Go to Teaching Mythology Episode 003: What I Did on the First Day of Mythology Class Every Semester

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Welcome to the teaching mythology podcast. I’m your host Lesli from education is powerful. Come with me as we explore myth, through a modern day lens.

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Welcome. Welcome. Today I’m going to share my lesson plan that I gave on my first day of mythology class, every semester. And what’s really interesting is that initially I didn’t start doing this lesson plan, but I wanted to make my first day of class kind of exciting, give a little preview to the course, but ultimately my goal was so that we would all have this common vocabulary around what mythology is. And it’s because there are a lot of misconceptions about what mythology is and what mythology isn’t. It’s really interesting, I just got a comment on a reel that I did on Instagram, where I was sharing my favorite mythology books for adults.

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And this person had had a comment and I think that they were being snarky. I mean, based on the Instagram candles that this person had, I think that that was their goal. They said, Oh you forgot one, the Bible. Right, implying that mythology book for adults is the Bible. And my response to that was actually the Bible would be an appropriate book because all mythology is a belief system, and it’s a collection of stories shared that part that are part of that belief system and all religious texts are mythologies.

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It’s just that some mythologies are ancient, some are living, and that I just didn’t include it in my list because it was an Instagram was for novels, but there’s just a huge misconception that a lot of my students had when they heard the word myth, they immediately thought untrue, false, and that would color their perception of these stories or they would come to me with these questions about, you know, it was so weird that they’re marrying their brothers and sisters and they would get so caught up in these details that they were missing the, the big picture the themes the archetypes, you know, so I created this lesson to do with the first day of class, and the minute I started doing it, it completely changed the tone of my class. So I recommend if you’re wanting to start a unit or a class on mythology that you start by defining what mythology is and what’s really powerful for students is not to define it for them, but to help them discover what mythology is. So, here’s how I did it and I called it a collaborative vocabulary activity. The first thing that we would do is I would have them brainstorm what they think of when they think of mythology, kids would come to class with so many different perceptions of what mythology is and what it isn’t, and I had to really navigate that because I had some kids who would come to class who loved mythology, they had read every Percy Jackson, they had, you know, played all these games about mythology they’ve researched wiki articles about mythology. So that was the one set of kit that I had, and then I have this other set, because it does count as English credit and my state, that they would come to is trying to take senior English, and they didn’t want to take regular senior English they wanted to take mythology that sounded easier, more fun, but probably easier, let’s be honest. So, I would have them start by writing a definition, what do they think a myth is, and give me some examples.

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Then I would partner them.

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Well, sometimes I partner them sometimes I’ve put them in groups of three or four sometimes when we do this whole class, but the next stage of the lesson was to give them some examples of myths, and we would read a creation story, we would read the myth of Orion, we would read a summary of Hercules, and we would read, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. These four stories kind of archetypal mythology stories that I started with, as they would listen to or read the stories they would write down what elements of that story, they think, Make it a myth. What qualifies as a myth what defines it as a myth, if you’re trying to define a myth to somebody who has no clue what that word is, how would you describe it.

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So let’s go through each of these stories. So, in the myth of a Ryan There are actually a couple different versions. And I would tell different ones at different times, but one I would tell was that Orion was an incredible hunter. He was supposedly able to walk on water and had great strength and stature greater than any mortal. He was a skilled blacksmith.

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He walked and traveled all across the ancient world, but at one point in time in his life he lived with Artemis, who is the goddess of the hunt, right. She’s the goddess of the moon, and she has her huntresses who would who would hunt with her every night, and Artemis, even though she had sworn to remain a virgin goddess, fell in love with her Ryan and wanted to marry him. However, her brother who was Apollo was not happy about this.

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And so one day he saw Orion swimming in the ocean, and he could see just his head above water, and Apollo knew that this was his chance to get rid of Orion.

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So he said to his sister Artemis. I bet you can’t hit that speck in the ocean. And Artemus, who was a greatest hunters right. She says, Of course I can. And she aimed her bow and arrow. And she hit her mark.

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And she killed Orion.

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And because of this, she was so mournful and then deep despair about this, she went to Zeus and begged Zeus to make Orion immortal. And so, Zeus put Orion into the stars, so that he could spend all of his nights with Artemis.

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So there’s our first myth. And I would ask students what makes us a myth, right, and they would usually come up with things like, oh, like there’s gods and goddesses and humans are mortals, and then some kids would say, oh it’s explained how constellation Orion came to be in the stars, and some would catch on that there’s a lesson or a moral, that we should learn from the myth or Ryan. Okay, the next story, we would read would be the boy who cried wolf.

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And I think we all know this one. That’s okay, I’m going to summarize it anyway.

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So there was once upon a time a shepherd boy who sat on the Hill watching the sheep, and he got really bored, I mean, sure it was quite lonely sitting there just him in the sheep. And so he decided to entertain himself one day and he cried out, Wolf, Wolf there’s a wolf, and the village came running, and there was no wolf. But the boy thought he was very funny.

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Then the next day, the boy got bored again, and he cried out, Wolf Wolf there’s a wolf, and the village comes running. And there’s no wolf and they tell him. Don’t cry wolf. No one will believe you.

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The day after that, a real wolf came to his flock. And they, he screamed and he yelled Wolf Wolf. There’s a wolf. But none of the villagers came to rescue him.

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And all of his sheep are scattered, and many were killed.

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So, in this story when I’d asked students what makes it the myth, immediately they would say this is not a myth. This is a fairy tale or folk tour folktale, I’d say, yes, you’re right.

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Because often we forget that myths are stories that we tell that are passed down from generation to generation.

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And they aren’t just what’s written down, or formal, right. So this is a form of a myth. And so then once we got over that students would say okay well this is a myth because it teaches a moral or a lesson. Very true. That’s what we’re trying to get out of it, Right.

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But sometimes would also catch on to the fact that it might have unusual circumstances, or there’s a creature, or a monster or an animal that is out to harm the main characters. So, can the next story I would tell would be a creation story, and I almost always told the Judeo Christian creation story and I had specific reasons why. So, I live in a very conservative religious community overall in the state of Utah.

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And I wanted students to know and understand that myth does not necessarily mean true or false. And I’m really trying to target that myth, and mythology, our belief system. So I chose a predominant religion, Christianity, to tell their creation story to try to get this idea across. So, I would never read it straight from a version of the Bible, I would always have like a different take on it.

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Just so it didn’t feel so much like I was preaching at a pulpit or having students read sermons or read Scripture is there, there is that fine line, right, so here’s the Judeo Christian creation story.

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In the beginning, there was nothing. And God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was a formless void and the heavens and earth, we’re in darkness. And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And he called the first, or God separated the light from the darkness and he called it the first call that day and night. And that was the first day.

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On the second day. He said, Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters. And this dome stretched above the waters forming the sky and Night fell on the second day.

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On the third day, God said, Let the waters be gathered together and let the dry land appear and he called the earth to bear fourth fruit and plants and trees of all kinds filled the Earth.

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On the fourth day God said, Let there be lights in heaven to separate the night from the day.

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And he created two lights, a greater light and a lesser light, and set them in the sky to be the sun and the moon. He also created stars and set them above the moon.

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On the fifth day, God said let there be living creatures on the air and the sea and then the dry on the dry land.

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And they all began to fill the earth, and multiply.

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On the morning of the sixth day God created man in His image and called him, Adam from one of his ribs he created the first woman, and she was called Eve, and God looked out at all of His creation, and saw that it was good. And on the seventh day he rested from all his labors.

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Now when I would ask students what makes this a myth.

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They were usually hesitant at first. And they would say, Okay, well, it’s story about God. It’s a story about how humans were created, it explains how things happened in earth, right, and we go through all the things that I had explained, and it’s at this point that I’ve really introduced this idea of a belief system. So the last story is a summary of Hercules, not the whole myth, just a summary. And most kids know this myth or know this story so it can be quite sure, but we start with Hercules is considered to be the greatest of all heroes, and he’s incredibly strong. Right. And, confidence, and he is fearless in so many ways. Well, he was married to Megara, and they had three children. And here I was so jealous of Hercules, he was a son of Zeus and a mortal woman that she was always trying to kill him. She had tried as a child, when he was a child, and she sent snakes into his crib. Right. He was always able to survive here as attempt to kill him. So she decided instead of trying to kill him, she would punish him. And so, once he was married and adult and had three kids. She sent madness to him and made him go mad. And he ended up in this fit of rage, killing his wife and his three children.

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It was brutal, actually like in the myth that describes like blood splattering the walls, I mean it is a brutal death.

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So he comes out of this madness and he is incredibly sorrowful, and he goes to the Oracle of Delphi to cleanse himself and to see what he can do to be forgiven of this, this horrific crime, and the Oracle says to him, that he needs to go to his cousin King Eurystheus and perform 10 labors for him. Now Eurystheus and Hera, are working together, and their plan is to give Hercules, the hardest labors they can possibly think of, so that he might die, right, and then he’ll be cursed in the underworld. While he ends up doing 12 labors, and we’re going to read this further in the, in the class and so I don’t we don’t go into too much detail about all these labors.

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But it ends with him. Going down to Hades, and bringing the three headed dog up from, from Hades. At the end of his life. After all these labors. He is seen as being forgiven and being worthy, and he’s allowed to enter Mount Olympus and live with the gods.

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And so he becomes one of the gods. When I ask students what do they see in this myth, they talk about, oh, it’s about heroes and mythical monsters and great tales and if they really know mythology they might say it’s a hero’s journey. And I say yes yes yes yes yes. So this is the first stage. And so generally students are in groups or pairs, and they only read one of these stories. They write down what they think makes it a myth, and then they get together with another group or another person who has read a different story. They share their story why they think that makes it a myth, and they add to it until they have all of the myths, right. So there are lots of different ways that you can do that, depending on the amount of time and space available in your class inside of class. Once they have heard all four versions of this, and they’ve written down their notes of what make it a myth, then may as a partnership have to decide on a definition, a one sentence definition of what is a myth or what is mythology. And it’s interesting to see them kind of wrestle with this idea, and try to combine all these ideas and it’s really great. It’s like deep knowledge for them. And then what I have them do is they will either get with another partnership, or another group, or I just want them to hear other ideas. So they’ll be with another group, and they will then share all their definition. And they have to turn their all of their definitions into one group definition one sided. So they all have to come to a consensus. This means they have to revise edit evaluate reframe, rewrite. It’s a really powerful technique to help students gain deep knowledge of what a word means.

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Once they have their group definition, they write it, every group writes it on the board. So my board is covered with definitions, and then I take on the role of facilitator, and I say okay, what do we see in common, and I leave a space in the middle.

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And students will say, Oh, it’s about God’s interaction with humans and I’ll write that and then I’ll start erasing where I see it in all the definitions, or they’ll say about heroes or unexplained how the world was created. And I started racing story racing, and we start forming our final definition and they write that down.

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And this is our first day lesson. So at the end of the day we usually end up with a definition that is something along these lines, mythology is the study of belief systems, stories about Gods heroes and man. Often these stories teach a lesson or explain a natural phenomenon. And then we’re going to have a discussion of what belief systems mean, and I get to walk over to the map that I have in my classroom and talk about living mythologies and ancient mythologies, ancient mythologies are dead, nobody believes in them anymore, but living mythologies are mythologies that people still believe in. So we have a Judeo Christian mythology, we have Indian mythology. We have some Native American mythologies, we have Chinese and Japanese mythologies, Aboriginal mythologies, and it’s really interesting for students to kind of go Wait, what do you what, people still believe in some of these stories. And because I live in a very predominantly Christian group, you know, if somebody says that’s just weird. Why would anybody believe in that. I will say, Why does anybody believe that a man walked on water, and that kind of stuff and they look at me and I, I’m like yeah, living mythology.

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And then I get to do my little soapbox moment where I talk about the fact that we are not here to judge mythology. We’re not here to judge whether it’s right or wrong, true or false. That’s not what we’re here to do. These are just belief systems that tell us a lot about cultures and ancient societies, and we can learn from them. They have archetypes and themes, and these stories were told, as an oral tradition for generations upon generations passed down from parents to children two grandchildren. I pictured them gathering around fires and tables, and big meeting halls, telling me stories and telling these myths and gatherings, and then eventually someday. Somebody wrote down the myth. And that’s why we have it to this day. And that’s powerful it there must be something really powerful and deep for something to endure so long, and have such an impact on society. And that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to learn from them. We’re not here to judge them. I’m not here to say whether it’s true or false. We’re not going to be treating myth like a mythbuster right mythology is a study of belief systems, stories about Gods heroes a man, and they’re often used to teach a lesson or to explain a natural phenomenon. That’s what we’re here for.

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So I love this because it really helped my class to start off on the right foot. I got kids talking to each other, the first day and then of course I did all the teacher things where I taught them how to work in partners and I taught them how to turn their desks to get into groups and I got to teach kind of procedures, and they had to see a lot of our my personality and ultimately what they learned was that my mythology class was a class of discussion. And it was one where we all had ideas, and they were all valid and we can all share them and, and, and that was a good thing. I also liked that we did it because it mirrored the oral tradition of mythology. I hope you like it, I hope you try it out in your classrooms. I’ve written a detailed blog post about this, I will link to in my show notes so that you can go straight to the blog. If you want, and read through it step by step. I’ve also done a lesson plan that you can get over at teachers by teachers if you don’t want to recreate this yourself, and you want the handouts and the myths. I hope you enjoy. Next week we’re going to start with the Greek creation story, and I’m going to share my experience of being evaluated while teaching this lesson, and having to explain how Kronos, cut off your anus his penis and it fell into the ocean.

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It was good fun.

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Thanks for joining me today on teaching mythology. Don’t forget to rate review and subscribe and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai