Thoughts about Fall Assignments

I am really excited about getting into the Myth-Folklore assignments this Fall. When I did the Myth-Folklore class a year ago, I didn't have a strong reading focus; I was just looking for chain-tale material from week to week. That worked out great, and I produced a good Portfolio (Chain Tales: One Thing Leads to Another)... but my reading was pretty scattered.

This semester, my approach to Myth-Folklore is going to be ALL about the reading. Since I have already read the UnTextbook units (it's weird to think that the UnTextbook is already 5 years old!), I'm going to be using the reading assignments each week to revise the current Africa units, and then to build some new African units to put in place for next semester's class.

So, just thinking out loud here in the post: there are a total of 26 regular reading assignments, plus the 14 extra credit ones, so that is 40 total! A very nice number; I can use 16 of those to work through the existing African units, and then with the remaining 24 units, I can certainly come up with 4 more options for next semester, with one assignment to find the stories, one to put them up as blog posts with notes, and then one more assignment to proofread. The hardest part will be choosing just which 4 units I want to do since there are so many fabulous new books that I discovered this summer.

Anyway, I am really excited about working on those reading units this semester; it will help me get into the story spirit this semester, improve the current African units before we get to Week 7... and it will also be a nice new addition to the Myth-Folklore class for Spring if I can add 4 more really good African storytelling units ready to go!

One of the books I enjoyed the most was the Gullah stories collected by Charles Jones, so for sure one of the units will have to be Gullah stories!

Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast