Meet retired teacher and ESU volunteer judge Helen Wells
Helen Wells’s passion for teaching is clear as soon as she starts speaking. She refers to older students as ‘subject specialists’ and is interested not so much in what students are taught, but in what they make of it. ‘Learning is not just about “filling pitchers” in students’ minds,’ she says. ‘It’s about pouring those pitchers out, as it were, and not just with the information that went in, but the student’s own take on that.’ To tease out that take, she has devoted much of her free time over the course of her long career as an English teacher to running extra-curricular speech and debate clubs for all ages and levels, including house, inter-school, ESU and other competitions. ‘Being able to explain what you think and to communicate an idea is something all young people should be able to do,’ she says.
It’s not surprising then that conversation has always been a key part of her classroom practice. ‘I firmly believe that the more you articulate your own ideas in conversation with others, the more you find confidence both in your opinions and in yourself,’ she says. ‘If students are only ever listening to others, they soon start to feel that what they think is wrong or doesn’t count. Dialogue is exceptionally important to learning.’
It’s largely because of this that Helen has been such an enthusiastic adopter and promoter of ESU competitions – both the ESU-Churchill Public Speaking Competition and the Schools’ Mace debating competition – in her working life, and why now, recently retired, she volunteers for us as a judge. ‘The first thing to say is that the competitions are tremendous fun – both to coach students for and to adjudicate,’ she smiles. ‘The training and judging criteria are very helpful. We’re all looking at the students’ performances against a mark scheme – it’s not hit and miss.’ She also enjoys the positive framing of the feedback. ‘I really love seeing students having their moment on the stage doing something which I know is difficult and has taken a lot of time and energy to prepare for. They’re learning a skill, rather than just taking part in a competition, and I like being able to help them with that – telling them the things they did well, as well as what they can improve upon.’
Helen also likes the ESU competitions for their social aspects – the way in which students from different schools and areas mix, and the fact that the suite of heats and regional finals ahead of the grand final allows for real progression. ‘The overarching idea behind the ESU’s competitions is this idea of finding your voice, developing your own capacity as debater, speaker or performer,’ she says. ‘It means that one is involved in a bigger picture. Winning is not the only thing that matters here.’
Learning to listen
Of course, the ESU competitions also teach specific skills and not just, as might be presumed, those of speech writing and presentation, though of course these matter. ‘Thinking about how you organise a speech, where you put the emphasis, choosing the right words to create a picture that will stay in someone’s mind – these are wonderful skills and very pertinent to a students’ writings skills too,’ says Helen. Voice – tone, dynamics and pauses – also has a role to play but, even for those not presenting, there is plenty to learn. ‘I like how the format of the Public Speaking Competition replicates real-life situations, with a chair and somebody posing questions of the speaker,’ she continues. ‘The questioner must tease out information in a telling, intellectually questioning way without being aggressive, while all three roles have to excel in the art of listening – really hearing what someone has said and responding to that. I think that’s a skill we all need – if people listened more, we’d have far fewer confrontations.’
The format of the Schools’ Mace, which requires ‘long prep’ (done in advance, rather than students being given the motion just a few minutes before the debate) on topical subjects also gets Helen’s approval. ‘The Mace encourages students to really get to grips with an issue and to think about it from many different angles. Students start to realise that there’s not an instant answer to a question and that, to understand different sides of an argument, you have to “walk in other people’s shoes”, as Atticus Finch might have said. A competition that invites us to dig deep into a subject, to remove ourselves from our echo chambers and to think differently is to be wholeheartedly embraced.’
Remembering her time in teacher training (a PGCE at Manchester University following a Master’s in Medieval Studies at York), Helen can recall no mention of oracy, other than a concern from the professors that students should not speak in dialect. ‘I thought it raised an interesting question about language as a living thing,’ she says, telling me that she used to love teaching students about the often surprising origins of words – be they old French, Anglo-Saxon or German. ‘We are so fortunate to have a language of such richness,’ she says. ‘I shed tears when people aren’t using it.’ This richness of language is something she’s particularly looking forward to witnessing when she begins to judge our Performing Shakespeare competition this season – the only one of our competitions she’s not had experience of teaching. ‘I didn’t have enough octopus arms to take that one on too,’ she laughs.
Are you a teacher or retired teacher with an interest in children’s oracy skills? If you’d like to volunteer as a judge for our competitions, we’d love to hear from you. Full training is given. Please email [email protected]
