What's Happening in Cougar Country

The Lake Catholic students have been in classes for almost a month to kick off the 2025-26 school year, but on Thursday, September 18, they returned to summer, if only for an hour.

Classes merged, departments collaborated, and students and teachers alike worked on various projects all relating to this past summer’s One School, One Book reading project – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

This is the third year for the One School, One Book summer reading, and Assistant Principal of Academics Maghen Frindt thinks the overall concept keeps getting better.

“This is something that unifies us all and brings us all together,” Frindt said. “Whether a student worked all summer or spent the entire summer at the beach, our entire community had this one thing in common over those months.”

While each student did take an exam on the book during their English class, Thursday’s special session was a true cross-collaboration between departments and students as grade levels and departments were mixed and combined in various ways. And, as Frindt said, this particular book lends itself to such synergy.

“The first thing we look for when picking a book is whether it’s accessible to our entire community,” she said. “But this book in particular has a log of complex and interesting elements, with touch points in every content level.”

The story follows four siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—who are evacuated to the English countryside during World War II. In their temporary home, Lucy discovers a magical wardrobe that leads to Narnia, a land under the spell of the White Witch. Her magic makes it “always winter but never Christmas.”

At first, the children are divided—Edmund betrays his siblings by siding with the Witch—but soon they join together to help the rightful ruler, Aslan the great lion, free Narnia. Aslan sacrifices himself to save Edmund, but through deeper magic, he rises again. With his help, the children and Narnians defeat the Witch’s forces.

By the end, the Pevensies are crowned as kings and queens of Narnia, ruling for many years before eventually returning to the wardrobe and finding themselves back in the real world—no time having passed.

Some of the deeper themes that come out of the story are good vs. evil; betrayal and forgiveness; courage and growth; faith and belief; and sacrifice and resurrection.

As for Thursday, there was a basic, but minimal framework that the teachers had to follow:

• Make sure they have read the book
• Their lesson/project had to be contained to an hour and could not result in homework
• Take their own content area and ground it in the text

A few examples of what teachers came up with are:

• Ms. Kane (art) and Mrs. Gainar's (culinary arts) group worked on two projects - students prepared a meal similar to the book and got to eat it together and also created trading cards based on the book’s characters, locations, and other items.
• Mr. Clark (art), Ms. Halcomb (English), and Ms. McVicker’s (English) group used AI to illustrate texts from the book. They searched for different quotes and passages and then used ChatGPT to create illustrations, and
• Mrs. Hufgard (science), Ms. Pattison (math), and Mrs. Graff’s (intervention) group used shaving cream to make their own snow.

While students seemed to enjoy the special session, not only working with different students and classes, but also learning differently, besides just a lecture, the singular day has concluded, and the work on next year’s One School, One Book summer project will soon begin again.

The administrative and faculty team will begin reviewing books in November, with the announcement of next summer’s book coming in April or May, before school lets out, Frindt said.

“My hope is that as we continue to grow this program, the faculty, staff, and students will really look forward to the book and days of working together once we return to school,” she said. “What happened (Thursday) is one of the most STEM, STEAM, STREAM-thing we’ve done here since I’ve been here. We were able to pull multiple content areas together and intertwine them for a very productive hour of projects, discussion, and learning.”