Beowulf: The Hero's Journey Unit Day One

My first day of teaching my Beowulf: The Hero's Journey Unit proved to be one of the most nerve wracking things I have had to do in my life thus far. For two nights before I taught the unit, I had horror nightmares about everything that could possibly go wrong on that day. Considering it would be my first day of teaching, along with the fact that my supervisor would be observing, and my teacher would be video taping me, I was extremely stressed! Because I had never taught a lesson that I actually created before in my life, I felt as though I would be completely unprepared and my students would totally think I was crazy!

Luckily, none of my nightmares came true. I executed the lesson exactly according to how I had written it, which according to my supervisor Ron Lukart was a bad thing. He said that I needed to leave more time for open ended discussion where the students could relate their lives to the story of Beowulf. He also would have liked to see more information about the background material of Beowulf. Basically, he told me that I should have lectured that entire day over the background material of the Anglo-Saxons and Beowulf. For some reason, I have this huge and riduculous fear of lecturing. First of all, even to this day, I completely zone out any teacher or person who lectures me about five to ten minutes into the lecture. I honestly just cannot pay attention that long! Secondly, I just have this fear of standing in front of my students lecturing them about this subject in which they might not be interested and having to watch their bored faces. I told this to Ron Lukart, who opposingly said that lecturing is neccessary sometimes. While I agree that sometimes it is perfectly necessary to lecture, I will never in my teaching career lecture for an entire class period. In my opinion, that is just putting my students through hell. Though I felt discouraged from what Ron Lukart discussed with me, I realized the criticism could help me in future lessons. Now, I plan to intersperse background information throughout my teaching of Beowulf. In the future, for the next unit I plan, I definitely will make sure I create some way of informing the students about the background material.

Through the criticism I received from my Student Teaching Supervisor, I was able to understand more of how to relate to my students and get them to really appreciate Beowulf. On my first day of teaching, some of the students did not seem to grasp the hero's journey theme or what was really going on in the text. Many of them were confused by the language of the epic poem and disinterested in the plot. This bothered me because I actually enjoyed reading Beowulf! Upon realizing that my students were not grasping this concept, I knew I had to change something about my lessons. Because I had them reading silently on the first day and then discussing the questions afterward with me, I decided that I would ask them how they felt about reading silently. Every single student said they would rather read aloud as a class and discuss the plot and themes as we went. Hearing this, I knew I had to change my lesson for the next day.

In changing my lesson, I quickly adapted it to include reading in a circle aloud with me. Another major concept that my students did not seem to grasp was the theme of the hero's epic journey and how it could relate to their own lives. In order to assist them in understanding this concept, I quickly created a mini-lesson over the hero's and "Grendel's" in their lives. In this mini-lesson, I will have the students name one hero who affects their lives or who they admire. After naming this hero, I will have them describe the qualities and attributes of this person that makes them a hero. Then, farther down on their paper, I will have them describe a "Grendel" they must face and battle in their own lives. This "Grendel" can be a problem or person that they must deal with and battle in their daily lives. After I have all of them write their hero's and "Grendel's," I will have the students state each to the group. I will state my hero and "Grendel" as well to show that I have difficulties in my life too. Then, I will ask them why I had them discuss these concepts with the class? After giving the appropriate wait time, and listening to their responses, I will say that Beowulf is a hero just like the hero's in your life, or the hero of yourself. In the story, Beowulf had to battle and face Grendel similar to how you (the students) battle and face your problems and difficulties in life. Then, because we will be reading the battle with Grendel on that day, I will explain to the students that we now get to see Beowulf battle his Grendel. Overall, my first day did not turn out as terribly as I feared, there was just a lot I needed to learn and think about in planning my lessons and relating to my students.