CALERA — Freshman boys clad in camouflage jackets and black Calera baseball hoodies huddle together in a corner of the classroom, talking in hushed but animated tones.

Being hunters, they usually bring their English teacher deer meat instead of an apple. One can easily imagine the boys talking about wild hogs and rifles, but, today, a brief listening reveals the boys are comparing quotes from Richard Connell’s literary classic, “The Most Dangerous Game.”

Why? Because they are painting their favorite story on the classroom wall.

Calera High School English Teacher John Coley strives for this moment, when students who normally shy away from literature suddenly open their eyes to the joy of reading.

“Here’s a chance for non-readers to really fall in love with stories,” Coley said. “I’ve had students who couldn’t stand reading and writing before, and I think this assignment has helped them recognize there are stories out there that connect to all of us.”

Coley allows his English classes to paint murals on the classroom walls of the stories covered in his class. The response has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic with several students claiming a renewed interest in stories.

Students interviewed said the assignment allows them to visualize what they read on paper and creatively express those visions in paint. With this assignment, the students are the interpreters rather than the teacher or the textbook.

“I think it’s neat that we can show our own ideas of the stories,” said Dani Stepp, a student in Coley’s freshman English class.

“Not every teacher would let us do this,” said student Allyson Patton. “He’s letting us show how we’re learning and interpreting the story.”

THE MAN AND THE IDEA

Coley, a former disc jockey for KLAK in Denison, Texas, changed career paths when his job traveled to McKinney, Texas, an hour away from his family in Calera. Realizing he would either have to follow the radio station and leave his family or try something new, he chose a completely different career path. He chose to teach.

Having taught youth classes at the Church of Christ in Calera and later enrolling in education courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University while he earned his communication’s degree, Coley said a part of him knew he always had wanted to become a teacher.

Coley completed training and certification through Oklahoma’s Alternative Placement Program, which allows individuals with degrees to teach in Oklahoma accredited schools, and began teaching at Madill High School in 2005. The newcomer, he replaced a beloved English teacher, Charlotte Estep, who had left the school to begin work at Murray State College in Tishomingo.

Coley said when he stepped into Estep’s room and saw the paintings of English literature on the walls, he was struck by the ingenuity of his predecessor’s approach toward instruction. Painting became a tradition he extended into his English courses at Madill and later at Calera.

When Calera High School offered him a job two years later, Coley told the principal and superintendent his only prerequisite to accepting the position: permission to paint the walls.

“I had to go through a few channels and get [approval] from a few folks ... because generally we try to discourage people from painting on the walls,” Coley said, smiling. “This is kind of out of the ordinary, but I think the administration understood what I wanted to accomplish.”

Calera Principal Rudy Manley laughed, describing his first reaction upon hearing Coley’s request, “I thought, ‘They’re going to have paint all over everything.’”

But Manley said he knew Coley had a penchant for unorthodox teaching methods to get students involved in their studies. As principal, Manley was more than willing to embrace anything that got his students excited about school.

“After all, it’s just walls,” Manley said with a shrug. “They can be repainted.”

PAINTING LITERATURE

A colorful collage of murals line the beige and off-white walls of the classroom, ranging from the literal with crude drawings of stick people hanging from nooses for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, to the symbolic, with the blood red petals of a lotus emerging before a monocromatic background for Homer’s The Odyssey.

Some paintings are unfinished remnants from previous semesters, such as an incomplete block of black clouds, a stretch of green grass and empty space between, and others are artistic gems, like the colorful tiger for Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?”, a mass of orange fury with thin black stripes.

The murals, replete with the story titles, notable quotes and the authors’ names, surround Coley’s students throughout the year with visible literary facts, so that even the bored student staring listlessly at the walls is exposed to tidbits of English education.

But most of Coley’s students would have you know they are anything but bored.

“[Mr. Coley’s] awesome,” said student Monica Curtman, a freshman at Calera High School. “He knows how to joke around, but he’s strict. He lets us know where he draws the line.”

Zach Childers, another student in Coley’s freshman English class, repeated a similar sentiment.

“He’s a great guy,” Childers said. “He has a whole different perspective on teaching. He’s open to different ideas to make sure that we get involved.”

Several of Coley’s students said they look forward to painting all year.

“It’s much more fun than reading out of the book,” said Aaron Barton, a freshman student. “It helps us visualize what the story is about.”

Coley said the students from his freshman English and American Literature class are allowed to paint at least once a year in groups.

The assignment requires the painting to include a picture, the title of the story depicted, the author’s name, a memorable quote from the story and the students’ names.

Although the painting assignment is strictly a participation grade, Coley encourages the students to work together and play a role in the process.

“Some of them just want to sit it out, but that doesn’t work at all,” Coley said. “Even if it’s just painting the clouds or the landscape, you have to be involved.”

Coley purchases the paint used for the assignment with the understanding that his students will use it sparingly and without waste.

“I make one purchase, and if we run out, they’re on their own,” Coley said. “They buy their own paint.”

Students have four days to complete the painting, and unfinished paintings are painted over by the next round of students to conserve wall space.

With the growing number of murals gracing Coley’s classroom walls, one can’t help but wonder what will happen once the walls are completely covered.

“We’ll move to the ceiling,” Coley said with an upward nod. “We’ll take each ceiling tile down and paint it as a pallet and put it back up there.”

Once every section of wall and ceiling is covered with paintings, students will begin to paint over the oldest paintings first, Coley said. As a result, the students murals will remain on the classroom walls for at least several years.

Occasionally, a mural will not get painted over.

“When I first got to Madill, all of the students told me about this one mural and said, ‘No matter what you do, don’t paint over this one.’ And the student who had painted it had died in a car accident,” Coley said. “It was essential that one didn’t get painted over. [These paintings] mean a lot to these kids as far as the work that they did and who painted what.”

Coley smiled and said, “I guess there’s something about leaving your mark on Calera High School for years to come that’s kind of exciting.”

LEARNING MORE THAN ENGLISH

Some of Coley’s students said they learn more from painting the walls than just English alone.

“It teaches us teamwork more than anything,” Childers said. “You can’t do it by yourself.”

Coley said the painting assignment also teaches students how to adjust to forced creativity under a deadline.

Jessica Palmer, a student in Coley’s freshman English class, agreed.

“It helps us to be creative and create a vision of our reading ... quick,” she said. The students have less than a week to complete the assignment.

Coley said the group dynamics of the painting assignment teach students to compromise, particularly if there is a clash between artistic visions of a story. The exercise also shows students how to overcome disappointment and continue to work, even when they make mistakes and lack the motivation.

Coley pointed to a painting of a tree with “The Most Dangerous Game” scrawled in black across a web of intricately painted leaves and branches. Coley said the students were in a hurry and misspelled “dangerous.”

Because of the work they had spent on the fine details of the tree, the students asked Coley if they could leave the word misspelled. He told them, “No.”

“So, as much as it hurt them, they had to redo it,” Coley said. “I guess that’s the tough part. They have a vision. They mess up and want to say, ‘Well, forget this.’ But they can’t, and that’s where the learning comes in.”

Whether it’s learning how to visualize and interpret literature, meet deadlines or simply working through setbacks, some assignments are intended to withstand time.

After the students graduate and move on and the paint of their murals either fades, chips or becomes replaced with the visions of future students, Coley said he wants his students to carry certain lessons garnered from this class throughout their adult lives.

“In the grand scheme of things, I’d be fine if they only remembered a fraction of the English that we cover. It’s the lessons for life that I want them to remember, how to treat others, how to be an honorable person. I want them to learn to think — to be ready for the world,” Coley said. “I try to teach them a little bit of English and a lot of character.”