Fact and Fiction? How Myths Reflect Our World

Howdy everybody! In fifth grade, we took a week-long field trip called “Outdoor Ed,” where we learned about nature and our local environment. We slept in dorms that week, and at night, I would use the light peeking through the door to read a series my older brothers had recommended: Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I burned through the first book, finishing it long before the trip was over, and I have since read that series around ten times. I developed a love for mythology of all kinds, and I could go on at length about that love, but I will spare you the details.

The next year, we started to learn about ancient civilizations in my social studies class. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to be able to use my knowledge of Greek myths for something. I was even more excited when the project at the end of the unit was to create our own ancient civilization (my friend and I created Lostica, an Atlantis-inspired sunken Greco-Roman civilization), where we had to, among many other things, craft a myth (we chose the creation of a fictional berry we gave religious significance due to its golden color). This project still sticks in my mind as one of my favorite assignments I’ve ever done.

Studying myths since then has only grown my appreciation for such stories and assignments. Learning about the tropes present in specific myths as well as tropes commonly assigned to different gods (and the roles those gods play in their pantheons) shows what a culture values and how a society operates. Looking at our real-world myths provides amazing insight as to what a culture is like, showing how intelligence or strength might be viewed, or how certain natural phenomena are associated with life or death (for example, water may mean life in drier climate societies but death in locations prone to flooding and tsunamis).

Creating a myth allows you to take these same insights about your own society. Looking at the subject matter of modern myths shows the sorts of things we think about. How are animals treated? How do the economics of the myth’s story work? What are the social repercussions of the characters’ actions? All of these reflect the society of the author. My specialty is myth-making for fictional worlds, which is not only proven by Lostica’s existence but by a personal project I have worked on for eight years now: Temera. Temera is the world where I set most of my creative writing endeavors, and making its myths has allowed me to flesh out its history and society (especially because the gods of this world are demonstrably real, so myth can BE history). You can find out more about this world at www.dragonsoftemera.com.

All of this to say, studying and writing myths is an amazing exercise in studying history, literature, sociology, and anthropology. The way a myth is written reveals so much about a people, but being able to read that closely requires a strong foundation in literary techniques, tropes, and criticisms. These myths also have strong rippling effects as easy references in more modern pieces, so it is important to know these myths and their purposes to understand our stories today as well. As a future educator, I hope to use mythology to help my students understand the world around them, just as people who believed in these myths used them to explain the world around them.

Purposefully Perusing Poetry: Pursuing Peak Performance

 Howdy everybody! Today I wanted to talk about poetry. I have been into creative writing for a long time, and, though I always liked reading fiction more, I preferred to write poetry. It always felt freeing to me, allowing me to experiment in form and meter much more than adhering to “proper” grammar present in prose. I have written poetry in my free time, even extending to some songs (though those were mostly writing lyrics and melodies, not so much the rest of the instrumentation). To me, writing poetry is more effective than journaling because it can bypass the perfectionist parts of my brain to allow me to use more of an outline form for my thoughts, which feels more raw. 

There is a massive difference in writing versus analyzing poetry. Because of the way I write poetry, I view analyzing poetry as almost a psychoanalysis of the poet. The choice of the form or the diction shows how structured the poet’s brain was at the moment of writing. The rhyme scheme shows whimsy but also an adherence to rules, yet a lack of one can show a more unrestricted mindset while being a little more serious. I am of the opinion that the study of a thing informs and therefore aids in the performance of a thing, so I encourage the study of poetry for the means of bettering your writing. It’s the difference between a point guard who shoots threes as much as he wants to a point guard who can run a play to move the ball around; the first one is good at basketball and scores some points, but the second is great because he sees more opportunities for points. Analyzing poetry forces you to learn more about poetry to decipher its meanings, but that means that the knowledge is now rattling around in your head for you to utilize when writing it later on.

Ultimately, this exercise called “analysis” is one in exposure. Exposure to great poets through analysis allows for the exercise of the portions of the mind that create poetry. It is the same reason athletes watch game tape, actors watch other performers (or interact with a subject they might portray), or prospective teachers spend time observing and student teaching: practice makes perfect. Analysis is just a form of education, letting the analyst learn the intricacies of a thing through critical thinking. This is true for poetry as it is for teaching as it is for anything that requires skill of any kind.

The New Age of Education

Howdy everybody! For my first post, I wanted to introduce myself and lay some groundwork on what I think media's role in the classroom is. 

I am Jeffrey, a senior at CSUN in the English Subject Matter program on my journey to become a teacher. My path here was unconventional, starting with a strong distaste towards literature while I studied classical saxophone at USC, but a series of stumbles, crashouts, and realignments led me to rediscover my love for the power of words and get an AA in Liberal Arts at Santa Monica College before finishing up my BA here. You can check my profile for more personal information about me, but that is the gist of my reason for being here. 

Media is important. It takes many forms, from movies to TikTok to video games to, yes, even books. It evokes powerful emotions, educates us, distracts us, and helps to shape our understandings of the world. It is this importance that requires us to study it with the same ferocity that STEM fields use to understand the natural laws of the universe; we aim to understand the nature of ourselves. With this in mind, it is also essential that media in all its forms and technologies is not just studied, but utilized in the classroom at every level.

Bill Nye allows younger students to grasp introductory scientific concepts while being entertained by flashy experiments while keeping it low-budget for the teacher. I have a friend who got a 5 on the AP US History exam with the bulk of his studying being from the play Hamilton. Even video games have their place in education, like CoolMathGames.com helping students to practice mathematical principles without even realizing it. I learned more music theory from YouTube videos than I did from my courses at USC! There is a balance, of course (kindergartners shouldn't be watching Saving Private Ryan and PhD candidates shouldn't be using LeapPads), but the whole reason that different forms of media are created is that they convey information more effectively than the pre-existing forms could. Students learn differently, and different media helps to incorporate more students into the classroom.

All that being said, maybe don't put Family Guy clips underneath your slideshows to try and keep the kids' attention.