About the Founder
Hello. I’m Ellen Finnigan, founder of Teach to the Text. I received my B.A. in English from Boston College and my M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana, where I won the 2008 Merriam-Frontier Award for distinguished achievement in writing. My writing has been published in a multitude of venues, both online and in print.
I have been teaching writing online to mostly homeschool students, in one form or another, since 2008. Most recently I taught in the English and Literature department at Kolbe Academy Online for nine years (2013-2022), where my classes were very popular. Before that I taught at St. John Bosco, a hybrid school outside of Atlanta. I am a practicing Catholic.
Simone Weil once said: “Prayer is sustained attention.” I love to help my students develop their powers of observation and concentration, to read slowly and think clearly. I want them to not only appreciate the Great Conversation, but one day contribute to it. (That’s where the writing comes in!) To encourage lifelong learning, I occasionally offer classes for adults as well. Please sign up for the newsletter so we can keep in touch. Reach out if you have any questions. I hope to see you in the classroom one day soon. God bless.
Secular or religious?
Truth matters! Truth is best pursued in conversation with others and with the past. At Teach to the Text, we pursue truth together, one text at a time.
Literature classes deal with moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions from a Christian perspective, and draw on the 2,000-year-old intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church to articulate and present that perspective. Religious content is very general and should be acceptable to any Christian, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.
Writing courses here are mostly secular.
Non-believers are welcome, as long as they can accept that Teach to the Text classrooms are “safe spaces” for Christians where the Christian worldview is assumed as the “norm”. (As for disagreements among denominations, we currently have no theology classes, so these issues rarely, if ever, come up.)