It takes a certain kind of person to stay at school for 17 hours to read a 3,000-year-old, 400-page poem with nearly 60 classmates.
“This is a smart kid thing to do,” Baldwin High School English teacher Keith Harrison said. “You have to be smart and adventurous and I think even a little bit crazy to want to do it.”
For the second year, freshmen taking Baldwin High School's Honors English 9 course stayed up all night at the school on Friday to read and discuss “The Odyssey” — an ancient Greek poem written by Homer — with their peers.
The Odyssey all-nighter was voluntary for the nearly 100 students taking the class this year. Nearly 60 chose to participate.
All students in the class are given a month to read the 24-chapter poem and are given weekly quizzes and a final test on the book.
“It's a tough, tough book,” Harrison said.
Two and a half years ago, while researching new ways to teach “The Odyssey” to students, Harrison found a New York Times story from 10 years ago about a school that held an all-night event, where about two dozen students read the poem together.
“I thought, you know what, ‘I'm a night owl, I could do that,'” Harrison said. “High school kids, they like being up late and staying in school after hours.”
Administrators in Baldwin-Whitehall were receptive to the idea, and even stopped by to spend parts of the night with the students, who signed up to read portions of the book aloud with their peers.
Fueled by pizza, pop and donuts, the students try to stay awake for most of the night.
Around 11 p.m. their attitude is often that “Sleep is for losers,” Harrison said. By 2 or 3 a.m., that tune has changed a bit.
Music, including songs whose origins were derived from “The Odyssey,” and “goofy songs” like Kiss' “Rock ‘n Roll All Night” and One Direction's “Up All Night,” helped to pick up the pace in the room.
A bell, added this year, rang every time certain repetitive phrases were used in the book to keep the students on their toes.
Students also Tweeted their thoughts throughout the night on the @OdysseyAllNight Twitter account, or by using the hashtag #OdysseyAllNighter.
Some shared photos of their reliance on Mountain Dew to keep them awake. Others Tweeted their thoughts on the book, like, “Why couldn't their names have been Sue and Bob?”
Harrison is assisted with the help of 10 parent chaperones, some of whom took shifts during the overnight hours.
“Everyone assumes that I'm a huge fan of “The Odyssey.” Not really,” he said. “I am a huge fan of how important it is in our culture.”
“The Odyssey's” influences can be seen across western civilization, in movies, like “Finding Nemo,” “Forest Gump,” “The Wizard of Oz,” various music and literatures and even U.S. foreign policy.
“It's not a dead piece,” Harrison said. “It's something that's everywhere.”
Preparation for the night took about a month, where students researched the book.
Students also raised $140 for the Relay For Life scheduled for June 20 at Baldwin High School.
