Christian Teacher of the Year: How this homeschool mom became award-winning lit teacher  

Susan Currier loves how her students react to classic literature – and how they often turn a discussion of the characters and storylines into one about gospel values.

“Some of the most gospel-centered conversations I’ve ever enjoyed have come through discussing books including Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my students,” writes the former fifth- and sixth-grade literature, grammar, writing and Latin teacher at Cypress Grove Academy in Mobile, Alabama.

“Through reading and discussing these stories, my students and I recognize sin and grow a disdain for it, just as we recognize virtue and long to cultivate it in our own lives.

“One of my greatest joys is hearing my students grow not only in their understanding of right from wrong, but more importantly in their love for what they ought to love, as they recognize characters’ actions and motivations, themes that speak to universal truths, conflicts that are part of the human struggle, and make comparisons to God’s truth.”

It’s this kind of masterly leadership – and getting the boys in class to eagerly read over the summer to see what happens to Anne of Green Gables – that makes Currier one of 12 instructors across the country named 2025 Christian Teacher of the Year by the Herzog Foundation, publisher of The Lion.

How the magic happens 

Perhaps surprisingly, Currier says the best gospel-centered class discussions inspired by literature happen organically – with students, rather than the teacher, putting the good news front and center. 

“That’s why I love to teach literature, the very best literature, the literature that keeps ending up on our list of classics and the great books,” she tells The Lion.

“As a teacher, I felt like the times when those discussions didn’t happen were when I went in with my agenda, and I went in with what I thought the right answer was, and I felt like maybe I was pointing out to the students the gospel connection.”

The magic actually happened when she stepped back and let the students take the lead, she says.

Currier’s approach is a concept made famous by British educator Charlotte Mason at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries – one that allows a teacher to maintain passive control while holding back and letting students steer the discussion.

“They are so capable of recognizing the true, good and the beautiful – sometimes by recognizing the vices in a character or a storyline, which helps them to see the virtue.

“And by sitting back, asking good questions, asking the right questions, and letting the kids get to the answers, oh my goodness, the gospel connections that happen when they get to form them themselves – that’s when it seeps into their bones.”

She may be biased, she laughs, but “I don’t think there’s any more powerful tool in the classroom than good literature. …

“The funnest part is the boys. When you don’t tell them that boys aren’t supposed to like Anne of Green Gables and they don’t know that that’s a common thought, they love her vivacity and her imagination and her carefree spirit.”

Anne of Green Gables and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are her favorite novels to teach – “walking through that wardrobe with the kids every year,” as she puts it.

“I cry at the end of the book every year, and it’s known at my school that Miss Susan’s gonna cry on the last page of the book. So I have to deliver – but it’s easy to deliver. Those are just powerful to teach. They’re very different in so many ways. But kids are drawn into them every single year.”

Where virtue can be found 

One look at many American classrooms and much of society today tells you that schools in general haven’t been teaching self-control and other virtues. But as a child of the 1980s and ’90s, when self-esteem and then character development danced around the fringes of virtue education, Currier is optimistic about the current trend in that direction, especially in Christian schools.

“I’m really encouraged. I feel like we’re starting to get to the real crux of what education is – which is, it’s human formation. It’s soul formation. We’ve been trying to get to it for a really long time.

“I’m encouraged about the direction that we’re heading, and I have been so privileged as a teacher who did grow up in the age of self-esteem to now get to have my own re-education as I’m teaching kids.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, this is what it’s about.’ Education is so much bigger than the subject matter. It’s how we’re shaped.”

But how do we fix the out-of-control nature of things in society?

Currier points to a song of praise they’ve sung in her school.

“In our sweet little school one of the songs that we would sing, it’s a modern-day hymn by Skye Peterson. And there’s a line that says, ‘I am not my own.’

“And that’s revolutionary. It shouldn’t be, but it is … this idea of self-mastery, self-control, because I am not my own. I don’t get to call the shots. Chaos is going to reign if I am doing whatever brings me pleasure and only pursuing my own self-interest.  

“So, I think part of the key is letting God do the work in our own hearts and then raising up kids who truly don’t just sing and say those words, but live and breathe the reality that we are not our own, and we were never intended to be.

“And everything goes topsy turvy when we think that we are, and when we try to live like we belong only to ourselves and that our only responsibility is to ourselves.

“When we know that we belong to the One who made us for Himself, that changes everything, doesn’t it?”

From homeschool mom to this

Currier’s rise to one of the nation’s top Christian educators is a classic tale of its own.

She had no background in education, but was homeschooling their three boys when COVID hit – which greatly accelerated ongoing discussions of starting a school with several other families.

“Everybody had their kids home. Everybody was scrambling. So we talked to the pastors and elders of the church where we were hoping to have the school, and they agreed to let us go ahead and start.

“So, we started it in six weeks, after sitting around a table. So, we essentially put on the wheels while we were driving the car.”

What started out as a two-day hybrid Cypress Grove Academy with 12 students quickly blossomed into one with 90 students three days a week, she says.

“I was on the founding board and then became head of school and then transitioned to the classroom after that, because I’m not a great administrator, I discovered through the process,” she laughs, “but I love teaching.”

Her family has since moved from Mobile to Birmingham, where she is now a third-grade instructional support teacher at The Westminster School at Oak Mountain, another classical Christian school.

One hopes the school knows what a teaching powerhouse they’ve got in Currier, though she politely dismisses the compliment.

“Truly, working at this established classical Christian school with master teachers is a gift,” she writes in an email. “And after working very hard in various roles with a start-up school for the past five years, this role will allow me to serve teachers while still teaching students in small groups.”

And maybe catch her breath a little – though she’s used the summer partly to catch up on her adult fiction. She highly recommends Theo of Golden, a first-time novel by self-published 67-year-old author Allen Levi of Georgia.

Currier talks about it as though it’s an instant classic – which it may be.

“As someone who loves fiction and reads a lot of it pretty voraciously, I’m really not overstating it when I say it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read,” she says. “I’m about to go home and reread it. My 13-year-old wouldn’t let me bring it on [a recent] trip because he’s reading it. It’s absolutely breathtaking. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful book.

“You must read it.”

You can see where her students get the hankering for a good book.

The Christian Teacher of the Year honor is part of the Herzog Foundation’s Excellence in Christian Education award series. Each of the 12 winners will attend a special professional development and recognition event in Washington, D.C.