About this Project

My mother had just recently found out she was being moved into a high ability classroom, and she was beyond nervous about making a space that was engaging for her students. I related wholeheartedly, as I was a bored over-achieving student academically, but secretly suffered from perfectionism and anxiety as soon as I left the room. How can you convey conference to your students, excitement in the education, without pushing them into feeling nervous about coming to the classroom? I decided to work with her to build a curriculum centered on my excitement, archaeology and the ancient world, to try to enrich their learning through failure, experimentation, and personal passions.

Why the Ancient Mediterranean?

A few reasons. First and foremost, I’m a Classical Civilizations major, so the enthusiasm I have for the topic carries over to my classroom work. Secondly, Greek mythology is present all over our daily lives. These kids have been exposed to it before. Percy Jackson books, the TV series, Disney’s Hercules, and even (I found this out through my students) the video game Roblox all contain Greek mythology as content. This way, they would be somewhat familiar with the types of things we’d be learning about, but not so familiar as to not be challenged or not come away with learning something new every day.

Why a Blog?

In order to fully convey the experiences of my students, I decided to publish my work as a blog rather than an essay. Here, I can publicly share my experiences, the curriculum I wrote, my syllabi and schedules (that I ultimately had to change multiple times throughout the process), and some of the work the students created through these lesson plans. Here, you can see the humanity in teaching. Here, you can see the benefit of accommodating for the needs of accelerated students who struggle with self-confidence and motivation. Here, you can see the emotional intelligence on display from third-graders as they navigate politics, history, religion, and culture from a place they’d rarely ever heard of before. 

If you are going to follow my lesson plans, I ultimately ended up in the classroom twice a week for two hours at the end of the day following a nine-week schedule. With this schedule, there is plenty of room for multiple days of planning or adjusting the length of activities to meet the direct needs of your students.

I hope this can serve as a resource for exploration and engagement for students and teachers alike!

Please note that all photos are used with consent