Nyansa Classical Community Year One Literature Teacher’s Guide

＂The humanities and liberal arts nourish youth and delight old age; they embellish good times and offer refuge and consolation in bad ones; they are charming in private without impeding public efforts; they are with us whenever we are up at night, travel, or enjoying leisure.＂ -- Cicero Defense of the Poet Archias

When students have classic literature as part of the furniture of their minds, it expands their sense of the world and what is possible. Black intellectuals such as Fredrick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley wrote about how being able to read expanded their outlook - how taking literature in took them out of their limited circumstances. Nyansa supports the formation of our students by teaching them great stories on great themes that are central to what it means to be human. This sort of education is especially critical for those who are disadvantaged. Expanding your universe and strengthening your moral grounding are the surest paths to self-determination.

Nyansa Classical Community has developed various curricula using classical literature. This Year One Literature Teacher’s Guide is designed to teach students classic Greek Mythology. The stories are rewritten for elementary students. These classic stories have been part of our cultural fabric for centuries. Greek Mythology is considered a staple of classical education. As we read these myths, they challenge us to reflect on eternal human questions of freedom, belonging, and virtue.

Our Teacher’s Guide contains four days of lessons. Each lesson is designed to help your student engage with the stories and use their imagination. The lesson plans build habits of attention, vocabulary, memorization, writing skills, and more.

This Year One Literature Teacher’s Guide is made to work alongside Nyansa’s Year One Literature Workbook. You can also purchase our Greek Mythology Stories picture book. The literature curriculum is one part of our Nyansa curricula, which includes Latin Skills, Bible, and Art. These are all available for purchase from nyansaclassicalcommunity.org.