The Study of Myths v. The Creation of Myths

Studying myths seems much easier than actually creating and writing one. When our class was assigned a certain type of myth (mine being "Sacred Places), I was interested in what different cultures found sacred and relayed through mythical stories. Many of the myths studied were from generations ago and are strong in the particular cultures that believe in them. Studying a myth is basically learning about different myths and the views the culture takes on them, the myths also seem to influence the cultures perspectives on many every day events, such as the creation myths.
Because studying is a form of learning, and I am in school to learn, it is much easier to study than create an origional myth. Which I am having difficulty with.

Now that I am responsible for writing an actual myth, the pressure is on, the myths found in our text book covers world-wide myths from generations back, knowing this makes the idea of creating an exciting and interesting myth nerve wrecking.

I was origionally going to do a FEMALE DIVINE myth, being one of the most interesting betrayal of the female... uh... divine, but it's now turning into a trickster-myth instead. Trickster myths are a little more easy going and fun, making this process easier.
Creating a myth is fun but challenging because one doesn't want to re-make a myth or reinvent common ideas. Creativity is an issue for me here.

But hopefully with practice and reference to the study of other myths, mine will be decent.

As far as redirecting this information into a future class room. I think teaching the students different types of myths, their guidelines, formats, etc. is really good before having them create one themselves.
I don't think I would have a website created for each student because it may be a little too much to ask from them. Luckily, a computer class should cover that, or I would assign this to another portion of the class so they have only one difficult item to tend to at a time.

Under What Circumstances Would someone Love a Dirty City?

Night after night I hear the subway running fast through my sleeping town. She wakes me at precisely 4:45 am, with her whistle, that loud and powerful whistle. She is my mother waking me up every morning, telling me it’s time to go to work at the small factory across town.
It smells of sweat and morning breath two hours into the shift. Men of all ages grunt as they pull and push heavy machinery into drive-able positions. I staple the cushion onto the framing of what looks like a chair, but for some reason is called a seat.
Twelve hours have passed and I am finally released for my lonely walk home.
Veteran men walk with their hands in their noses, portraying the damage of post traumatic stress disorder. I try to walk away from them, but they don’t mind anyone near their territory, as long as the loud airplanes above aren’t around. When the planes make their welcome home noises, the men remember the bombs overhead, and force themselves into a safe place, usually a stranger’s car or a local restaurant sleeping for the evening.
Aged women selling their insides for a cheap price whistle at me. Their whistles are different than my mother’s. They are appealing, sensual, forceful and dirty. My mother’s is loud, consistent and clean. I like her call during the night, I ignore the other calls: continue walking forward three blocks—turn right, up stairs, open door. Home.
I am a bastard son. I have no father. My mother wakes me up every morning at the same time. I work every day around bad breath and salty water. My neighborly ways are to ignore women who are too good for me and men who have seen the world.
I am tired, good night, mother. Don’t forget to wake me up.

13 year old prodigy on Conservatism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/27/jonathan-krohn-13-year-ol_n_170642.html

Explicating Vs. Actual Writing of Poetry

I've written poetry for a majority of my life, and never really considered how much time and energy renowned poets put into their works.

Explicating is a fun and exciting process of understanding poems in new ways. Every individual may recognize a phrase to mean something other than someone else may think. That is the beauty of poetry. Thus far in my college career, I have been lucky enough to attend classes where explicating poetry was a huge factor, giving my experience under my belt in regards to knowledge of breaking a poem down to its core.

Writing poetry is now a harder challenge than it once was because I know how I can play with word usage, dialect, metaphor and simile, etc. Having fun with placing words together to form a secret meaning or the actual truth in a poem is very exciting. I love having the knowledge of what other famous poets have possessed.

It will be fun to introduce this new found knowledge into a classroom environment. Having high school and junior high students learn to read and understand difficult poems by poets such as William Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and the list can go on.

I am very excited to practice the new "exercises" I've learned in my future classrooms. These being: "wrecking the first person," "found poem" and the classic haiku. We also participated in a "poetry slam" and I think allowing students produce their own dramatic poetry, then acting it out would be a good relief and way of expression for them.

Now that my college education is near complete, I am looking forward to using the tools learned from CSUN and applying them in a classroom environmet.