My Heroine’s Journey
I’ve been enamored with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey analysis since I read The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). I love rooting for the hero as they leave their ordinary world and descend into the extraordinary, overcoming obstacles and ordeals to once again return with the prized elixir or boon. Back in April, 2020, I decided to write a personal narrative blog post detailing my quest to be a teacher. I always felt a lure toward the Hero’s Journey. The structure is the skeleton embedded within some of my favorite books, movies, and TV shows (Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, The Iliad, Odysseus, Avatar). Even some of my favorite comic book characters have their own monomyth journey (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman). I wanted to catalog my personal stories, from my pre-service teaching experiences throughout my twenty-year career. I wanted to show how at different parts of my life, I was hitting the major plot beats of the Hero’s Journey (Call to Adventure, Withdrawal, Return, etc.).
For a while, my writing progressed. I noticed patterns in my teacher’s narrative. I was telling a decent story using the monomyth framework. I wrote about my mentors and how they helped me cross into the public education threshold. I was documenting my quest to be a teacher trying to disrupt public education along the way. I tried to keep writing, but the more I wrote, the more stuck I felt. I was rambling; not telling a coherent story. My writing wasn’t moving forward.
Then my writing stopped.
I got stuck and never crossed the threshold. Each time I would reread my old blog posts, something didn’t seem right. It was like I was forcing something to happen and I couldn’t figure out why the words stopped flowing.
Then a global pandemic hit.
Everything stopped. I stayed home and struggled to navigate this terrifying airborne virus. After a month of quarantine, I decided to return to the classroom. I had taken a six-year hiatus to be an instructional coach, but I didn’t know what that would look like now that we were dealing with a global pandemic. Staying home gave me an opportunity to reevaluate my mission as a public educator: mentoring students and helping them find their voices in order to change schools and society. The unspoken, social contract of public education had been disrupted and I wanted to be in the classroom with students so that I could help them redesign the system to be just and equitable for all.
In August, 2020, I started documenting my return to the classroom during the pandemic. It was brutal. That first year back was the most challenging of my career. With the craziness of teaching, I abandoned my Hero’s Journey blog posts and wrote to keep myself grounded during a very difficult school year.
Still, something has been nagging at me to return to those older blog posts. I wanted to get back on my Hero’s Journey, but a lot has changed since I started. The old path seemed stale.
Enter Gail Carriger. I read her book, The Heroine’s Journey (2020) and things started clicking again. I started making connections to my teacher’s journey and realized that I had been wrong this whole time. I never was on a hero’s journey; I was on a heroine’s journey.
For those of you unfamiliar with this cycle, I highly recommend Carriger’s book. Here is a quick list of the major plot beats of the Heroine’s Journey.
I started reading the Greek myths of Demeter and Inanna and the Egyptian myth of Isis. I reread Twilight and Harry Potter. I lectured anyone that in fact, Harry was on a heroine’s journey, not a hero’s journey. I gained a deeper appreciation for romance and young adult literature. I even rewatched some romantic comedies through this new lens. I couldn’t believe that this separate narrative structure existed and I never found it before. The realizations came quickly: teachers are heroines, not heroes. Whereas the hero must go on his/her journey alone, defeating an enemy, heroines seek and receive assistance along the way. Instead of a hero’s self-reliance, a heroine’s strength lies in companions and allies. The Heroine’s Journey emphasizes networking, connection, asking for help, solidarity and unity, giving aid to others, and being successful by sharing their achievements.
As a male teacher, I can see why I was so drawn to the Hero’s Journey. With an emphasis on individuality, solo achievement, revenge, not asking for help, and vanquishing the enemy, I liked the Hero’s Journey because that is how I was taught to be a man. Toxic masculinity pervaded my childhood and I learned early on to categorize men and women in binary archetypes. Men are strong heroes, women are weak seductresses. Men are capable of saving the world on their own and their women will be there to welcome them at home when they return.
As a white, male teacher, my upbringing exasperated my white knight complex. I wanted to save all of the disenfranchised and marginalized children from the big, bad racist system called public education. I worked primarily with women and looking back on those first years as a teacher, I thought that my way of teaching was better because of my heroic qualities. I was reticent in asking for help and I wanted to do everything on my own. I was raised to be a Byronic hero just like Wolverine or Batman.
Many called the early months of the pandemic the “Great Pause.” Everything shut down: schools, work, entertainment, restaurants. Every day felt like a Sunday. I was grateful to still have a job during those months, so I was able to just sit. I read. I wrote. I thought. I asked myself a lot of questions: What type of teacher am I? Do I still want to be a teacher? What would another career option look like? Where am I of most value? To my family? To my community? To public education? Where can I have the largest impact? Is change actually possible?
Many of these existential questions did not lead me to concrete answers. However, the act of thinking led me to better define my purpose. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years and in that time, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what kind of teacher I am. The “Great Pause” allowed me to deepen my self-understanding. Gail Carriger states, “We love the Hero’s Journey because it is about striving, conquering, and victorious power” (p. 270). Teachers strive to make a difference in their students’ lives. Teachers are part of a broken system that forces them to succeed against all odds. This is why the teacher-hero archetype exists (and why so many teachers quit). I’ve learned that teachers need each other. Teachers need connection. If educators are going to actually disrupt public education to create truly equitable learning experiences for all students, we can’t do it alone. We can’t go it alone. There is no boon that will fix the educational system. Carriger continues, “We love the Heroine’s Journey because it is about defeating adversity through connection and recognition of others’ abilities” (p. 170). Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. In fact, this is exactly what makes heroines throughout mythology and history enduring and strong. Heroines are empowered through the connections they make with others. Most importantly for me, these traits are not inherently feminine. In order to break the toxic binary of strong men and weak women, we need more stories that question this bias. Teaching, like storytelling, provides comfort and connection. Teaching creates community. At its core, teaching is about promoting unity through a shared love of knowledge. Just like we need to critically examine what it means to be male or female, we need to examine what it means to be strong versus weak. For teachers, this translates into questioning what it means to be successful. What does a successful teacher look like? What does a successful lesson look like? What does engagement look like? What does it mean if students are not engaged? Is this a failed lesson? Is this the sign of a weak teacher?
I’m deep down the Heroine’s Journey rabbit hole. I see it everywhere just as I saw the Hero’s Journey when I first discovered it. In terms of storytelling, there is value in both. Readers who love their Hero’s Journeys are looking for excitement through fast-paced, rough and tough plots. Readers who love their Heroine’s Journeys are looking for comfort through heartwarming connection. For me as an educator who designs learning experiences for students, the value in examining these journeys is in defining success and understanding my definition may be (and is often) at odds with others. Carriger explains that in storytelling, “if success is defined by a struggle for rulership or power, a battle for dominance, and a redefining of superiority, then it is a Hero’s Journey” (p. 194). This is not the type of classroom I want. I am not looking to dominate over my students in order to break them to my will. I am not trying to force students to learn. You can’t force anyone to learn anything. All you can do is create a safe environment for students to want to learn for themselves. Carriger states, “if success is defined by accomplishing an action together, by good humor and happiness, by ending up as a group or in an organized operation, then the chassis is the Heroine’s Journey” (p. 194). This is my classroom! We are learning together. We are struggling together. We are a surrogate family. Teachers are more like heroines because most of us have the same goal for students, just different approaches. When I have had conflicts with teammates in the past, most likely it is because we have conflicting goals.
So, where am I currently on the Heroine’s Journey? I think I am going to spend some time rethinking about my journey to become an educator and see if I hit any of the beats. I have a feeling that my path is tied to the Heroine’s Journey more than it ever was to the Hero’s Journey.
