Myth Makers - Make Your Own Scepter Project!

Alright, myth lovers, have you ever wondered about the thyrsus of Dionysus? His staff, or wand, was always my favorite of the Olympian gods. Ever since I've taught Myth Makers, the mythology class I've developed around maker culture, students have asked me about the thyrsus. "Why does it have a pinecone on top of it? Why do the Maenads (the followers of Dionysus) also carry it?" If you want to know the answers to these questions and more, you should read this article. It explains that the pinecone is really an artichoke. As interesting as this is, that's not what this blog post is about, but I couldn't help but mention it! It's too nerdy not to.

Can we talk about all the cool scepters that the Olympian gods hold? I like to talk about Dionysus because he's my favorite, but the students love Poseidon's trident, Hermes' caduceus, and don't forget the bident of Hades. Who doesn't love a scepter to show off power?

These scepters also represent the gods in a visual way. As the students begin to learn about the Olympians, these symbols help them remember the gods more easily.

I use this concept to spark a maker challenge: the make-your-own scepter challenge! Students begin by learning some basic paper folding techniques. Learning to fold paper skillfully can be tricky for some students so trust me: start simple.

I leveled up my myth-making game when I discovered Engineering with Paper. Godwyn Morris founded this small after-school maker lab in New York City for kids to learn making (you can watch a short video about the concept here.) I highly recommend their free projects like catapults and city blocks, but if you want to learn about easy folding techniques, purchase the "Design Your Own Creatures" packet. Once kids learn to fold basic shapes such as tubes, rectangular prisms, flaps, etc., they can adapt them as they design their own scepters. As I teach each structure, I add it to a display board so students have a visual reminder of what they learned.

This project literally uses three things: paper, tape, and scissors. All three are cheap and easily accessible, but make sure that all students have their own scissors and their own tape. I highly recommend Lichamp masking tape for this project. You'll also need to teach them to tear tape with their fingers (not kidding with this one. I think years of typing on screens has moved our kids away from using their hands for cutting, tearing tape, and other small tasks for which fine motor skills are needed.) Another good trick to teach is pre-tearing at least 5-6 pieces and attaching those to a desk before they start folding and building.

Once they've learned to build, they start dreaming by creating and labeling a sketch. Years ago, when I learned to teach STEM, my mentor taught me that sketching ideas and labeling them should always be the first step. Once my students understood that they weren't being graded on their drawing skills and that sketching was just a way to put their ideas into a 3-D format, they loved starting projects with this simple first step.

After sketching, the students picked out colored paper to bring their ideas to life. And oh, what ideas they were! One student based her scepter on the power to heal cats. Another built one that could retract like a fishing pole because he loves to fish. These projects actually helped me to get to know my students early in the semester - what they cared about, what they were interested in, etc. The daily work also allowed me to see who might need help, who was self-sufficient, who was bold, and who was shy.

Honestly, some were not so great, and these students struggled to bring their ideas to life. Others didn't want to finish because they were having too much fun creating. That's just the nature of a STEM challenge - the struggle is part of the process. 

After we were done, I took glamor shots of the students in front of "Mt. Olympus." I wish you could see their faces!! The looks of pride and creativity - this is why I teach!

In case you're interested in bringing this project to your own classroom, here's a presentation that lays out the concept. And if you're interested in my Myth Makers class, see this video of a presentation I did a couple of years ago. Questions welcome!

The Penelope Project: Fun-ded!!

"You win some, you lose some." That's what I told myself at the beginning of this school year. I was bummed because I hadn't yet heard about a grant I'd written way back in May. The grant instructions said we'd know by July, and in mid-August, still nothing.

The grant was going to fund The Penelope Project, an experimental archaeology lesson plan to build large-scale warp-weighted looms for the students to weave on. This community weaving project would create woven sunshades for our campus that any students could contribute to. In addition to the looms, the grant was written to include outdoor furniture so that the students could sit outside, read, weave, and enjoy the cooler weather of fall and winter. 

As I checked the status of the grant online and found nothing, I was beginning to put aside my dream for this year. There's always next year, I told myself. Even though we weren't funded, we can still have FUN.

But then something unexpected happened. During my school's parent night, I set up stations in my classroom for parents to visit. One of them was about the Penelope Project and specifically asked for woodworking skills to help build the looms we need. A full week later, I got an email from a parent volunteering her father. When I emailed her back with specifics, I then got a very long, detailed email with specifications and research from the woodworker himself! He thought he could figure out how to build an ancient Roman/Greek warp-weighted loom, and he was ready to go. He even offered to build us a more permanent loom meant to stay in my classroom for future lessons on weaving in my Roman Technology class.

The very next day on Friday afternoon, before I'd had a chance to return his email, I went to the copy room to prepare some paperwork for Monday. When I looked up at my mailbox (yes, we still have physical mailboxes), I spotted a letter in it. When I opened it, I was shocked to find a letter stating that the Penelope Project had been funded. We got the grant after all! Enclosed was a check in the amount of $2025.00. Thanks to Baton Rouge's Academic Distinction Fund for their generosity.

As we prepare for this project, I can't wait to dig more into the ancient technology of weaving. Years ago, when I wanted my students to learn this ancient skill, I taught myself with YouTube videos on small hand-made cardboard looms and even took a class from a modern weaving artist. It's become one of my favorite little side hobbies. But modern loom weaving is very different from large-scale fabric production weaving. I'll be looking for resources from the experts out there. Can YOU help? It's gonna be FUN!

Myth Makers - Pandora's Box Project

This year, I'm teaching a class called Myth Makers. We read the stories of ancient Greek and Roman mythology and use them as inspiration for all kinds of projects. I have 85 students enrolled in 3 sections, and the kids represent a wide variety of ages (10-15), backgrounds, and abilities. We spend a LOT of time reading the stories and writing about them. But the best part of this class is the maker component. In each unit, I design a project that asks the students to think creatively. 

In our first unit about the "beginning of time," the students read the story of Pandora. They love this story. You may recall that Pandora was the first woman, given to humankind as a "gift" but really as a punishment. Gifted with curiosity by Zeus, Pandora is tasked with not opening a mysterious jar (or box, in later versions of the story). When she finally gives in to her curiosity, Pandora unleashes all the evils of the world, such as gossip, theft, jealousy, etc. All this detail is rich fodder for student outrage, but the bit that gets the kids really riled up is the fact that HOPE is left inside the box. It raises all kinds of questions such as "Why was hope in a box of evils?" and "Why did Zeus do this to people?" and "Why is hope left INSIDE the box? Does it really not exist in the world?"

This questioning of the story led me to design a project that allows students an opportunity to meditate further on this fascinating tale. They get to create their own Pandora's box! I teach them how to make a box out of paper (a simple origami method), and then they decorate the box as they think the original might have looked. (Was it beautiful to create more temptation, or was it just a plain box? Or did it have a mysterious light shining from within like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? LOL)

Once the students have created their boxes, their next job is to write about the evils that are flying out of them. I ask them to pick five evils that are affecting the world, their home state, their school, their own personal lives, and one that they think will never be fixed. This writing prompt really gets the kids thinking, and it also helps me get to know them. At the beginning of the year, that information is helpful to have.

Can I tell you that I absolutely LOVE to read these projects? Some of them are hilarious - one kid this year picked our school system's superintendent! (To be fair, the start of our year has been challenging due to a school bus crisis that involved a bus driver strike, long-overdue bus maintenance, and an extreme heat wave, and many of these problems were blamed on our leader.) Others picked predictable evils like social media overuse and homework. My favorite evil was the overpumping of our city's aquifer by chemical companies and subsequent saltwater intrusion! I'm pretty sure that the student learned about that evil in a unit on water systems in last year's Roman technology class so that made me super proud.

After everyone is done with the project, the students do a showcase walk. After displaying each project on a desk, the students rotate their seats so that they eventually see everyone else's project and write their thoughts on similarities and differences. They take this work so seriously and really enjoy seeing their classmates' projects. It's a great way to start the year!

Interested in bringing this project to your Latin/classics classroom or club? You can find project details here.

Our superintendent does not have hair so...

Roman Britain for Latin Teachers

In 2019, I attended the ACL Summer Institute in New York City where I heard James Watson, a British Latin teacher, talk about his travels to Roman archaeological sites in his home country of England. I was intrigued because in the Latin textbook I use, called the Cambridge Latin Course, there is an entire story arc that takes place in ancient Britannia. I was struck with a curiosity to see the places James talked about and more. That talk started me on my own story arc.

In 1995, I was fortunate to receive a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Greece where I participated in the summer session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for 6 weeks. In this program, students and teachers traveled to and learned about archaeological sites all over Greece and Crete. At the sites, we heard from actual archaeologists, usually the lead on that particular project or dig site. One of my most vivid memories from that trip is being told to go under the rope at the Parthenon where we climbed up a very tall ladder to touch the remaining parts of the marble frieze! In the school's famous Gennadius Library, I touched the journals of Heinrich Schliemann! In the agora, my class heard from the leading archaeologist, John Camp, while actually at the archaeological site! That's how awesome this program was in getting students close to the actual archaeology. I learned so much on that trip.

In 1996, the gods blessed me yet again when I earned a scholarship to participate in a comparable summer program in Italy at the American Academy in Rome. More memorable experiences and learning followed including walking around the streets of ancient Pompeii, experiencing the Pantheon on a quiet morning before the crowds arrived, and learning about Roman inscriptions. Another amazing experience!

Side note of importance: if you're interested in either of these programs, there are wonderful sources of funding out there. You can find a complete list of scholarships for attendance at the summer session of AAR right here and of ASCSA right here. I want to reiterate that these two programs added to my classical education enormously. I would not be the teacher I am today without these experiences. Thus, I was so terribly disappointed to learn that there was not a similar program, regularly offered, in England to assist classics teachers in exploring the significant Roman sites there. To be fair, the Vergilian Society will be offering just such a tour for teachers in the summer of 2024, but this program is not an annual one.

As you can probably guess, I decided to design my own tour of the Roman archaeological sites in the UK. I enjoyed immensely the process of researching the sites and then planning the itinerary, but before that, I had to secure funding. If you're doing the same thing, you'll want to look into three organizations that offer funding for a teacher who is "designing your own" travel study experience:

The Society for Classical Studies offers numerous options. The National Latin Exam offers the Christine Sleeper Educational Travel Award. I was fortunate enough to get scholarships from both organizations. That funding paid for most of my trip! Extra money acquired through speaking engagements and writing assignments for the past few years related to my Teacher of the Year (Louisiana 2021) status allowed my husband to accompany me as my driver. (Trust me - I needed one.)

Through research, reading, and listening to the English Heritage Podcast, I designed this itinerary starting in London, heading east, and then making a big circle around all of Britain. As far as I can tell, it worked out great. I missed a few sites that I will get back to later, but for the most part, I saw everything I hoped to see. You can see my actual itinerary here.

Because I'm a nerd, and because I like to help, I've created a Website called Roman Britain for Latin Teachers. This project gave me an opportunity to review my pictures, read books I bought, and relive the adventure - all things necessary to set the learning in my own mind. On this site, you'll find all kinds of information about how to plan your own tour and prepare for it, how to incorporate Britannia into your Cambridge Latin Course lessons, and how to use my museum and site pictures in your classroom. I hope it helps you! Now get yourself to Britain!

Professional ENvelopment

Summer is halfway over. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

It started at the end of May with a few days on the beach helping my daughter and her friends celebrate their graduation from high school. I cooked for them, but other than that, I spent my time literally staring at the ocean and listening to the waves. I guess I needed that. The beach was quickly followed by a jam-packed epic trip to visit the archaeological sites of Roman Britain. I'll do another post about that soon.

Besides "resting" most teachers spend their summers learning how to be better teachers. It's what we do, and I'm no different. I LOVE to learn new stuff especially when I don't have the pressures of work/teaching to worry about. My trip to England was exactly that, a time to learn without worry.

Now, I'm sitting at MSY waiting for my flight to depart for the annual Summer Institute of the American Classical League. I attended this conference sporadically for decades. For the past few years, I've gone every year to present my work on Myth Makers and Roman Technology, classes I've been developing. I seem to know so many more people there now, and what used to be professional development has turned into professional "envelopment". I made that word up. It's kinda like work but really more like friends that you know through work that spur you on to continue learning and loving teaching classics. You're enveloped by a sense of fun and excitement to see them and learn from them.

I'll be presenting three sessions:

Hands-on History: Roman Board Games and Dice Boxes

Come play a game with me! In this workshop, you’ll learn how to create and play three Roman board games that you can teach to your students. Then, you’ll participate in a Roman STEM challenge in which you and a partner will design and build an ancient Roman-style dice box to use in playing dice games. Utilizing simple and cheap supplies (all provided for you), you’ll have a ton of fun and walk away with engaging activities that you can integrate into your regular Latin classes or use as a stand-alone club experience. Can't participate in person? Don't worry - I'll demonstrate how to play these games online too, and the STEM challenge is one that can be done at home with simple supplies from around your house.

Hands-on History: Write Like a Roman

Explore ancient writing! In this workshop, you’ll learn how to write like ancient Romans and Greeks by exploring the tools they used. After learning about the textual and archaeological evidence for different types of writing tools and materials, you’ll experience writing on papyrus and wax tablets, using squid ink, and making your own oak gall ink. All supplies will be provided - participants will receive a stylus, a small piece of papyrus, and their own container of ink. You’ll walk away with engaging activities that you can integrate into your regular Latin classes or use as a stand-alone club experience.

Engagement and Inclusion Through Narratives and Games

(I'm joining others for a segment of this one. Can you guess which part is mine? LOL) The Latin classroom can be a place of fun and imagination, and this workshop incorporates those ideas in three ways. The first presenter will speak about the power of stories to capture the imaginations of students. Attendees will receive an adapted text of an inscription to study the life of an accomplished woman in the Late Republic. The second part of the workshop will be a presentation on the medieval correspondence known as G. Unice Sue Rose, an erotic correspondence written from one nun to another in medieval Germany. Attendees will receive an adapted version and two brief activities related to the text. The third part of the workshop will feature a presentation on the games that Romans played. Attendees will learn how to make a tiny game of ROTA, a game that Roman soldiers often played and that teachers can use to teach Roman counting vocabulary in Latin class or to learn about the lives of these ancient gamers.

I'll be using a lot of hands-on supplies for these sessions so I've had to bring an entire suitcase full of crazy stuff like squid ink, cardboard scissors, and tree bark. I can't wait to see what TSA has to say about it all!

In addition to learning and presenting, I'll also be receiving a special award: the 2023 Charles Humphreys Award for Innovative Pedagogy. Here's the description: "The American Classical League has established this award in memory of Charles Humphreys to recognize excellence in teaching Classics and Classical Languages. Nominees should exemplify those qualities which Charles himself brought to teaching and the profession, namely a “sparkling enthusiasm for scholarship, education, and the Humanities,” which lead to innovative teaching practices (in the classroom or delivered through other means), including interdisciplinary instruction and authentic, real-life learning opportunities for all students. Furthermore, the nominee should show evidence of how he/she has influenced our profession by sharing and disseminating innovative practices for other teachers." I'm honored to receive this award in light of the Roman Road Project especially!

I hope to see many friends there for some professional development and ENvelopment!

Myth Makers - The Penelope Project

Next school year, I'll be taking a break from teaching Roman Technology to teach Myth Makers, my STEAM class based on classical mythology. (You can watch a presentation about this class here.) One of my favorite lessons to teach is weaving, in conjunction with the stories about Athena, the Greek goddess of household craft. Students consistently cite this lesson as one of their favorites. Each student creates their own hand-held loom out of cardboard and weaves a small piece of cloth. Why not take it to the next level?!

I'm spending my last day of school writing a grant to make large, ancient-style warp-weighted looms. The Penelope Project is a collaborative project that will have students build 8-foot-high looms to weave on in outdoor classrooms. While a couple of students weave, the rest of us can enjoy listening to mythological stories while we sit outside, basking in the sunshine. The looms will eventually be broken down and moved to our new school whenever it gets built.

You can read more about the project here.

And if you need free weaving lessons for your classics students, go here.

Roman Technology - Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my Roman Technology class! Six years in, and I'm still in love. Here's the story.

Six years ago, my former school was encouraging its teachers to incorporate STEM into their classes with the help of a STEM coordinator. If requested, Betsy Minton would help any teacher come up with a plan to integrate STEM methodology into our curriculum. As a language teacher, I found the idea intriguing. Despite the fact that I loved teaching Latin, if I'm being honest, I had grown bored with teaching language. Caesar was one of the Advanced Placement Latin exam authors I was teaching that year, and every time I read about his soldiers building a bridge across a river in record time, I pined to create a lesson in which students would actually try something like that. I used to show my Latin students episodes of a Nova series called Secrets of Lost Empires. These featured archaeologists, engineers, and historians employing experimental archaeology to recreate a Roman bath or the canvas awning of the Colosseum using the tools and processes of the ancient Romans. I decided it was time to try something different.

With Betsy's encouragement, I designed a class called Roman Technology. In its first iteration, I made it an upper level Latin course for students looking for an alternative to taking AP Latin. I had five high school seniors that were willing to try ANYTHING. One of my favorite lessons was reading and comparing the concrete recipes of Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder in the original Latin, and then actually mixing, setting, and testing our very own version of the stuff. After that first lesson, I was hooked, and I was never going back. You can read an article about that original iteration of the class here.



Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." During the first year of my Roman Technology class, I took a right hook. Midway through the year, the headmaster of my school decided that the large and popular Latin program I had worked to grow would be phased out. Although I never got a real reason from him, I think it had to do with the difficulty of scheduling students into three different languages at such a small school. He offered me a job as the school's educational technology coordinator teaching other teachers how to use things like Google Docs and Canvas. I said no. After 24 years at that small, private school, I left for a job at a local large, public middle school, Glasgow Middle, my current school. And it's been a GLORIOUS time with AMAZING students, diverse in culture, age, background, and abilities.

My new job was supposed to be part-time. The school hadn't had an in-person Latin teacher in a few years so their program was dying out. To make it a full-time position, my principal asked me to teach mythology and adapt the Roman Technology class for non-Latin students. The rest is kind of history at this point. We've built sundials, archery bows, catapults, kilns, looms, roads, gromas, and ovens, mixed makeup, bread dough, and concrete, designed ships, shadufs, aqueducts, and dice towers. And more. I can't even remember the whole list any more. 

I've presented on lessons from this class at so many conferences now that I've lost count. Countless people ask me when I'm going to write a book about it! (I wish I had an offer and the time.) In just the past year, I've had nearly a dozen people ask about how to introduce a STEM-based classics program in their own schools. If they take my advice, Roman Technology classes will be offered from California to Maine in just a couple of years.

I'm having an absolute blast designing and teaching these lessons...and sharing them with the world. I hope you've gotten some enjoyment out of them. Happy Anniversary, Roman Technology class - I love you! Here's to many more years of hands-on history learning!!

Check out my Website for Roman Technology lessons and much more.