushed and said they wanted to send it to her for her comments and did so. It was all done at the very last minute to make matters a little more embarrassing and gave her a very small timeframe to make her comments. Within a week or so I received a handwritten set of comments from Dorothy about the book. She had clearly read it in some detail. She also felt able to endorse it on my back cover. It was inconceivable, somewhat like me releasing a cd and getting David Bowie to endorse that! She even wanted to reference one section in an article she was writing! My hero was prepared to take the time to read my little effort and seal it with her approval.
Dorothy Heathcote inspired my working practice and changed my life. I know I am not alone in thinking this. She has influenced a generation of Drama teachers and I hope her work goes on to be even more widely used. I for one will never forget the wisdom, generosity and general down to earthness of Dorothy Heathcote.
I’m so happy for you!
I studied Dramatic Arts at Warwick Uni, UK where I met Dorothy, never face to face but through the writing s of others and was transformed by her understanding of the teaching/learning process.
I’m getting my work “endorsed” too, not by Dorothy but by the Ministry of Education in, of all places, Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m heading a project, training 20 teachers to teach English through Drama in Special Education. We are working in hospital schools, orphanges, home visits for children with severe and terminal illnesses, in shanty town schools and a further 14 special schools. This is an incredible move for a very traditional education system and all thanks to Dorothy.
Both my parents, Roger Barnes and Beatrix Barneshe knew Dorothy well. We lived outside Newcastle in their 60s 70s and 80s. My father taught on Dorothy’s course at Newcastle University from time to time and has a great deal of respect for her contribution to education and was very fond of her. My mother was lucky enough to study on Dorothy’s course and on many occasions during school holidays Dorothea allowed me to take part in the drama workshops. After doing the course my mother set up a drama club in my primary. I was fortunate to encounter the mantle of the expert and be introduced to being in role when I was child, before I experienced other forms of drama. Incidentally, I learned to cook when I was 10 because my mother was busy studying and we all had to muck in! So I guess I owe that to Dorothy too.
My mother Beatrix, worked in special needs education for many years and was constantly inspired by what she had learnt with Dorothy. She still teaches children to this day aged 79 andI know is still inspired by Dorothy.
Dorothy’s work has had a huge influence on me as a drama/theatre practitioner, educator and as a person. The philosophy of my work has its roots in Dorothy’s work.
In the 1990s and early 2000s I worked for GYPT – Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre, where we were all conversant in Dorothy’s work. The mantle of the expert and in-role work was central to our methodology.
Today,I work for a theatre company in London, Oval House, where we run projectsfor some of the most marginalised and excluded young people in London. We use methodology and approach to learning all the time. It is extraordinarily powerful to put learning in the hands of the child and four children and young people to harness the power of their imaginations.
Dorothy has made an extraordinary contribution to education and her legacy lives on inside all of us who as children and adults experienced her work from the inside.
I was first introduced to the work of Dorothy Heathcote by Luke Abbott while in my first term as an NQT. Luke worked with my class of difficult to engage five year olds. At least I thought they were difficult to engage, within fifteen minutes with Luke they were operating as a team of rescue workers saving villagers whose homes had disappeared into giant holes.
For me the experience was revelatory. I had no idea (from my training at university) that children’s ideas and interests could be activated so effectively to curriculum learning. Later, Luke explained that the approach he was using was called mantle of the expert and that he had learnt it from the inventor while studying at Newcastle University for his MA. The name of the inventor, he told us, was Dorothy Heathcote.
By that time, the early 1990′s, Dorothy had already retired from university teaching and so there was no chance for me to study either the diploma or the MA which she ran alternate years from 1982. Fascinated by what I had seen in my classroom I started to read everything I could find on this remarkable person. My favourite book at this time was the wonderful, “Drama as a Learning Medium” by Betty Wagner. Wagner had spent several years following and recording Dorothy at work with children during her prime when everything she seemed to do was stellar and transcended the work of learning into an artistic experience.
As I turned the pages of Wagner’s book, Dorothy Heathcote appeared to me a force of nature, unbridled by convention, undaunted by the establishment, certain in her convictions and unswerving in her search for truth. Nothing was beyond her, she could make anything happen that children wanted, take them anywhere, at anytime. To be in a class with her must have seemed like an act of magic. The evidence can still be seen in the remarkable “Three Looms Waiting” where Dorothy’s incredible skill and improvisational genius are caught on camera by the BBC.
It was several years before I met Dorothy for the first time, at a workshop in Birmingham, organised by the NATD. The first thing that struck me was the intensity of her eyes, the most penetrative and intelligent I had ever seen. Her gaze seemed to stare right inside my soul and ask – “do you really believe?” In my experience Dorothy had no time for fools or time wasters. She could be kind and incredibly (uniquely) generous with her ideas. But she had no time for those who misused or mistreated her methods or didn’t practice what they preached. In the many times I met her at conferences and workshops over the next ten years the one message she repeated over and over again was ‘practice’ and by that she meant practice with children, in class, as often as possible. Dorothy’s ideas could only be understood, truthfully, in the crucible of the classroom and she lived this belief herself by continuing to teach until the last year of her life.
Dorothy Heathcote was the most remarkable and talented drama teacher of the last seventy years. She saw drama as a learning medium and transformed the practice of drama in schools (especially primary schools) from something children did in the hall to a pre-recorded tape (“now walk like a dinosaur… take great big steps…”) into a genuine cross-curricular pedagogy, where the use of dramatic conventions and inquiry were fused into meaningful and exciting learning experiences for children. Not satisfied with transforming drama practice, Dorothy’s vision was to transform the whole educational system of teaching and this (for me) is her legacy.
My favourite expression of this ambition, is from Gavin Bolton’s biography “Dorothy Heathcote’s Story” –
“A real lab in a real commercial or university setting fulfils the image better, for when you enter such a lab you bring in your knowledge and training with you and take on the mantle of responsibility that goes with the character of the setting. Above all, you know that the result of what you do there will matter to someone other than yourself. Such settings are cells effecting change in society. And this, according to Dorothy, is what an educational establishment should be, an institution contributing to the welfare of the local community and the environment.
Dorothy points out that children in the 18th and 19th centuries were exploited and put to work down coal mines. This misuse of children’s ability nevertheless established their usefulness to society, a function that has been removed from them since laws rightly prevented such employment. We have replaced this abuse with an education system that requires children over many years to be content with an absence of status, to feel useless, to exist in a limbo of learning which relies solely on the de-functioning maxim that ‘one day you’ll be good enough to really do it’ but never today.
Ever since she started to think seriously about the nature of education, Dorothy has been exasperated by the cultural disenfranchisement of school pupils and students. And the older she gets the more exasperated she becomes. She sees our educational system as based on a false premise, that education is to be a waiting room, not a laboratory. She has set herself passionately to erode this sterile functioning. This is her life’s mission. That she happens to be a drama teacher becomes almost irrelevant in the light of this greater crusade.” (p.126)
I first encountered Dorothy’s work when Luke Abbott worked at my school when I was an NQT in 2002. I consider myself very lucky to have come across Mantle of the Expert so early in my teaching career. It set me on a path that has brought so much to me, both professionally and personally. It has also brought so much to the children I have worked with. The impact I see on them as they grow in their understanding of the world, as responsible, empathetic, thoughtful and passionate individuals is I believe the true testament to the power and lasting impact of Dorothy’s work. I look forward to many more adventures in MoE as I strive to better understand and practise Dorothy’s ideas, which seem to me to be so endlessly complex yet so beautifully simple.
I first met Dorothy in the late 1980?s when I was lucky enough to have been able to participate in several of her unique projects. I also feel truly honoured that she encouraged and believed in me and my teaching skills when others failed to support me. Through her kind words and inspiration she advised and mentored me so that my own projects were more successful! I had many enlightening and inspirational conversations with her and have very fond memories of her and the workshops I attended – she taught me so much more than the drama for which I shall always be enternally grateful – so I shall continue in my own way – as she advised me so often – to spread her enthusiastic way of teaching.
Reflections on the early Dorothy Heathcote:
Like so many former students around the world, I was sad to hear of the passing of Dorothy. She was one of the brief, but major influences in my career as a drama specialist and full professor over all these many years. I think you should do a “pebbles in the pond” piece that chronicles the many pebbles like me that found answers in Dorothy’s primordial pond of dramatic learning. I, along with the late Barbara McIntyre, my first mentor, and a couple other fellow graduate students were the first to host Dorothy in the USA at Northwestern University. It was a life changing time. She returned a couple years later to film her first hands on teaching videos post the early BBC documentary.
One monumental memory I have was the day I presented my first professional drama workshop at an Illinois Drama Conference for teachers and both Dorothy Heathcote and Winifred Ward (then retired but living near Northwestern) attended my workshop. I believe it was the first time if not the only time they ever met. There are many such “early” stories during the 70s about Dorothy, including a stay at Nancy Ibsen’s home in California where Nancy and friends, myself, and several of my own university students had an intense few days with Dorothy working in schools. Anyway, though I did not continue to connect with Dorothy past the 70s, I stay current and continue to study and integrate her work – her legacy.
To be honest, after endless authors began to analyze and categorize Dorothy’s gifts, I became less and less engaged in some ways – there was something so fresh and so fundamentally holistic, powerful and effective about her work with children back then – magical and practical all in the same artistic moment of engagement. I am so grateful to have been a small part of that wonder and grace at such an early and critical point in my career.
Xan S. Johnson, Ph.D.
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Pioneer Theatre Company
300 S. 1400 E./Business Office
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0660
801-581-4927
Dear Marianne, family and Friends of Dorothy,
What an amazing tribute to a fellow human being! Here am I, aged 78, a teacher for 50 years at every level from infants to students of teaching, 10,000 miles away from you and yet still under the influence of the wonderful teacher, Dorothy Heathcote, I met in Sydney, Australia, decades ago.
THREE LOOMS WAITING changed my life. I have shared it everywhere I can. I was further overwhelmed to see Dorothy in person, all those years ago, face a young class for the first time here in Sydney, and persuade them to “build” the Pyramids of Egypt. “Astonished” is the only way I can describe “me” when she relinquished the executive responsibility for the project, at a late stage in the lesson, and gave it to one of the pupils.
As with so many other teachers influenced by Dorothy, I have a deep sense of loss. But this is allayed considerably by my good fortune in discovering her ways, and knowing that they are still with me.
As Dorothy put it: “Drama is about “man in a mess”. Oh my! Is that view of drama relevant in this troubled world today. That is why those of us who wish to teach still need Dorothy’s genius, patience and love of mankind with us–a presence by our side as we work.
I thank you with all my heart for the work you are doing in spreading her influence.
With respect and love to you and your fellow workers on this site,
Royce Levi
Dorothy visited Finland first time in 1985, when she gave a workshop (46hours) under theme “prejudices” with children to teachers 24.-29.3.85 in the city Espoo near Helsinki. I helped as a volunteer the professional interpreter, who was not familiar with drama in education. It was an intensive and interesting week to all of us.
Next time I met Dorothy in Durham, where she visited the 2 weeks course 3. -18.9.87 “How do we train drama teachers in 90′s”
The third – and unfortunately last meeting was in Ankara 20.-24.11.2008 in International Drama Conference, where I gave a speech and 2 workshops – and therefore couldn’t attend her workshop – but happily heard her splendid key note! Dorothy gave her heartily laughter when she saw my purple visit card with a Monalisa -drawing and wanted to get 2 of them to have both sides always available on her desk! I gave, of course, and do hope that she had later on, too, some smiles, when she saw that visit card picture, drawn by a Finnish 13 year old boy!
With thankful memories, Tintti Karppinen, Finland
To Marianne, Anna, Kevin
Just wanted to say thank you very much for making such a warm and joyful Celebration of Dorothy’s Life today – it was just delightful. It was a privelege to be there, to join with everyone else who was able to come to listen, share, laugh, shed a tear, and cherish.
Thank you.
While conducting one of BAYFEST’s international summer intensives in Newcastle many years ago, with young actors from all over the UK and US, a local colleague (a great local High School drama teacher) told me about her mentor and friend Dorothy Heathcote and asked if I would like to meet her. I had not yet heard of Dorothy (sadly her work is still not widely enough known in the US), but I was excited to meet with someone so highly recommended by my friend. My associate director and I went to see Dorothy at her home one afternoon and spent an absolutely riveting and inspiring 4 hours with her. She was so clearly the Real Deal — an educator of profound and clear insight, a truly happy woman who was only too glad to listen and share with anyone else pursuing similar goals, and as I remember, a very good baker as well! That afternoon she gave me one of her books, which I devoured and followed with all the other writings of hers I could find. They have all been influential and wonderfully encouraging to me over the years, and I have made free use of many of her ideas (I remember that we talked about the fact that all ideas in education are Free). We corresponded in the years after, and I have thought about her often. It is with sadness and joy that I read of her passing and think of how strongly her memory and work lives on.
Dorothy Heathcote was MY friend.
I met her through our local Drama group, which she had joined just before me as a ‘normal’ member.
Sometime later we had just finished a production of Jane Eyre and had struck the set on a Sunday morning. In the afternoon my wife and I were going on holiday with Dorothy to a little cottage in the busy end of St Ives, Cornwall. I drove down there, but in Dorothy’s car.
During the next week, my wife and I visited the usual spots such as Penzance, Falmouth, Lands’ End, or even out and about in St Ives.
Dorothy, however rarely left the cottage, and when she did it was to visit the local post office with a handful of letters to post. She was content to sit and write to her many friends throughout the world. This for Dorothy WAS a holiday
I said at the start that Dorothy was MY friend. That was the problem. Hundreds of folk throughout the world also thought of her as THEIR own personal friend. But she never waived them aside and was happy to spend her holiday writing letters by hand, popping them in real envelopes with real stamps on, for HER friends.
Dorothy was not just MY friend but OUR friend, and we gathered together on December 11th to celebrate HER friendship with US and to say “Dorothy, we thank you. We will miss you. Rest in a well-earned peace”.