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The Hero's Journey:
Curriculum Outline
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| The Hero's Journey:
A Guide to Literature and Life is a comprehensive program
which incorporates literature, film, art and speech under a unified theme
with a logical progressive structure. The curriculum contains ten units
and 14 lesson plans, and includes all of the text, stories, copy masters,
and forms you need for up to a full year of teaching. It may be
used in part or in its entirety. The following outline will give you a
clear idea of the curriculum's inclusiveness and progressive nature.
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Unit
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Material Covered
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Activities
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Ritual and Rite of Passage
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- Ritual and Rite of Passage (handout)
- Ritual and the Creation of Meaning (NEW)
- Film: Star Wars (or other Hero's Journey film)
- Blackfoot legend: The Buffalo Dance
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Discussion: Teenagers and Modern Rites of Passage
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Questions for review
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Create your own ritual for a modern "life transition"
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The Hero's Journey
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- The Hero's Journey: outline and explanation of the
stages and their relationships to literature and life (handout)
- A history of research and analysis on the heroic
journey pattern, including extensive sections on the Jungian hero
archetype and Joseph Campbell (NEW).
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What makes a hero? (brainstorming and discussion.
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Athletes, actors and actresses, and victims as heroes (discussion)
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Elements of the Journey: notetaking, discussion and film
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Gawain and the Green Knight
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The Legend of Gawain and the Green Knight (handout)
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Background: Gawain, King Arthur, the Round Table (lecture)
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Log Gawain's Journey (activity)
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Understanding the Nature of the Challenge (study questions)
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Interpreting stages of the Journey (discussion)
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Demeter and Persephone
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Myth: The End of Eternal Spring (handout)
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Quests and the importance of compromise (discussion)
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Mythology based vocabulary
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Demeter's and Persephone's compromise (discussion and reflection)
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Writing about compromise (short reflective essay)
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The Legend of Buddha
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- The Legend of Buddha (handout)
- Film: The Little Buddha (optional)
- Buddhist Non-Attachment and the Hero's Journey (NEW)
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Understanding mythological motifs, archetypes and metaphors
(discussion)
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Historical context: The Axial Age
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The Message of the Return, sacrifice and responsbility (discussion
and reflection)
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Understanding Buddha's journey (review questions)
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Analyzing The Little Buddha: Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation,
death as a journey, the father's journey (discussion)
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Field of Dreams (film unit)
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Group collaboration: notetaking, analysis and presentation
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How our Journeys interlock (discussion and reflection)
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Log Ray Kinsella's Journey (activity)
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Understanding transformation: charting a characters growth
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Character analysis (major essay)
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Write a Hero's Journey Short Story
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- Step-by-step directions for writing your own short
story (handout)
- Directions for using short stories or films (from
your own curriculum)
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Write your own short story using the Hero's Journey pattern
as a foundation
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Inventing and developing character, building setting and
creating conflict (exercises from text)
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Sentence modeling exercises for describing scenes and writing
dialogue (from text)
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Peer response editing (forms in text)
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The Call Refused
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- The Call Refused: What happens when we reject the
call to adventure (handout)
- Groundhog Day (film)
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The Myth of Minos and the Minotaur (handout)
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"What if...?" (How would the lives of heroes differed if
they had refused their calls?) (discussion)
- Understanding the need for accepting your calls:
Groundhog Day discussion
- Analyzing Groundhog Day (review questions
from text)
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Understanding how refusing your call affects others (discussion
of Minos myth)
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Writing about a call you refused (short, informal essay)
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Hero's Journey Presentation
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Group activity: research non-Greek/non-Roman myths for a
class presentation (instructions in workbook)
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non-Greek/non-Roman myths (from your curriculum or library)
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Find a non-Greek/non-Roman heroic myth (student research
activity)
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Group collaboration, rehearsal and presentation of the myth
(group activity)
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"A Member of the Team" (group self-evaluation)
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My Journey:
A Personal Mandala and
Autobiographical Essay
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- Personal mandala pre-writing exercise
(from teacher's manual), including two NEW
pages on the philosophy of the mandala and using mandalas in the classroom.
- Directions for essay-writing project
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Using the mandala as a window to self-discovery (discussion
)
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Using the mandala to analyze charcters from literautre and
film (discussion and activities)
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Revealing self through symbol and metaphor (discussion)
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Finding the shadow self: personal qualities chart (activity)
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Creating your own mandala (activity)
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Writing a reflective essay about a heroic journey you have
taken
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