The Course
Teaching Of Mice and Men can feel like walking a tightrope between heartbreak and heavy themes. You’re navigating questions of mercy, justice, friendship, and power—while helping students see that Steinbeck’s short novel isn’t simple at all. How do you make a 1930s ranch feel alive to 21st-century students? How do you guide them through topics like race, gender, and disability with honesty and care? And how do you balance moral complexity with practical classroom strategies without spending hours on prep?
Designed for students in a classroom setting, this course does the heavy lifting for you with two distinct video series: one built for students, offering engaging, chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, and another made for teachers, providing insight into key themes, moral questions, and discussion strategies that bring Steinbeck’s world to life. The student-facing videos unpack the novel’s ideas with clarity, humor, and empathy, while the teacher-facing videos help you structure lessons, frame difficult conversations, and lead students through authentic, text-based inquiry.
Whether you’re teaching Of Mice and Men for the first time or looking to re-energize a classic unit, this course gives you the tools, structure, and confidence to make Steinbeck’s novel as urgent, humane, and unforgettable as it was meant to be.
The Unit
This unit helps teachers guide students through Of Mice and Men by focusing on what makes it timeless—questions of power, friendship, and justice. Instead of treating Steinbeck’s novel as a simple story, we explore it as a moral crossroads, where George’s loyalty, Lenny’s innocence, and Curley’s cruelty reveal what it means to be good in a world that isn’t. Teachers get a clear, ready-to-use structure, while students engage with Steinbeck’s themes of mercy, responsibility, and the American Dream gone sideways.
Across the unit, students examine real letters from the Great Depression, chat with philosophers through AI, and culminate in a Socratic seminar that wrestles with empathy, justice, and moral choice. With lesson plans, activities, and prompts that spark authentic discussion, this unit turns Of Mice and Men into a deep, relevant, and unforgettable exploration of what we owe one another.
See The Course
Download the Free Teaching Unit
From my classroom, to yours
