The Hero's Journey in the key of C.

We watched Star Wars in class. I know... it was a terrible waste of time... OR WAS IT?

Currently, my students are executing what my partner, Sarah, and I call, The MYTH Project. It's one of my favorite projects.

The "crime" board

The entry event for this project is quite extensive and requires planning. For the entry event, I created a myth about young man named Les Davis that supposedly went to our school in 1961. The story leads the students to believe that there is buried treasure - or something - somewhere on the school grounds. I tell them that when we renovated our school they found this piece of paper. I show them a school map that I had soaked in coffee and let sit out for a long time. I put a book cipher with the words "School Song" on the map. The book cipher leads the students to the "stage light". The stage light box has another clue - also on coffee soaked paper - that leads the students to one of the school tree lines, depending on which class they're in. When we go to the tree line, the students find a tree that has peculiar markings on it (L.D. and a down arrow that I carved with a pocket knife on a Sunday afternoon three years ago). They search for a shovel, which I had methodically placed in the baseball field's excess sandpit - it just happens to be within site of the marked tree. When they dig, they discover a message in a glass jar that I had buried one month prior to the entry event. This letter tells them to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.

Campbell's book lays out the Hero's Journey. We ask the students to identify stories that share the hero's journey. Then we begin to research and study mythology - but not just mythology - culture, philosophy, and the origins of society. What is good? What is evil? Who decides? How can we be a force for either side? Is there such as thing as neutrality? All of these items become need-to-know questions, and the whole while students are examining themselves to see how they stack up. It's an amazing project.

What is the outcome of the MYTH project? The students have some options: They can create their own myth that follows the hero's journey. They may adapt another myth that we approve, and present that. Or they may simply study and present a myth that they like. In the past we've seen shadow puppet shows, movies, tableaux, staged plays, and some really creative pieces of artwork that included illustrated story books, clay statues, paintings and sketches. We also encourage oral storytelling - utilizing those public speaking skills in an informal way.

Everyone project also has to include music. The mastery level column demands that students perform original music. Students may also orchestrate scores for their project and have a program like Finale play them during their presentation. The presentations are to be timed to the music, just like a movie score, to match the action. Of course, to differentiate, students may also utilize pre-recorded works if they acquire the appropriate permissions to use them. It takes so much work to get the permission that students often opt to create their own music.


Scaffolding for this project comes in several pieces. The first is a mythology gauntlet. Sarah and I pull every book with mythology that we can find from the library. We organize them by geographical location and have the students do a series of Literature exercises at each station. The kids get 12 minutes at each station and we collect their work at the end. Some of the exercises include compare and contrast, crime board mapping, storyboarding, flow charting, mad-libs, analogies, inference, and general reading comprehension and visualization techniques.

Storyboarding

Myth Gauntlet books

Reading 

Hero's Journey Exercise

We also watch Star Wars (IV, A New Hope), stopping about every 5 minutes to ask, "Where are we in the Hero's Journey?"

As students work on their presentations they find themselves needing specific workshops on things like cinematography, movie score writing, hyperscribing, orchestral scoring, creating fake blood, creating fake smoke, script writing, instrumental characterization, text painting, action sequencing, costume/prop/set design, acoustic engineering, oral storytelling, origins of myth, Foley artistry (no relation to me), sound effects use... these are just a few that we have had to deal with this year. Students discussions foray into economics with talk of budgets, time and resource management, casting, and other considerations that go into making a production.

Creating a dragon's head.

Of course, Sarah - in her brilliance - seamlessly works in motif and literary theme. She also gives a killer workshop on allegory vs. metaphor, and she reviews tone, voice, and public speaking skills. I have to utilize the project to teach tonal structures vs. melodic structures and tonicization. This project sets our students up to be able to tackle a large scale film production. Also, we can easily see the public speaking, problem solving, critical thinking, and collaborative skills that students are forging.

 Mr. Foley's white board - post Tonicization workshop

It's too bad these concepts aren't tested on the State End of Course Assessments...

Until next week, friends!