Greek mythology has always held a special place in my life. In Grade 3 at a scholastic book fair, I discovered the Usborne book, “Greek Myths for Young Children” and, moments after picking it off the shelf, I was utterly enthralled in its pages. Apart from the bold and bright images of dragons, cyclops, and gods, the tales of derring-do and justice served (or not served) were all fuel for my 8-year-old imagination. I took that book with me everywhere (much to my parents’ chagrin), making up my own myths for my siblings and I to act out wherein we could be heroes and adventurers just like Perseus, Psyche, or Heracles.

            Now that I’m a teacher, I like to bring Greek mythology into the classroom as well and, interestingly enough, I’ve found the vast majority of my students have a similar response to these stories as I did. These are students who often respond negatively to the prospect of reading and writing due to the difficulty it poses for them, but when it comes to hearing and telling these ancient stories from long-forgotten philosophers, they jump at the chance.

Maybe it’s partly to do with cultural osmosis. After all, who hasn’t heard of Medusa? The Minotaur? Heracles? Once curiosity has been peaked, it’s satisfying to get the full story. But I think it’s mostly to do with humans’ inherent need to share stories with one another. These ancient tales shock, engage, confuse, and terrify just as much as they did back in the Greek world. They have magic, violence, love, injustice, and victories aplenty and students love to hear more, to imagine themselves in the heroes’ shoes. How would they rescue Andromeda from the sea serpent? How would they navigate the Minotaur’s labyrinth?

The English language itself draws so much from Greek and Roman myths, not just semantically, but morphologically as well. As characters like Vulcan and Ceres appear, kids are astounded to hear these gods have lent their names to such things as volcanoes and cereal. Greek stories are quite literally the foundation upon which we speak, with which we concoct new ideas, with which we continue to share words with one another. It’s a beautiful thread that winds its way through human history, the simple act of telling a story.

Despite their struggles with dyslexia and dysgraphia, my students all have their own stories to tell. It’s taken me a while, but perhaps I’ve realized that the characters I connected with most in the Greek myths of my youth were the storytellers themselves, the ones bold enough to share their words and fortunate enough to have those words reach our ears centuries into the future. I think this is the case for my students as well. Telling stories is one of the most natural human experiences. And children, dyslexic or not, are often eagerly waiting for their chance to share theirs.