jessica langosch lyons township high school

Thus began the absorbing interest in Tennyson, Gosse, Hardy and other Victorian writers that many former Sixth Form students will remember. One year no-one wanted to tackle the formidable Dickens' novel on the 'A' level paper so Mrs Henderson volunteered. As Deputy Head her teaching was still very important to her.

An Upper Sixth student received a leaving report in rhymed couplets. One Sixth Form group was given an extract from Wordsworth's Prelude to analyse that they would not have been able to find in the poem. Mrs Henderson's skills as a parodist and poet were put to irreverent use in her teaching. Charts and diagrams have helped numerous students through the tangles of the plot of Bleak House, through the complexities of the irony in Romeo and Juliet and up and down the peaks and troughs of Macbeth's psychological state. She had, too, the uncommon ability to make difficult abstract concepts so simple and concrete that students gained confidence from secure understanding. Mrs Henderson was able to cut through the verbiage of accumulated lit crit' to the essence of the concept she was examining. These qualities were seen very clearly in her '0' and 'A' level teaching. Then, she was the staff-room rebel with red hair, full of energy and wit, ever ready to challenge any Loughton tradition that seemed 'stuffy'.

For the Mrs Henderson in the English Department at Loughton High School from 1967-72 was not exactly an establishment figure. It is surprising that the gold-framed portraits of past headmistresses did not fall off the wall in protest when Dorothy Henderson was appointed Deputy Head in 1974.

Jessica langosch lyons township high school