Our Star Wars curriculum includes teaching about the pivotal characters Darth Marcus and Luke Groundrunner. If you've not heard of them, they'll be featured prominently in Star Wars X or XI, one of those, when the franchise finally begins wrapping things up.
I've written about our Star Wars curriculum before. It is, like our entire curriculum, a product of the children themselves, which is, like our entire curriculum, a product of their interests. For the past couple years, Star Wars has been top-of-mind, even for children who have never seen the movies. Indeed,
most of the children have never seen the movies, so we largely cobble things together from what we glean from the popular culture, older siblings, parents, and our own imaginations.
Darth Marcus, as I tell the story, is the father of all the Darths and in the end he turns them all to the Light Side. Luke Groundrunner is Luke Skywalker's brother. There isn't much to distinguish the two other than their names. Some of the children have added their own bells and whistles to the legend. This is what I call goofing off with the kids,
or as Kurt Vonnegut puts it, "farting around," which is the reason we exist, "don't let anyone tell you different."
Lukas, now a grader, was among the first to be privileged with the Darth Marcus information. By this time, he's seen the movies and assures me that I'm wrong, the character does not exist, yet still, when he comes to visit the school, he holds his tongue unless pressed, much the way we adults do about Santa or the Easter Bunny. It's part of the fun to believe in Darth Marcus and, to a lesser degree, Luke Groundrunner.
Yesterday, a mother of a recent Woodland Park preschool grad posted on Facebook, quoting her daughter:
I cannot eat lunch right now. I'm watching the Star Wars channel and it's the movie Tom made. Eeeee! This is the scary part. Here comes Darth Marcus! (Screams while staring at the imaginary big screen TV) He is so bad and dangerous! Okay (walks to dining table) I can watch it from here. I made the TV higher up, but watch out. I might scream!
Are you listening George Lucas? Darth Marcus is a game changer.
This is the kind of stuff that makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning: being a part of this, these families, having the chance to live forever in the imaginative play of their children. And I do hope Darth Marcus lives forever, a secret only understood by us.
: )
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