Building a Middle School English Curriculum

In this conversation, Craig May—a middle school English teacher at O’Hara Catholic School in Eugene, Oregon—shares how he’s spent the past fifteen years building a literature curriculum designed to form students’ imaginations as well as their reading skills. We talk about how great stories help students grapple with the deepest human questions, why literature can reveal not just what the world is but how we’re meant to live in it, and how teachers can choose texts that open students to truth, goodness, and beauty. Along the way we discuss teaching everything from George MacDonald and Tolkien to the original Little Mermaid, helping students recognize their own lives as part of a larger story, and why Christ himself chose stories—rather than lectures—as his primary way of teaching.