The sophomore class completed their first block of the school year studying the Ancient Greeks, beginning with the earliest Bronze Age cultures of the Greek islands, the Minoans, and continuing to the Mycenaean of Agamemnon and Helen of Troy fame. We traveled from those early cultures through the Trojan War and the collapse of the Bronze Age, through the Greek Dark Age to the early Archaic Period and the rise of the city-states. We looked closely at the Polis, while focusing on the two most famous city-states: Sparta and Athens. In the middle of the block we journeyed to Washington DC to draw connections of the ancient forms of Greek government, architecture, monuments, art and theater with the modern. We ended our journey through the ancient Greeks with a lively discussion on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, but the students continued their study of the Greeks with a week-long exploration of the Odyssey with Ms. Bedell.