Recent Blog Posts
Teaching Nolan’s The Odyssey: Not Whether to Show It, but Why
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — one of the most talked-about releases of the year — takes enormous liberties with Homer, so does it belong in a serious unit on the poem? The real question, I think, isn’t whether to show it, but why. Here’s the case for what this beautiful, unfaithful film can do in the classroom.
Why Teach To Kill a Mockingbird: A Novel About Learning to See Each Other
Beyond its themes and its place in the canon, To Kill a Mockingbird teaches something rarer: how to truly know another person — by first being willing to love them. A literature teacher’s case for why the novel is still worth reading, and worth teaching, and how to give it the depth it deserves.
Waiting in To Kill a Mockingbird: Why the Slow First Half Is Already the Heart of the Book
We tend to rush students toward the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. But the slow first half is where the novel does its quietest work — teaching us to misjudge Boo Radley before we’re asked to judge Tom Robinson. A teacher’s reading of waiting, with ideas for the classroom.
Atticus Finch’s Closing Argument: A Teacher’s Guide to Chapter 20 of To Kill a Mockingbird
Atticus Finch’s closing argument works as a legal argument, a study in rhetoric, a moral challenge, and a historical document — all at once. Here is how I read it, and what I have found most productive for teaching it.
Teaching East of Eden in High School: Are We Free to Choose Who We Become?
Steinbeck called it his most ambitious novel. At over 600 pages, with a cast of characters spanning two generations, East of Eden is not an easy text to teach. This guide explains why it belongs in your high school classroom anyway — and how to make it work.
Lee in J. Steinbeck’s East of Eden: The Wisdom of the Margins
In East of Eden, Lee speaks broken English by choice, studies Hebrew for fifteen
years, and raises two boys who are not his own. Steinbeck called him a better man
than himself. This article explores why.
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