This teaching blog is shaped by a clear conviction: the books and stories we choose for our students matter deeply. Every text, story, and film I write about is the result of a personal and thoughtful choice — selected from what I have personally read, studied, loved, and found significant, profound, and enduring.
Here you will find reflections, analyses, and ideas for middle and high school classrooms. Analysis becomes discovery, and stories become encounters. They are not chosen simply because they fit a syllabus; they are rich in beauty, depth, and human insight — and students deserve what is most beautiful, most challenging, and most significant in storytelling. This teaching blog is where that search begins.
Latest Posts
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Teaching East of Eden in High School: Are We Free to Choose Who We Become?
Read more: 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.
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Lee in J. Steinbeck’s East of Eden: The Wisdom of the Margins
Read more: Lee in J. Steinbeck’s East of Eden: The Wisdom of the MarginsIn 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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Cathy Ames and the Mystery of Evil: Understanding One of Literature’s Most Unsettling Characters
Read more: Cathy Ames and the Mystery of Evil: Understanding One of Literature’s Most Unsettling CharactersCathy Ames does not invite easy interpretations. In East of Eden, she stands as one of Steinbeck’s most unsettling creations—resisting explanation while quietly reshaping the novel’s moral landscape. This reflection explores her role as a figure of evil, illusion, and moral tension, offering educators a space to engage with one of literature’s most challenging characters.
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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Allegory: Understanding C.S. Lewis’s Intent
Read more: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Allegory: Understanding C.S. Lewis’s IntentExplore whether The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a true allegory or a rich imaginative supposal by C.S. Lewis, and learn how this distinction can deepen students’ understanding of Aslan and the novel’s themes of redemption, sacrifice, and moral growth.
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The Magician’s Nephew and the Bible: An Intertextual Comparison
Read more: The Magician’s Nephew and the Bible: An Intertextual ComparisonWhen I read The Magician’s Nephew with my students, they almost always notice echoes of the biblical creation story — and they’re right. In this article I follow three of those echoes: the world sung into being, the naming of the creatures, and the choice in the walled garden — with the questions that open…
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Narnia Reading Order for the Classroom: Publication Order vs Chronological Order
Read more: Narnia Reading Order for the Classroom: Publication Order vs Chronological OrderIn The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis wrote the origins of Narnia—yet he wrote them last, five years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This article looks at what that “written later, set first” paradox means for the classroom, and at how the choice between publication and chronological order shapes the way students…