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Lesli: Welcome back today’s episode is going to be  different from other episodes. I won’t be retelling a myth today. Instead today. I want to be talking about. Resources and tips for teaching mythology.

[00:00:27]And this comes from two different blog [00:00:30] posts that I’ll link below in the show notes. Uh, so you can read it in more detail, get links to the resources and websites that I’m going to be talking about. But.

[00:00:40]You know, I talked about in one of my first episodes that. The mythology program when I left my last high school kind of fell apart because teachers really struggled with knowing how to teach and what to teach. And I realized that.

[00:00:56]Over the years as I was teaching [00:01:00] mythology, I changed what I did almost every semester and I tried different things. I use different texts. I tried different formats. We did different activities. And over the course of that time, I ended up creating my own. Sort of mythology, anthology of literature and texts that I used.

[00:01:18]Because I wanted to pull from different sources. So let me talk about some of the resources that I used in my classroom. So that you can go out and [00:01:30] look for other resources.

[00:01:31]I know that a lot of classrooms just use the classics. And I consider those Edith Hamilton’s mythology. Or Bullfinch’s mythology. They are both anthologies that are translations of other texts.

[00:01:47] I actually find them so helpful. Because the ancient myths were not told like a story that we know of today. They are piecemealed. Some of it comes from Homer, some [00:02:00] from Ovid, some from Hesiod. Some from the Aeneid, right. And what Edith Hamilton and Thomas Bullfinch did. Is they gathered all of these sources.

[00:02:11] Rewrote the myths into one story. Now Edith, Hamilton is very hard for some students because very frequently she will. Kind of stop mid paragraph and say in some stories or in other versions or in [00:02:30] Ovid. And she tells the different.

[00:02:32]Myth version. Or where it deviates. And sometimes it’s just like one little sentence. It’s super short. It’s super brief. In fact, all of her myths are super short and super brief. And so they’re actually really good for students who just need a quick overview. And if you want to use an exercise where students fill in the blanks.

[00:02:59] And this is something [00:03:00] that I used when I taught Hercules. She goes over the 12 labors so quickly. I can’t remember which ones. Off the top of my head, but there are several where she says like, and then he killed the lion and then he did this and then he did this. It’s like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[00:03:18]And that’s the part that students wanted to know more about. So she’s really great for good overview. Thomas Bullfinch  because his text is [00:03:30] over a hundred years old. The language can be quite archaic for students, and sometimes it can be hard to access for them. But it’s free. It’s in the public domain. So it’s freely accessible.  Even if your school does not buy the textbooks. You have access to them? So I would look for some of those myths I would use his version rather than Edith Hamilton’s or other versions. So those are kind of your two classic mythology books. I [00:04:00] never read. The Iliad or the Odyssey with my mythology classes.

[00:04:06] Simply because we had so many myths to cover. And I wanted to cover more myths and more cultures rather than go really deeply into a text. However I did use the Illiad in my humanities class and our senior English classes read the Odyssey. So it wasn’t like it was completely taken out of my teaching regime. It just [00:04:30] wasn’t something that I planned in.

[00:04:32]The second two texts are texts that are for you and not for students. So both of these come from Joseph Campbell. The first one is the power of myth. And the second one is a hero with a thousand faces.

[00:04:49]What I really love about the power of myth is that. It helps a teacher like me really understand and see the deeper [00:05:00] meanings in the myths. Too often, I feel like we read them as cool stories, but Joseph Campbell really helped me to think deeply about them. And the ancient cultures that they come from.

[00:05:12] Now the hero with a thousand faces, I feel like should be required reading. By any mythology teacher. And in this book, Joseph Campbell. Explained and uses examples and references from mythologies all over the world.

[00:05:28]His [00:05:30] heroic journey. And it’s a 17 stage process. And three phases or three acts that every hero goes through. Now Joseph Campbell was researching ancient cultures and kept seeing these stories coming about or coming out. And they all had the same elements. So he goes through these. Now in the future, I am planning on doing a whole blog series on the heroic journey.

[00:05:56] First the journey with examples and then [00:06:00] go into the hero myths in Greek mythology. And probably also epic stories like Beowulf and Gilgamesh. And everything down to. I mean. Every mythology has it. And then talk about how we see it in our modern world. So it’s going to be. Kind of along series it’s coming up. I’m.

[00:06:21] Researching and preparing it. So look for that in the new year.

[00:06:25]Another. Resource that I used in my classroom was actually [00:06:30] children’s literature and children’s books.

[00:06:32]So some of my favorites are two books. They’re generally known as D’Aulair’s Myths. D’aulair, I’m not quite sure how to say their name. But it’s a husband, wife, duo, who did the illustrating and the writing. And they have two books, one called the Greek gods or Greek myths and Norse myths. So. They’re super great because they have [00:07:00] also taken the ancient stories and the ancient myths.

[00:07:04] Combined all of them and retold them.

[00:07:07]I especially loved using it for Norse mythology. When we get to Norse mythology, we’ll talk about this, but. All of the Norse myths that we know have really come from two collections. They’re both ancient Norse histories. And. An epic poetry. Like [00:07:30] the Iliad and the Odyssey, but it’s Norse poetry.

[00:07:33]Norse mythology is especially difficult because it was never written down. And so.

[00:07:39]It’s hundreds of years separated from when those myths were told.

[00:07:44]But my students loved them. The language was accessible. That the books were entertaining and they liked the pictures. There. You know, kind of 1970s illustrations, but students liked it. [00:08:00] And. I couldn’t afford to buy a book for every kiddo in my class. So I would, you know, read it like. Kindergarten.

[00:08:09] Where I would hold the book up and show the pictures. Or read it under the dock. cam. There were, there were other things that I, that I did to make it so the students were able to follow along.

[00:08:21]Another favorite of mine is. The Olympian comic series by George O’Connor. They are [00:08:30] incredible. He has 10 books. Each book centers on a different Olympian God. And. Wow.

[00:08:36]Number one. They’re beautiful.

[00:08:40]If you head over to the blog post that I’ve linked in the show notes, you can actually see pictures that I’ve taken from my copies and. Shown you. They are modern and interesting and graphic, and yet they are incredibly accurate to the myths. And George O’Connor has a website [00:09:00] with tons of teacher resources, there are resources in the comics.

[00:09:04] My students loved them and they would pull them out of my bookshelf and read them during quiet time.

[00:09:10] I really only used the first book, which is the story of Zeus. Because it has the Greek creation in it. And I would show pages from the comic as I was teaching the Greek creation story. So. They were wonderful. I had great plans to do a whole graphic, [00:09:30] novel type unit with all of the books.

[00:09:32] And was never able to actually teach it because I ended up switching positions. But they’re beautiful. Check them out. They’re also on Amazon Kindle. So if you wanted to buy them on the Kindle, And then project them using the Kindle app on your computer. It would be amazing.

[00:09:51]And last one I want to talk about is Rick Riordan into Greek gods and Greek heroes books. They’re actually told from the [00:10:00] voice of Percy Jackson, retelling the myths. So they’re incredibly entertaining. And a lot of our students started. Really loving mythology because of required in and because of Percy Jackson.

[00:10:14] So they kind of stepped back into this character that they know, and they love, and they probably read when they were 10 years old. So. Rick Ryan does a great job of being accurate and also heavily researching the myths. So I really trusted his [00:10:30] sources. If you haven’t checked out his website. You should, because he has some incredible resources on his website for teachers.

[00:10:41]Just beautiful.

[00:10:42]So speaking of websites, that’s another resource that I would use all the time. People are constantly rewriting the myths reposting, the myths retelling, the myths. They post pictures and graphics and family trees. [00:11:00] And why not use all of these resources in your classroom? Of course, I do think you should kind of double check it, make sure that somebody isn’t telling some wild outlandish mythology story.

[00:11:11] But for the most part, they’re all trying to be really accurate.

[00:11:16]So some of my favorites are the mythology teacher. Zach Hamby is amazing.

[00:11:23]I mean, when I grow up, I want to be just like him. His was one of the [00:11:30] websites that I found early on with a lot of amazing resources that I bought. So, number one, not only does he have some incredible resources for teaching mythology and. And he’s expanded now to ancient culture and ancient Greek history. And.

[00:11:45]Civilization and the whole shebang. But. What he has done is he has used his incredible talent to rewrite the myths as reader’s theater scripts. What a great [00:12:00] way. To change up what you’re doing in class. So. I would. Read an Edith Hamilton version. We would read a Bullfinch version. We would read the D’Aulair’s version.

[00:12:11] I would use the comic and we would read reader’s theater version. So that from day to day, they weren’t reading the same texts. They weren’t reading the same type of texts. And it kind of broke it up for them. So not to mention that the reader’s theater scripts are super [00:12:30] cheesy, corny, funny. There are sound effects and  when you’re choosing roles.

[00:12:35] You can see who reads the most and who doesn’t read a whole lot. And. Zach has, if you buy. The books. , of all the reader’s theater scripts instead of just one script at a time. He has these games. That are awesome. It was awesome. So check him out. I’ll put the link below. He’s definitely a resource that I used in my [00:13:00] classroom and I learned a lot from him.  When I did Norse mythology. He has a Ragnar rock game of the

[00:13:07] Aesir God’s battling the giants. And we did it, you know, the day before Christmas break, you know, days that. It’s so hard because like, how do you run school when you’re having Christmas assemblies and kids are giving each other presents. And so we played this game and you use dice. My kids made chants and cheers, [00:13:30] apparently.

[00:13:31] The math class next door said. You were really loud and why couldn’t they do fun? Things like that. Instead of watching a movie. I also love the big myth.

[00:13:42] Which is. A website that I referenced when I talked about the Greek creation story. But they have creation myths from all over the world that they’ve turned into animations. They have the texts. They have lists of gods. They have short. Information about the history and culture. It’s an incredible [00:14:00] website, completely free to teachers.

[00:14:03] Uh, well to everybody, but especially for teachers, it’s so useful, completely free, and I would link to it and have students go straight there

[00:14:10] Another resource I use for gathering texts for my mythology class are actually media. And I most often used. Podcasts or YouTube videos. So. Let’s talk a second about YouTube videos. You can’t trust everything that’s out [00:14:30] there. So generally I stayed with Ted ed mythology videos. There’s a whole series.

[00:14:38] I love that these are written by teachers. And they’re the texts that are used most frequently in their classes. So I’m going to link below the Ted ed playlist, uh, just mythology when I searched. So you can see all the different ones that are there. And they have built in activities or discussion questions that [00:15:00] you can totally use with your students.

[00:15:01]They’re great. Last minute lesson plan. I mean, I’m not saying that that ever happens right. Where you have to like fill in 20 minutes. No, that happens all the time. So use Ted ed. It’s a great resource. Another one is, uh, podcasts. So.

[00:15:21]This isn’t a shameless plug for my podcast. Because my podcast isn’t designed for students and I don’t want you [00:15:30] playing this aloud to your class. But there are some great podcasts out there that retell the myths. Some of my favorites are just mythology. It’s a great one. They’re going to be moving just to Spotify, like strictly to Spotify. So.

[00:15:49] Look for it there in the future, but you can always access the back. The back catalog on apple. I don’t think they’re planning on taking that away. Then we have let’s talk about myths, [00:16:00] baby. It’s. Also a retelling with some commentary. And then we have myths and legends. Which. Goes into folk tells and king Arthur. And I mean, it, it’s kind of a wider variety.

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[00:16:17]And then. Last, but not least. And certainly my favorite. And it’s also the most recent or new is Greeking out. It’s made by national geographic [00:16:30] kids. I love it because it’s entertaining. It’s super informational. So the main host retells, the myths, but he has a character that he talks to. Who is called the Oracle of wifi.

[00:16:46]Not the Oracle of Delphi. Don’t be confused. And she kind of pops in all these little interesting facts and stories. I think it’s. Probably designed for. Fifth through eighth [00:17:00] grade. But high school students liked it too. They thought it was funny and interesting. And it’s a break and it’s something different.

[00:17:08] And he also does a great job researching the myths. So definitely check out Greeking out. I actually have made a whole bunch of note sheets. Overall my teacher pay teacher store. That you can use with students if, to help them kind of focus while they’re listening to the story and the retellings.

[00:17:26]And then of course you have. The websites [00:17:30] dedicated to mythology. And they’re really great for understanding. The history or being able to look up as a reference. Just a certain God or a certain place and how they show up in mythology. One of my favorites is theo.com. It’s T H E O I. Dot com. It is a great website. It’s an encyclopedia type website.

[00:17:56] And I go to it all the time. [00:18:00] I still go to it all the time. I was recently reading the book Circe by Madeline hunter. And I thought is this real? Did this really happen? I think Madeline, Hunter’s making up this part of the myth and I would go online and sure enough, I would find it. And it makes sense that we need these encyclopedia type websites. This is just one of them. Greek mythology is another.

[00:18:21] Myth web is another, there’s a ton. Out there. But. We need them because. I have no [00:18:30] desire to go back and read ancient Greek literature for the two sentence mentioned. In this poem. About this Greek God, and then four sentences over there and then maybe a stanza over here and they show up in  Odysseus a story somewhere. I don’t want to do that. So I really depended on these. Websites and I would teach them to students. Whenever they would question me, I’d be like, let’s look it up. Let’s do some research. They all have, [00:19:00] you know, a walking. Worldwide web in their pockets. And so pull out your phones and let’s use it. Let’s start using the internet for research. So. Definitely use those websites. Don’t feel bad about it.

[00:19:14]If you’re looking for links on these web websites and resources, I have them in the show notes below and also in the blog posts that are also linked in my show notes. If it’s an Amazon link, it’s an affiliate link. I earn a small commission, but  you pay the [00:19:30] same low price. And I have no shame about that because I use these books in my classroom. I love these books.

[00:19:37] So now let’s talk about my main tips for teaching mythology. I know I’ve said some of these in the past, and I’m probably going to say them again, but they are worth repeating.

[00:19:47]First and foremost. Accept that you don’t know everything, right? This is why it’s okay to use these websites.

[00:19:56]Lesli (2): We cannot forget that mythology is an oral tradition [00:20:00] that these stories were passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. Before they were written down. Which means that there are so many different versions. Of the myth. It’s really important that you know, that you shouldn’t be expected to know all of the versions or every little detail.

[00:20:19]

[00:20:19]You definitely want to use. Blogs wikis. Everything that you have in your power. To quickly [00:20:30] learn these stories so that you can teach them. And don’t be ashamed if students know more than you do. I can’t even count the number of times a student would pop their hand up and say, Uh, actually dot, dot, dot.

[00:20:47] And they were right. And I’m okay with that. I can’t be a walking encyclopedia of mythology. But students tend to have favorite myths or favorite stories or things that [00:21:00] they’ve researched or that they. Fixate on. So let them be the experts of that. That’s great. Then students have voice in my class.

[00:21:08] Their opinions matter. They’re heard they’re knowledgeable. They’re successful. I think it’s a positive thing and it creates an environment in a classroom that is incredibly.

[00:21:21]Receptive to learning and to creating a community of learners. Where all voices are valuable.

[00:21:28] Lesli: K my second big [00:21:30] tip for teaching mythology. And I say it again and I say it often, and I really mean it. Don’t worry about how you say things. Right. Just say it with confidence. And move on and say it quickly.

[00:21:45] I’m surprised at how often. This stops. Teachers, but also students from speaking in class. And whenever students would try to say. Oh a name and they couldn’t quite say it. And they’d be [00:22:00] like, I can’t say it. They get really nervous. I’d be like, That’s okay. Neither can I. And I’d make a big joke about it. And I’d say you just don’t know it because.

[00:22:09] I’m the first one who’s ever used that word. Right. So I could be saying it wrong. You could be saying it right. And I could be saying it wrong. Make a big joke about it and we move on.

[00:22:20]Don’t let this stop you from teaching something. And if you don’t make a big deal about how to say things, students might not either. They’re [00:22:30] already naturally self-conscious with speaking in class. So let’s not just add that on top of it. And certainly never correct. A student who says it wrong. Don’t do it.

[00:22:40] It’s not worth it in the end.

[00:22:43]Lesli (2): So these last two tips have to do with all of these resources. One use media to help you. One thing I didn’t bring up was, uh, movies.  There have been some great remakes out there. Use [00:23:00] them, pull kids in, keep it interesting. I would actually love if I could teach a college class comparing mythology too. The Marvel.  Universe, I totally would. Right.  As a side note there, I just recently rewatched guardians of galaxy. And the Avengers. Those last two movies. I forget what they’re called. And. I kept being struck by Thanos who [00:23:30] wants to like wipe out half the universe. And the Greek God. Thanatos. Who is the God of death. Right. I mean. Brilliant. Brilliant. I love it. So you might be hearing some podcasts. In the future about me comparing these two worlds. Also use Pinterest. People have made these amazing posters. Of [00:24:00] all of the. Like mythical creatures in the world or Norse family trees and Greek God family trees. And I’ve made my own posters. But I have to tell you, there are some amazing ones out there. And I definitely follow these people on my Pinterest. I repin their pins. I look at their stuff. And some of them. You can actually buy and reprint in large size. And they’re beautiful. So. [00:24:30] Check out social media. Check out Pinterest. Don’t check it out in front of students because unfortunately a lot of them use artwork that is, um,

[00:24:42] Makes me uncomfortable. There’s something about if it’s ancient artwork. I’m totally okay with nudity, right? Like a marble statue is fine. But when someone draws. A caricature of a God and they’re like nude. I don’t know that just, I’m [00:25:00] not okay with it. So I don’t know. Maybe I’m a hypocrite, but. Be careful what you post. And what you look up in front of students, especially if you’re like, let’s go to Google because sometimes the images are not, you know, school friendly. And our school filters don’t don’t catch everything. Like we wish they would.

[00:25:21]And my last tip is really embrace. Reading, myths from a variety of sources. And I’ve given you a ton of resources [00:25:30] here. You can check out the links in the show notes. I know I’ve said that like a million times, but. This episode.

[00:25:36]Just listening to it. Probably doesn’t do a lot of good for you. But. Looking at the show notes and looking at the Episode on my website with all the links. will help you. And there’s so many great things for you out there. And I want to make it as easy as I can for you. And I really encourage you to go [00:26:00] out, find different retellings, find different sources, print them and make your own mythology textbook with all the things that you like and all the things that you want to teach.

[00:26:11] Hope this is helpful. And if you’re interested. I want to send you three free lessons to get you started with teaching Greek mythology. I’m going to put the link in the show notes. It’s also on my website. And. There are three of my favorite [00:26:30] lessons, three of my most popular lessons. And I just want to help you. Get started with teaching mythology.