Twin Cities teacher helping students connect literature to outdoor skills

Inside Saint Thomas Academy, a boys high school in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, students are studying English Literature. But it's what happens outside the classroom where their connections to the material grow.

Luke Marks is teaching an elective course called "Words of the Wild," where storylines connect to fishing lines, and fiction meets fire building.

The class was developed four years ago by Marks, a Saint Thomas alum who's currently the dean of students, as well as an English teacher.

"The very first day of this class in balmy Minnesota is it's winter, we read 'To Build A Fire' by Jack London, where the protagonist famously is not able to survive the elements because of its dire cold," Marks said. "I essentially challenge them, so, 'OK, tomorrow we're going to go outside and do the same thing, bundle up.' And it's forced empathy with what they're reading. The other thing I like to see is teamwork, camaraderie."

And that challenge begins with a spark.

"When we started doing this, it was really cold, really windy. There was 2 feet of snow on the ground, so when we started doing that we just really had to maintain a distance from the wind," said sophomore Grant Keeley.  

"The first time when we were doing it it was like negative 5 degrees out and we could not get it started," said sophomore Shannon Joyce.

"First class, no one got it," Keeley said.

Failure, at first, is part of the curriculum.

"We're kind of doing the same things he's doing outside, you know, getting outside, having the bare minimum of things," said sophomore Gavin Curran.

What they read they now get a chance to feel. The struggle against nature is no longer confined to the page.

"Part of this class is connecting what feels abstract and to something that feels real," Marks said.

Somewhere between the lines of a novel and the glow of a hard-earned fire, something else takes hold.

"If you give kids responsibility and you put kids in a situation that requires a lot of them, they meet it," Marks said.

In a class where survival stories are lived, and not just read, these boys aren't just learning literature — they're discovering it.