Stories of the Sacred, week 7 - Dussehra

[edenfalling]

I haven't been posting much about RE this year; I am not sure why. Anyway, I am teaching second grade this year, which means I am dealing with the same group of kids I taught last year. That is helpful, in many ways, because they know me and I am not always groping for lost names. (I am terrible with names.)

Our curriculum this year is "Stories of the Sacred," which seems to be cobbled together from a couple other curricula, such as "Holidays and Holy Days," plus some insta-lessons that include, of all things, YouTube videos.

Anyway, this week we learned about Dussehra, which is a Hindu holiday centering on the tale of Rama, Sita, and Ravanna the ten-headed demon. So we told a very abridged version of the story, complete with an illustrative puppet show. Since we didn't cut out the puppets to exact outlines, they all looked the same from the back and my co-teachers sometimes brought the wrong ones forward, which resulted in oddities like Hanuman coming to tell Sita that Ravanna had carried off Rama! Then we took an extra puppet of Ravanna and ceremonially burned it in a large dish, with a pitcher of water standing by in case of emergencies.

Many lesson plans this year have been absolutely jammed full, according to my co-teachers, but the three I have taught (intoduction, Rosh Hashannah, and now Dussehra) have had a fair amount of down time at the end. So we closed the circle, blew out the chalice, and had the kids go color their own set of Ramayana puppets.

I walked back home for a nap, after which I had lunch, and soon I will head back into town for work.

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Hey, valles_uf, I am working on your story! It's about 1,650 words now, but I have to fake my way through the medical stuff before I can introduce the pirates, and I need to tidy the world-building in the early sections to make clear why this tiny ship is out on its own without ready backup. I think it will be about 3,000-3,500 words when I'm done.

ETA, 11:30pm: Okay, it's 2,375 words now, and I am still a few days before the pirates. So... maybe 4,000 words all told? I am sorry! I seem to be writing you a story about the investigation and treatment of a mysterious xenobio plague on a colony world, complete with complications because of the colonists' religion and organizing social philosophy, rather than a straightfoward action/adventure thing with space pirates. I think I can still make the pirates appear in a relatively organic fashion, though, and I have laid a bit of groundwork for the Enterprise being called in to intervene.

Comments

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Really?

Awesome.

As long as it doesn't get to the point of becoming a chore for you, I'm delighted to see what would've been a quick little taste turn into something more substantial.

[edenfalling]

It's actually pretty interesting -- I am shamelessly abusing Wikipedia and handwaving any medical oddities on the whole 'alien plague' gimmick, and I have managed to tie the pirates into the reason the colonists are so ill-equipped (both technologically and socially) to deal with a medical disaster. 3,100 words at the moment!