Starting the Year Off Right

I always give a lot of thought to which block will be the first of the year. I’ve started things off different ways in the now four(!) times I’ve taught fifth grade.

Starting with Botany

A couple of times I have started the year off with a Botany block. I was somewhat inclined to do that again this time but I changed my mind at the last minute because some of my students are starting the year off online (I’ll write a post about that at some point.) I decided to put the Botany block off in the hopes that more of my students will be in-person by then and we can do a bunch of hands-on, fun stuff.

But Botany is a great way to start the year. The weather is good enough in September that you can get outside and do some drawing, harvesting and observation of plants. And in general, I try to put those more outward-facing blocks on the ends of the school year. I usually close out the year with a Botany block, as well.

Starting with Ancient Civilizations

If you’re not worried about making the most of the warm weather or getting lots of hands-on, outdoor projects going at the beginning of the year, Ancient Civilizations is another great way to start fifth grade.

I really like kicking off the year with the history/mythology content. Starting with those stories gives you a good chance to set the tone for the year and give the students a feeling sense for the theme of the year from the very beginning.

Starting with a good story-telling block is also a great way to start the year off with good classroom behavior structures and routines. I’m finding this particularly helpful this year, after having been away from the traditional classroom for so long. More than a few of my students need regular reminders of school behavior expectations. This is absolutely to be expected and I consider it a standard part of the work I do with my students.

A good history/mythology block usually follows your typical routines and habits — listening to stories, completing main lesson pages, participating in verbal reviews of those stories — and I’m so grateful that my students are getting a reminder of how those things work best. I think if I’d started off the year with a big hands-on, outward-focused block, I’d be facing some behavior challenges and they’d have a harder time making the most of the block and then readjusting to typical classroom routines later on.

So, yay for me for deciding to start with Ancient Civilizations.

Why Ancient Civilizations in Waldorf Grade 5?

One of the things I love most about the Waldorf curriculum is how intentional it is about each aspect of the curriculum and how it meets the child of that age. This is no less true for Ancient Civilizations in fifth grade.

Up until now, the students have been hearing stories from the world of mythology. These stories are the truer-than-true stories that have lived in the oral traditions of their people. In fifth grade, they’ll start the year hearing those mythological stories, but by the end of the year we’ll move into the realm of actual history.

To prepare the students for this shift, we will show them, through these various cultures, how human beings came to make the earth their home. Each one of the cultures we’ll study this year brings the human being closer to feeling at home on the earth. Here’s a very brief picture of how each culture does that.

India. To the ancient Indian, the world was Maya. What we call the real world, they considered an illusion. They felt that the true real world was the heavenly existence of the spirit. In this way, the ancient Indian hardly touched the earth. They tread lightly and were happily inclined to return to the spirit world, however possible. The story of Buddha (though he comes from a later time period) brings a strong picture of this desire to escape the realm of earthly existence.

Persia. The ancient Persians came closer to making the earth their home. They represent the shift from a nomadic life to domesticating animals and growing crops. They had to act upon the world to make it suitable to inhabit, in a way that the ancient Indians did not. This is in part because of the differences in climate between the two regions. With wide fluctuations in temperature throughout the year, Persia is a more difficult place to make a life.

Mesopotamia. We’re covering this civilization in our next history block in January, but it continues to follow the stream of earthly incarnation. In Mesopotamia, the people developed cities and a system of laws that formed agreements between people living in community. The engineering required to build the walls and structures of a city demonstrates a further step towards making the earth a comfortable home. The story of Gilgamesh is a significant one that shows how far humans were feeling from the world of spirit. Gilgamesh’s quest was to find everlasting life. The last thing he wanted was to return to the spirit world.

Egypt. The last of the four civilizations traditionally studied in fifth grade is Egypt. The ancient Egyptians thought so highly of earthly existence that they wanted to bring it with them into the afterlife. Though it seems that they were obsessed with the idea of the afterlife (as seen in their elaborate tombs and pyramids) all of this attention was an effort to extend their earthly incarnation and bring it with them into the afterlife.

Now, of course, not all of this is explicitly articulated to the students. If you read an anthroposophical perspective of this journey, a belief in reincarnation and the spiritual world is pretty baked in. My goal is to present the stories so that they are accessible to students, no matter what their family’s beliefs might be. We can still talk about people learning to make the earth a comfortable place to live without assuming any particular belief.

At the end of the year we’ll conclude our mythology/history studies with a unit on Ancient Greece. In the past I’ve done a unit on Greek Mythology and a separate unit on Greek History. This year I’m putting them back to back so we can be immersed in the world of Greece for six full weeks.

Structure of the Block

Every year I find the history/mythology curriculum to be the most difficult content to get through. There are just so many fantastic stories to tell and I always feel compelled to do justice to each of the cultures we study. Inevitably, though, I find myself falling short, wishing I’d covered more. (This is, incidentally, why you’ll find so few history/mythology curriculum guides on my site. I just don’t feel like I’ve done them well enough yet! But I remain hopeful!).

But, I’ve started off the block with a pretty good outline (though it is a little more pinched than I’d hoped) and I’m determined to stick with it. Here’s a week-by-week overview of what it looks like.

• Week #1 (3 days): The Monkey King/Journey to the West
• Week #2 (4 days): The Monkey King/Journey to the West
• Week #3: Ancient India — Overview, the gods, Sons of Pandu
• Week #4: Ancient India — The Ramayana
• Week #5: Ancient India — Buddha and Ancient Persia

The one adjustment I might make is on week three. It’s a bit light and I might try to start The Ramayana at the end of that week, allowing for a full week on Persia.

The Monkey King/Journey to the West

I started off the year with these stories and I’m really enjoying them. They come from China and they have such a fun and lighthearted feeling. The Monkey King is a trickster character, a bit like Loki, so it makes sense to bring it at the beginning of the year, before diving into the more reverent content of the other cultures.

My students are thoroughly enjoying the stories and I think they’ll be sad to bid Monkey a fond farewell after Monday this week. If you want to read more about how I’ve been preparing these stories, you can read more on my Substack site. (This is where I post a bit more informally with weekly posts for subscribers that give a more journal-like experience.)

Ancient India

My summer planning time was definitely cut short this year, so I’ll be spending a good chunk of this weekend putting together my plan for the week. Thankfully 5th grade is familiar territory, so I have a good sense for the resources and stories that I might tell.

Overview, The Gods and Sons of Pandu

This coming week we’ll be diving into the India content and for this week my primary resource will be Charles Kovacs’ Ancient Mythologies. I like that his stories bring some of the basic facts about India in picturesque story form. Through these stories we’ll learn about:

• the holy River Ganges
• the Indian gods
• the climate
• the caste system

I’m realizing now, though, that I did not slot in the stories of Krishna, which are some of my favorites (from this fun resource). Hopefully we’ll have some time in this week to touch on those stories.

The Ramayana

I’m excited to devote a full week to these stories and I’ve got a couple of resources I’m turning to. First, I will read through the Kovacs story, though it is just twelve pages for this epic story. So it might present a good overview, but probably not enough detail for storytelling.

I was also recommended a book titled Sita by Devdutt Pattanaik. I plan to sit down with it this weekend. I also remember using this version by Krishna Dharma, though I no longer own it, so I can’t really attest to it. I’ll probably see what I can find at the library, as well.

I do like to start with a few different resources and look through them all before settling on one. My preference is definitely to find a good young adult or middle grade reader, though lately I’ve had to turn to adult books and sift through them to find the essence of the stories.

Buddha

My hands-down favorite resource for Buddha is the biography called Buddha by Deepak Chopra. I love this book so much, though it’s another one of those adult books that will give you a good background heading into the block. It’s not really an open-and-go book to read to students. (Incidentally, I was excited for 6th grade when I saw that Chopra has written similar books for Jesus and Mohammed. I gave them both a try and didn’t love them as much as the Buddha book.) Kovacs has a story about Buddha, but again, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to provide content for storytelling. (Though if you’re covering India in just one week, as was recommended in my teaching training, then you might be grateful for the short version that Kovacs provides.)

Ancient Persia

I’ve always found Persia to be the culture that gets overlooked the most, and honestly, when it’s paired up with India, it’s easy to do. The main gist of Ancient Persia is that it brought humans the capacity to use fire and it is a land of great contrasts. Those contrasts come through most dramatically through the story of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. As long as I get to that one, and the fire-filled story of Zarathustra, then I’ll feel satisfied. I plan to use Kovacs for these stories.

We’ll end this block with Ancient Persia before moving on to Botany in October. Hopefully I’ll be back with an update of some of the work we did!

The post Ancient Civilizations in Waldorf Fifth Grade appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

The 8th graders and I have been studying American Government since the beginning of the year. Usually this content comes in the Revolutions block when the 8th grade studies American History. But, this being an election year, I knew that I wanted my students to have that information before November 8th.

So, since the beginning of the year, we’ve engaged in a thorough study of the three branches of government, checks and balances, the electoral college and all of the other important elements of the American system. Students have been bringing election-related current events and it has been a huge topic of conversation since the end of last year.

So I knew the 8th graders were prepared to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the 2016 election.

But, as I watched the results come in Tuesday night, I worried that this election, and the compassion and understanding necessary to comprehend the results, would be beyond them.

Heck, that level of compassion and understanding was beyond me!

Wednesday morning, I knew that my students would feel disappointed and shaken. We had already had many conversations about how unique the 2016 election process had been. We watched debates of previous elections and found them to be dramatically different than this year’s debates. We discussed the biographies of the candidates and noted how dramatically different they were.

Throughout all of our conversations, I had been cautious to never share my own political leanings. After having a high school teacher who constantly expounded on his own political views, influencing young future voters, I’ve vowed to never use my influential position as a teacher to further my own agenda. My students asked again and again who I was voting for and though they eventually guessed my political leanings (Waldorf schools are not terribly diverse ideological communities) I never confirmed their suspicions.

As I watched the results roll in that night, I was filled with shock and concern for our country. And, as usual, my mind quickly turned to my students. As I thought about them, my own children and the implications of this election . . .

I felt overwhelmed by my own emotions.

I felt irresponsible and ashamed of the world that was being handed off to them.

I felt incapable of instilling them with confidence that the world is a good place.

These are things I know to be my job as their teacher and I had never before felt so incapable. As I went to bed Tuesday night, shortly after the news of our president-elect was announced, pushing aside tears and worry, I considered my options for the next day’s lesson.

Face it. Head on.

I could let the students come into the room and vent. They could share their reactions. They could discuss all of the things they heard as they watched the results with their parents the night before.

Perhaps this approach could help us to understand the situation better. We could discuss the electoral college and consider the complexities of doing away with this system. We could investigate and analyze all of the circumstances that brought us to this result. Maybe if we processed it we could get out all of the hard feelings and come out the other side with some renewed hope in what our new president-elect could do to benefit our country.

Since they were 8th graders, I thought my students might be able to handle this kind of discussion, and with some confident coaxing, we could end up feeling good at the end of the conversation. I would follow their lead, but know that I needed to strongly guide the conversation to end up at a reassuring place.

After considering this approach for a time, I decided that emotions were just too high to allow for this kind of discussion. I knew there would be students who felt so shaken they would feel uncomfortable showing that emotion. And, though I am usually a fan of allowing for difficult conversations and complex emotions, I worried that my own emotional state would be unable to manage, navigate and guide the conversation in a healthy way.

Go on. Life as usual.

Sometimes carrying on is just the right thing to do. In fact, I can’t tell you how many times my classroom has been my safe haven.

When life is topsy-turvy and emotions are running high, the classroom is a great place to be. The steady, reassuring environment of my classroom has seen me through a difficult divorce, the death of my father and family health crises. Children live so strongly in the moment, there is just no room for the confusing events of last night or the fearful wonderings about the future.

School, with its safe, consistent rhythm, is a comfortable place to be. At school, we can forget about all of the worries of the world and immerse ourselves in the joy of learning, in the moment, with our classmates.

If my students had been any younger, this would have been, without a doubt, the approach I would have taken. But, given the amount of time we had spent studying American government and learning about the election process, it didn’t feel right. It actually felt a bit disingenuous to ignore the results and their reactions.

What I did.

When it came down to it, I followed my intuition in the moment and it ended up being just the right thing.

Hillary Clinton was due to speak right when the students were arriving. I set up an overhead projector streaming the news commentary and as the students arrived they settled in and watched. By the time Hillary Clinton appeared, the entire class had arrived.

We watched her concession speech together in silence. Then, we knew that after a short break, President Obama was coming on to speak. We used the opportunity to go for a walk around the neighborhood. The students talked to each other as we walked, sharing their reactions to the news and what they thought would happen next. By the end of the walk, they were relating with each other like they always have — discussing teenage topics, laughing and enjoying each others’ company.

We came back to the classroom in time to watch Obama’s speech and observe, in action, the model that we learned George Washington created — the peaceful transfer of power. We saw that, even though we had questions, many adults had questions, and, we guessed, even our president had questions, President Obama talked about how our president-elect would be welcomed into the White House. 

At the end of Obama’s speech, we turned off the broadcasting and I stood in front of them.

I looked at them full of the understanding that I was talking to the future.

I looked at them suddenly filled with hope and confidence that these were the people who would care for our world moving forward.

Though their education and daily care has been trustingly placed in my hands, I suddenly realized how willing I was to place my future in theirs.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I wanted to inspire them, fill them with hope and let them know that everything was going to be okay. I also wanted them to know how powerful they are.

I wanted the girls to know that though Hillary Clinton may not be the first woman president, one of them could be.

I wanted the boys to know that every day I see them stand up for what they believe to be true, and that they should continue to do so, because it really does matter.

I wanted all of them to know that they are powerful, important and they should not despair. I told them,

The difference between disappointment and despair is action.

As I spoke to them my voice shook with emotion. I worried that I was inappropriately showing my own biases and judgments. I worried that seeing their teacher so full of emotion would be unsettling and disconcerting. When I finished talking, my words felt woefully inadequate. The usually happily boisterous and social 8th graders were silent and intent.

We stood for our closing verse and I asked the students to speak it “with their whole hearts.”

May wisdom shine through me

May love glow in me

May strength penetrate me

That in me may arise

A helper for humanity

A servant of sacred things

Selfless and true.

In the following days, we just worked.

We dug in and got things done, working through our disappointment with action. Our American Revolutions block continued with the stories of the Battle of Yorktown and Benjamin Franklin. The students worked on their election projects. And on Monday the entire middle school went out for a service day and hike in our local park.

The day after the election I came to school and found an envelope on my desk. I opened it and this is what was inside.

This letter is just what I needed.

I feel so proud and hopeful being the teacher of these students. This work is such a blessing.

It was a hard, good week.

The post A Post-Election Lesson in the 8th Grade appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I think I love Waldorf history more than any other aspect of the curriculum. My experience is that every step of the way, the Waldorf history curriculum so perfectly meets the developmental stage of the child, and in fact, we can look to the history curriculum for greater clarity and understanding of the child at each age.

This is certainly true for the 8th grade history curriculum, which is all about Revolutions. The 8th grader is ready to take everything that he or she has learned and completely turn it around and use it to act upon the world. The image that comes to mind is this class of 8th graders forming their inwardly facing circle that they’ve been forming since the first day of first grade, and then turning around. They’re still a circle. They still learn and grow together, but now they are looking out into the world and feeling poised to use everything they have learned to make their mark.

Waldorf 8th Grade History

During this election year, the 8th graders are also feeling quite political and opinionated. We’ve had some pretty good discussions, but I have been a bit disappointed that this year’s election isn’t quite the model of civil discourse that I would like to present them with. One day last week we did a survey of a couple of different debates — we watched Obama-McCain and Obama-Romney, and then we watched Clinton-Trump — and all of the students observed the difference in the level of respect the candidates seemed to have for one another.

Election Project

This exercise set the stage for an assignment that I gave the students that will allow them to learn about American History by studying different elections. I’m really excited about it!

For this assignment, they’re working with a partner and each group has chosen an election. I gave them some suggestions of interesting elections to choose from, but they were so inspired, they immediately went home and started their own research. There were several students who wanted to study the Bush-Gore election and the Nixon-Kennedy election, but I didn’t allow repeats so that we could get a nice survey of American history via this project. I told the students that if there were several people who wanted a particular election, I would award it to the group that had gathered the most resources and done the most research. Many of them found this extremely motivating and I was astonished to see stacks of books, print-outs and even a binder full of information with a nicely illustrated cover the day after the assignment was given! In the end, we got a nicely diverse group of elections.

The assignment has several components:

• A summary of the election, including a discussion of 3-4 of the major issues and the candidates different stances on those issues.
• A biography of one of the candidates (one partner does one, the other does the other candidate)
• A campaign poster (and other campaign material, if desired)
• A portrait of the candidate
• A map of the United States showing the results of the election in blue and red.
• A scripted debate with at least 5 questions and written responses. We’ll hold the debates at an evening presentation that parents and siblings will attend. Because I have so many students, we’ll divide them up into 2-3 groups and hold the debates in 2-3 classrooms. Audience members will give feedback that I’ll use to evaluate their work on the project.

If you’d like a pdf download of the assignment, I’m happy to share it. Just fill out the email form below and I’ll send it along to you. This form will also get you on my updates list (I update just a couple of times each month.)

Other than this project, we are diving right into history and I’m having fun telling stories. I find that history blocks require an enormous amount of preparation! I’ve been spending 30-45 minutes in every lesson delivering content — sometimes it feels like a story, other times it feels like a college lecture. Either way, each evening I spend at least an hour preparing just the new content portion of the lesson.

This is going to be a writing-heavy block and I really want to use it as an opportunity to give the students some more instruction and feedback on their writing. There is a wide range of style and ability in the class when it comes to writing, and they could all use some stronger guidance, which is what they’ll get in this block. Last year I started scoring assignments and I’ll continue to do that this year. In this block the writing assignments will be weighted more heavily.

So, what is the content of this history block?

I struggled a bit in putting together the block outline, recognizing that though I wanted to stay within the theme of Revolutions, I also wanted to keep all of the gaps filled in. History is a continuum, of course. We left off last year at Martin Luther and the beginning of the Reformation, so I needed to take a little bit of time to elaborate on the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, including the biographies of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

After facing this challenge, I strongly recommend covering these topics (through the Spanish Armada) in 7th grade. So, we took a quick 3 days to cover those things and now have moved on. Here’s a basic outline (of course the first week is more thoroughly mapped out than the rest of the block, perhaps I’ll update as my planning gets more specific.)

Week 1

• Monday — review Martin Luther, biography of Henry VIII, the Reformation
• Tuesday — biography of Elizabeth I, the Counter-Reformation
• Wednesday — the Spanish Armada, conditions in England that led to colonization, the lost colony of Roanoke
• Thursday — The London Company, Plymouth Company
• Friday — no new content, field trip

Week 2

Colonial America

Week 3

The American Revolution

Week 4

The French Revolution

My primary resource for this block is an ancient set of books I found at our school called American Heritage: New Illustrated History of the United States. I’m a sucker for those old books. Than language in them is sweet and story-like — very different than the sound-bite, short attention span style of more contemporary books. I have also watched some videos to gain a better feeling sense of the time. Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett and the John Adams miniseries on HBO are especially great for adult preparation (definitely not for student viewing.)

In our next history block, I plan to cover the Industrial Revolution and American History through the Civil War. Finally, I’ll have a short block at the end of the year to talk about civil rights, the technological revolution and more current events. Some teachers put a strong emphasis on covering history right through modern day in 8th grade, but I find that task pretty monumental. Instead I’m choosing to stay with the theme of Revolutions and bring in some of the other topics (World War I and II, for example) through class readers.

Current Work

This week my students are working on portraits of Elizabeth I and they’ll receive a composition assignment about Roanoke. I’ll share some photos of their work as it comes in. I’ve been so busy with my prep work, I don’t even have a chalkboard image to share. This weekend a map of the colonies and a Join or Die flag will go up, though.

Some of my 8th graders shared with me that they are reading my blog, enjoying it and even using it as a chance to keep track of what is coming next. Clever students! Hi guys, should I give bonus points for leaving a comment?

The post Waldorf 8th Grade History appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

This year I’m even more motivated for a couple of reasons.

• I’m teaching modern American history during an election year.
• I may be able to incorporate the hit Broadway musical Hamilton into my curriculum!

I’m so excited to think about how engaged my students are going to be with the completely modern and current curriculum that they’ll be facing next year!

Towards that end, I’ve already started doing a little curriculum research.

Hamilton History Lesson

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda is at the very tippy-top of my summer reading list. I hit that Amazon One-Click button so fast it made my head spin!

Of course, I also had to get the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the musical (am I the last person on earth to purchase this album?)

The other book I’ll be reading this summer is I Am Malala. This will be one of our 8th grade class readers and I am actually going to see Malala speak in Seattle in July.

So many great books out there! And I can justify reading all of them as curriculum preparation!

What are you reading this summer? Let me know in the comments!

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I’m using one of my favorite resources to teach this block — The World of Walls by Polly Schoyer Brooks. It’s a great book full of Middle Ages biographies, but it is long out of print and sells for $1700 on Amazon (makes me wonder if I should sell my copy!) If you can somehow get your hands on a copy of this book, grab it! Update! It is available (not in the edition I own, but still, the stories are great!) Check out this Amazon link to get it!

This week we learned about St. Benedict and Gregory the Great. Next week we’re on to Charlemagne and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Good stuff!

We’re also in the midst of our play — Robin Hood. We don’t have a dedicated play block, which makes me a little nervous that we won’t have enough time to practice, but it will help us avoid losing focus with the spring. We have lots of activities ahead of us before the close of the year, but it promises to be good, fun stuff. I’ll do my best to keep you posted.

I’m also thinking a lot about 7th grade. It’s been a while since I taught that curriculum, but I’m up to the challenge and looking forward to entering the Renaissance with this vibrant group! Our team of middle school teachers is coming together to create a really exciting, enriching middle school experience that promises to bring a fresh, modern perspective to the Waldorf middle school. Creative juices are flowing!

The post Waldorf Sixth Grade Middle Ages appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

This time our school had an open house, which gave me the perfect opportunity to camp out in my classroom and get ready for the next block

On Monday we start our Medieval History block.

I’m starting off the block by finishing up the end of Rome. I had planned on telling the biography of Jesus during our Geometry block, but for various reasons, that didn’t happen. So, this is what I’m looking at for week one . . .

• Monday — biography of Jesus
• Tuesday — Constantine (see the drawing above)
• Wednesday — fall of Rome
• Thursday — biography of Muhammad
• Friday — biography of Muhammad

In my mind, there are two different parts of the Middle Ages block.

1. What happens in Europe following the fall of Rome.
2. What happens in the rest of the world during this period.

In my training at Rudolf Steiner College, they recommended moving into the European picture following the fall of Rome. I’ve decided to use the arrival of the Dark Ages in Europe as an opportunity to move to another part of the world. It’s sort of like, “While Europe was asleep in the Dark Ages, there were things happening in the rest of the world.”

Waldorf Sixth Grade Islam

Taking a look at the rise of Islam is the perfect thing to do at this time. We’ve had a break from history, we’re feeling a bit detached from the Romans and we’re overdue for examining other cultures and the rest of the world. Due to the constitution of my class this time around, I am giving particular thoughtfulness to our study of Islam. I’ve really enjoyed the research and there are some fantastic resources out there.

• Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet is a great PBS video that is available on YouTube and elsewhere. I remember watching this video the first time I taught this block and it is just as good now as it was then.
• Muhammad by Marilyn Tower Oliver is a basic book about the life of Muhammad from the library. You can probably find a basic book about the life of Muhammad from your own public library in the juvenile section.
• Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time is a great book by Karen Armstrong. It is completely digestible and gives a richer picture than what you get in books from the kids’ section of the library. This book is an update of her book, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. I am always hesitant to rely on resources from the adult section of the library (a week’s worth of reading yields two days’ worth of main lesson content) but for this topic I want to be thorough and I’m enjoying the reading.
• Islam: A Short History is another good one from Karen Armstrong.

I plan on spending about a week and a half on Islam this time around. In addition to the life of Muhammad we’ll cover . . .

• The Five Pillars of Islam
• The Four Rightly Guided Caliphs
• The schism between Suni and Shia
• Stories from Arabian Nights

In addition to main lesson content, with my last class we visited a mosque and this time around we have an opportunity to have an Islamic calligrapher come teach the class. At Rudolf Steiner College it was recommended to explore Islamic calligraphy after learning English calligraphy as part of the European portion of the Middle Ages block, but I plan to take advantage of this opportunity anyway.

Following our Islamic studies, I plan to spend a few days studying medieval Japan, particularly the life of a Samurai, and the biographies of Miyamoto Musashi and the poet Basho.

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