Mayan Craft

I have long been fascinated by Mexican history, particularly its pre-Conquest history.  In fact, I was ever so close to becoming a History major in undergrad and focusing on Latin American history.  Alas, that was not the path I chose, however it definitely remains an area of interest for me.  As you may know, my husband is from Mexico and fortunately I have been able to visit there many times with him.  Whenever we go, I always do a bit of research and make him take me to the “zonas arqueológicas” or archeological zones.  One thing that you may not realize is that there are TONS!  Apart from the big famous ones like Chichén Itzá and Teotihuacán, there are a myriad of smaller or lesser known ones in cities and towns all over the country.  Two of my favorites are El Tepozteco in the tiny, charming town of Tepozlán, about 2 hours from Mexico City and El Tajín in my husband’s home state of Veracruz.  However, when it comes to truly spectacular architecture, the Mayan archeological zones in the Yucatán  really stand out.  So naturally, when it came time to design my mini-build lesson, I knew I wanted to focus on Mayan architecture.

In addition to teaching languages, I sometimes also teach Latin American and Iberian Studies courses, which are in English but focus on the history and cultures of the peoples of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal.  Though I have not taught the course, I envision my mini-build lesson being part of the LAIS 372 Indigenous Peoples of Latin America class.  Now as I have mentioned previously, I am not a gamer.  In fact whatever talent it takes to be good at video games, I think I severely lack.  In survival mode, I don’t think I lasted more than two Minecraft nights without being killed by spiders or zombies.  Prior to building the Pyramid for my lesson, I had really only built a few haphazard, rudimentary shelters.  This said, I watched several tutorials on pyramid construction and was off and running.  It took a  little over two hours in total to build.  Surprisingly, it didn’t really feel tedious, rather it was kind of relaxing.  I would get into this little building “zone” so to speak and actually enjoyed it.  While it wasn’t perfect and towards the end I realized my door calculations (I should have started with a two or four block door instead of a three block door) were a little off, it wasn’t bad.  In the end, I was quite pleased with how it turned out.  I think Minecraft is a very neat learning environment and I hope that I really do get to teach the LAIS 372 course one day and use Minecraft.