Our comprehensive guide to teaching the hero’s journey incorporates literature, film, writing, art, presentations, and personal reflection. Read More Order The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life has became a part of programs for schools and organizations in 47 states and eighteen foreign countries. Why do teachers find teaching the hero’s journey valuable? […]

Three Views on Transformation Plus “Teaching Transformation” from William Bridges Accomplishing something will often trigger a transition. Sometimes the result is what we hoped for and sometimes it isn’t, but in either case, the result comes about because achieving the result necessitates not only a situational shift (a change) but an inner redefinition. At the […]

Workshops, Seminars and In-Service Presentations Because the hero’s journey pattern is so adaptable, it can form the foundation for many kinds of workshops. The Basic Workshop presents the foundations for understanding and using the journey pattern in the classroom or in life. Other workshops are built on how the journey process expresses itself in different […]

The hero’s journey is the pattern of human experience. It’s in every story we encounter: in literature, film, myth and life. Because of its universality, the journey pattern gives your students a tool to better understand, interpret and analyze the stories they read and the challenges they live. The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature […]

The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life Benefits to Teaching the Hero’s Journey Pattern The Hero’s Journey forms a scaffold to aid comprehension and understanding. The journey’s framework gives students a generic structure to help them understand the story’s main elements (i.e., motivation, plot, conflict, and characterization). Then, by using the journey’s innate […]

The Hero’s Journey unit is the result of many years of planning, research and work, but our experience with the subject is far more extensive than that. We have been using elements from this unit since 1975 and have spent literally hundreds of hours creating, testing, revising, and polishing the material you see here. The […]

by Reg Harris Copyright © 2007 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me. Behind the Heroic Journey This hero’s […]

Articles and Essays (categorical listing) Education Educating creative citizens Educational metaphors dictate educational values Essay Writing as a Hero’s Journey Our Lives as Human Capital + Living Inauthentically Reading to remake the self Sacred power of metaphor Schema and the Hero’s Journey Teaching to the Child’s Story Texts must “decontextualize” themselves Trickster is the agent […]

(For a detailed description of the units, click here.) Ritual and the Rite of Passage: an introduction to the transformation as a foundation for studying the journey The Hero’s Journey: an introduction to the eight-stage hero’s journey pattern and its internal dynamics Gawain and the Green Knight: a retelling of the traditional legend to study […]

NOTE: This is an excerpt from our teacher’s guide, The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life (page 133). Copyright © 2007 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. This article may not be copied in whole or in part in any form without my written permission. For permission to use the article or excerpts […]

(These are the first five paragraphs of an article from The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life. This article is typical of the background information the guide provides for teachers. The full article explains the importance of ritual in creating meaning and introduces ideas teachers can use for discussion or writing. Click here […]

Excerpts from the Teacher’s Guide From time to time, I will post excerpts from the The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life. These excerpts will give you an idea of the depth and scope of the material in the guide and provide some insights into the journey process. Excerpt 1: Ritual and the […]

The Hero’s Journey Thought for the Month: November 2009 Here are some thoughts on myth and its function in creating wholeness. Myth, as discussed here, is the personal myth, narrative or story. Following the quotes is a excerpt from The Eternal Circle: A hermeneutic model of the heroic journey discussing the nature of personal myth […]

“Thought of the Week” for June 15, 1998 Our worldview gives meaning and direction …For most of us, a world view is a lived truth, something we just take for granted and seldom try to describe. Indeed, there is normally motivation to do so only if something goes wrong, if in some way our world […]