For the past twenty plus years I have taught 7th/8th grade Language Arts in the New Haven school system, a system located in a city that itself would make a fine setting for a dystopian novel, where towering gothic towers hidden behind gated courtyards, weave their way in and out of blighted neighborhoods whose inhabitants live day to day trying to make ends meet.
I began my career in New Haven in a 5-8 arts magnet school, taught briefly in a neighborhood high school and since 2015 have been teaching at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, an urban neighborhood school which has struggled over the years to overcome grade level shortcomings among our K-8 population.
While for most of my teaching career I have taught seventh and eighth grade students, I currently teach grades five, six, seven and eight as a reading teacher in a Read180 classroom. The unit I am creating for the Yale Institute this year is designed to parallel a dystopian unit we study in Read 180 entitled “Life in Dystopia” in which students are challenged to answer the question, “What causes people to go along with the crowd, despite the costs?” Through a series of readings, including the short story “The Lottery,” an excerpt from a Shirley Jackson lecture on the feedback she received after publishing her infamous story in The New Yorker and an excerpt from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, students are introduced to a plethora of vocabulary words and questions that lead them to discover many aspects of dystopian literature while attempting to answer the guiding question. A typical day in the Read 180 classroom begins with fifteen minutes of whole group instruction followed by one or two rotations in which students split into three groups; one meeting with the teacher in small group text instruction, one utilizing the Read 180 app on computers in the back of the room and a third group focusing on sustained silent reading. At the end of our class period, students come together for class wrap up of the day’s activities.
I feel fortunate to have become a reading teacher in the latter years of my career, as the program has rekindled my love for teaching as no other assignment ever has. I feel closer to my students as we meet weekly in small groups to discuss topics, sharing opinions and feelings related to the given units we are studying. While the Read180 program can be scripted and regimented in its presentation, it also allows for teachers interpretation of the topic which is why I think this unit on the dystopian novel will complement the program nicely, allowing students to explore the genre beyond the unit that will serve as an anchor for my Yale curriculum. Due to the gravity and mature nature of the content of a study of dystopian literature, I plan to use this unit with my eighth grade students.
Finally, I feel that this unit touches on a reality that we all want to understand and perhaps better navigate through as dystopian fiction and dystopian reality seem to overlap more and more in our world. Dystopian literature is fiction, but more and more, as Orwell himself seemed to see in the 1940s, the reality of our world seems more and more dystopian. His words from nearly seven decades ago still ring true as he commented on human nature; “As soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged.”2 His words are both fascinating and terrifying at the same time, while also so timely and relevant. Orwell’s words repeatedly point to a reality which seems to travel throughout the heart of dystopian literature as characters repeatedly find themselves stuck in increasingly desperate situations.
A very real modern quandary that at its heart seems dystopian, is the rise of AI in our society. AI is destined to be the new technology explosion of the future and is already very much a part of our lives. But there is an underlying fear that many harbor as AI becomes more and more intertwined in our lives. How far will it go? What are the dangers of developing such technology before we truly understand its limitations and flaws? As Orwell’s work at times seemed to predict the chaos of politics gone awry, Isaac Asimov seemed to explore the same dangerous possible outcomes in regards to AI. I Robot explores a future, (his future, our reality) where the power of AI, with initial good intention, runs amuck and threatens the security of our world. Children marvel at these sort of quandaries and I believe that introducing them to this genre in a way that helps them to connect with and perhaps see more clearly the world that they will inherit going forward as they search for their own roles and those of their heroes. In The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar comments on how children interact with works of literature, asserting, “There, children, who invariably count themselves among the downtrodden and underprivileged, identify and empathize with the protagonist. The more Hansel, Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White are victimized by the powers of evil, the more sympathy they elicit and the more captivating they are for children.”3 Dystopian literature, fairy tales and the YA genre in general, helps children find their way through our confusing and sometimes terrifying adult world, as they increasingly seek ways to identify with the mistreated protagonists cast out of the societies and social groups they need to be in to survive.
In “Here’s Looking at You, Kids; The Urgency of Dystopian Texts in the Secondary Classroom,” Michael Soars asserts, “Teachers and students are entering new territory as the headlines imitate our dystopian texts.”4 In a world where lockdowns in our schools have become the norm, where shootings inside and outside our school buildings barely make the headlines, where the threat of contagions combined with the fear of a violent, angry and confusing world force children to cower beneath their covers with nothing but their phones to keep them company, perhaps dystopian literature may prove to be the genre most like our students’ reality and most needing their attention as our students are forced to navigate through this world which many adults find impossible to understand, predict or manage. A new urgency and role for classroom teachers seems to be emerging in our society. Again, Soars comments, “Clearly, great responsibility lies with the teacher in the effective facilitation of dystopian text; the most important role a teacher can play is providing opportunity to interact with text in ways that promote students towards positive social and political change and/or action.”5 Teachers do have many roles in and beyond the classroom. As we go forward into an unknown future these roles will certainly become more intricate and important in the raising of our children and the shaping of our world.
