Teaching the Journey of the Hero in High School English

I can’t remember exactly when I learned about the 12 steps in the journey of the hero, but I do remember that I knew immediately that I needed to share it with my students and I have been including lessons on the Hero’s Journey ever since.

Teaching the Hero's Journey in High School English. 5 ways to introduce the journey of the hero and to practice analysis. Makes the perfect foundation for teaching your students about archetypal criticism.

Why the Journey of the Hero Matters

Archetype literary criticism is one of the foundations of teaching students to write about and analyze texts. And understanding the 12 steps of the hero’s journey is integral to this understanding. Joseph Campbell’s concept of the mono myth can help students to make predictions and see other archetypal patterns.

Once students can see the patterns of the journey of the hero, they can begin to apply the patterns to the works they are reading. Additionally, they start to look for other archetypal patterns like weather, setting, characters and more.

Students can explore the hero’s journey through classical stories like The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet to more contemporary novels like Life of Pi. The key is to get students to not only see the journey of the hero in action, but also to see how this journey impacts the text as a whole.

But first they need to recognize both the 12 steps of the hero’s journey and common literary archetypes.

Grab your free hero’s journey pdf.

Teaching Archetypes in Literature

Archetypal Criticism Anchor Charts and Task Cards

Any time, I present students with a new difficult concept, I like to begin with Anchor Chart Notes. Using notebook sized anchor charts provides students with the foundations they need to explore texts. Following this up with task cards is a great way for students to practice.

Archetype Web Quest

This one takes some work on the front end, but the reward is beautiful presentations. Assign small student groups (pairs or triads) a specific archetype. I usually use character archetypes. Then have students research the archetype to find the characteristics of this archetype along with examples (which should be from both literature that they have in common and from media). Then they present. Students love to go all out on these presentation because they can embed video links and create fabulous collages.

Use a Choice Board to Teach or Practice Archetypal Criticism

Create a choice board of archetypes you want your students to be familiar with. Then send them to examples in poetry, short stories, video clips and more. They can take notes to develop the characteristics of the archetype or you can provide them with the characteristics and ask them to do analysis based on the archetype.

You could do the same with the hero’s journey. Have students look for specific parts of the journey in the texts you have linked. They can then examine how that part of the journey links to the plot structures like conflict, climax or denouement.

Use Picture Books to Practice Archetypal Criticism

Teaching the journey of the hero through picture books, especially wordless picture books, is a great way for students to quickly see the 12 steps of the hero’s journey. Picture books are generally in the neighborhood of 50 pages, so students can quickly see the evolution of the hero’s journey. For more, check out this post.

Additionally, picture books can be a great place to explore other archetypes because authors and illustrators rely heavily on them.

Use Video to Explore the Journey of the Hero

Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces has been integral in the creation of feature length movies. George Lucas read it before he wrote the first Star Wars movie in the late 70s. So it is is no coincidence that movies and shorts are a great place to introduce the hero’s journey to students.

You can take the time to watch the videos or just have them complete a chart based on memory from a movie they know well. The can use Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks or any other animated movie they watched a million times when they were younger.

The Journey of the Hero in the Everyday

Students love the journey of the hero because they can immediately see it in the texts they are consuming on a daily basis. Just think about all those Cinderella story movies that you have seen. It’s all there. Don’t forget to grab your free Journey of the Hero PDF.