My partner Claire Widgery, who has died aged 70, was for most of her life an exemplary teacher of drama, most recently to students at the Islington Sixth Form Centre in north London. She was also a feminist and an early innovator in a classroom approach to challenging gender norms.
Claire trained on the teaching course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, from which she emerged in 1973 with a distinction and a teaching post at Clissold Park school in Hackney. Within a year she was the youngest head of department in the Inner London Education Authority (Ilea). She quickly became an expert in the role-based approach to drama teaching espoused by Dorothy Heathcote, in which children were empowered to make their own decisions and find their own stories. She later promoted this immersive vision of drama teaching across the Ilea.
In 1979 she took a job at Hackney Downs school: a boys’ school with a disadvantaged intake from a richly multicultural area. Working with her colleague Mike Davies, she developed Skills for Living, a radical new course addressing the challenges of the dominant macho culture. Claire and Mike taught lessons on cooking, sewing and housework, but it was in helping her pupils to soften their attitudes to women and childcare that the approach was most remarkable.
Claire was born in Barnet, north London, one of four children of Margaret (nee Finch) and Jack Widgery. Her mother was a teacher and father a colour consultant to Dulux. When Claire was eight the family moved to Berkshire, and she went to Maidenhead high school for girls before returning to London to train as a teacher.
She joined the Islington Sixth Form Centre in 1987 and remained there for almost 20 years. Latterly, as performing arts coordinator, she led a vibrant and loyal department of music, drama and dance teachers. They were all inspired by her empathy, expertise and fierce defence of those subjects in the face of the prevailing orthodoxy seeking to diminish the value of performing arts in education.
For many years Claire endured a complex multiplicity of health conditions. One of her consultants was moved to write: “She bore her many illnesses with such courage, dignity and style, and I shall miss seeing her so very much.” She was a vocal defender of the NHS and all of those at Guys and St Thomas’ who devoted themselves to her wellbeing.
She is survived by me, and our daughter, Katherine, two sons, Matthew and Ben, and four grandchildren, and by two sisters. She also had many devoted nieces, nephews and friends.
