Friday, June 13, 2008

Honestly.

My dear friend Nickie P. and her crew the 7Chakraz played a show with Doodlebug, formerly of Digable Planets (love them! and love him, he was such a cool cat). One of 7C's best songs is called honesty, in which the hook is, "Honesty, I keep it real with you, you keep it real with me..." I feel that I'm sifting through so much dishonesty lately and I just want to break it all open with the truth. ("All I ever wanted was the truth from you")

So things fall together, not apart right now (wish I could teach that book next year, but I think they read it in 10th grade anyway). I found a wonderful unit on greek mythology to teach, and now I'm settling on research for Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Know any great first-hand texts? I feel like it's going to be a year of creating our own mythologies, ha. I have soooo much work to do before I get there on the 1st. It's hard to believe I'm leaving in 3 weeks. I feel prepared and ready, but not so much.

Here's a partial list of what I think I may teach this fall. Suggestions or comments always welcome.

➢ The Epic of Gilgamesh (and some Sumerian creation myths)
➢ The Egyptian Book of the Dead
➢ The Art of War – Sun Tzu
➢ Li Sao (The Lament) – Qu Yuan
➢ The Ramayana
➢ The Mahabharata
➢ Theogony - Hesiod
➢ Metamorphoses – Ovid (includes Echo and Narcissus, Psyche, Persephone, Prometheus, etc)
➢ The Odyssey - Homer

I'm looking forward to this already!! It's going to be new and exciting for me to try and figure out relevancy to my students' lives when working with such old texts. But I'm determined to do it and do it well!

Cheers,
Lauren