Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe is an essential author to study when it comes to English education. I remember learning Edgar Allen Poe in every step of my education. I even remember reading books for fun that had to do with Poe. In elementary school, I remember reading them as scary stories for fun. When I was in middle school I learned the history of Edgar Allen Poe and even wrote a parody of "The Tell-Tale Heart" for an 8th-grade assignment. High School was when it finally came time to dissect the stories and learn about the symbolism and messages in each story. We ready The Raven, of course, but I don't remember any other stories popping up much until I got into college. In one of my first college classes we read Fall of the House of Usher and the Mask of Red Death, but I had not read the Cask of Amontillado until now. But, clearly, Edgar Allen Poe has been in education throughout my life, and I am glad that it has.

Having the collection that students can read is a good idea to get them interested in reading Poe. Most will probably jump to The Raven or Tell-Tale Heart, but on the way they may read some more and that is what is important. I wish that I would have been exposed to more Poe in my younger years besides the classics to learn that Poe's work was more than "scary stories" to read on your own time. But, at the same time, Poe is aimed at a more mature audience to comprehend it more than just being scary. High school or late middle school, like where I was taught it, is probably the best time to be teaching it to students. It will be interesting to see where the presenters decide to put their lessons and how they decide to teach it.

I would love to teach Edgar Allen Poe in the classroom and really dive into some of the more obscure works for the students to read. I might introduce the students to Poe by reading the more well-known stories to the class, and then have them pick unknown works to read on their own to expose them to more. I am not sure how I would teach it to the class because some of the stories are complicated and take a bit to understand. I know I struggled a little bit even when I read them in college. I want to see how the presenters decide to teach the class and see different ways that it can be taught. Edgar Allen Poe is already being taught widely in the classroom, and I definitely think he should be here to stay.

The Graphic Cannon

I want to start out by saying that I think The Grapic Cannon is really cool and I am glad I purchased it. I have already spent a few hours just looking through the book and reading snippets of the stories or looking at the art and style of each section. I agree that maybe an essential thing for English teachers to own for their students, if not just for themselves. But there are some issues that I could see arising from it depending how you let students use it.

The Graphic Cannon has an assortment of styles that it uses to illustrate iconic stories. While some illustrate the entire story summarized, others only illustrate a chapter, or an image. A problem could occur when a student uses the summary as an excuse to reading the actual book, or tries to get by reading stories from these volumes rather than the actual books themselves. I think The Graphic Cannon is a good tool for students to use to get them interested in reading one of the stories portrayed in it. Seeing just a picture based on the story or a few comic strips could really get a student interested in wanting to read it. I could also see using it as a comparison if you read the chapter that is depicted in the Cannon and compared it to the actual text to see how the artist interpreted it and how the students might have interpreted it differently. I don't know how you could teach a lesson solely on just the picture, like Scarlet Letter, so I am interested to see how Cecilio does it in his presentation today!

Again, I am still very happy that I purchased The Graphic Cannon and I am interested to see how I can integrate it into my classroom someday. I just have to make sure that it is not the only thing that the students read and make sure that they read the actual stories as well. I went through most of elementary school saying that I had read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when in reality I had only read a Graphic novel version of it. When I finally read the story I saw how much better it was using my own imagination for the images rather than the ones that were already given to me. So I will just have to be careful with how I use graphic novels in general in the classroom.

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night was a sad telling of the struggles, despair, and horrible reality that the Jews had to go through during the Holocaust of WWII. It cuts deeper than just reading the number of deaths that happened during that time period, instead you get to read about it firsthand through the eyes of a 13 year old as Elie recalls what happened to him. This historic personal story teaches you lessons about humanity, good and evil, and strength through family in a way that a story told any other way wouldn't be able to connect. The book is short but you want it to be shorter as you read about atrocity after atrocity that the Jews had to go through, never getting better and only getting worse. It was a powerful read and I regret not having read it sooner.
Teaching this in the classroom would work really well paired with a history class that was teaching WWII at the same time. Even if that is not the case, I think it is a good read for students to learn the about the experiences of the Holocaust through a primary source. While the Diary of Anne Frank shows the dangers of being a Jew who had not been found, Night shows the other side of a Jew going through being found and living through what Anne Frank tried to hide from. It is a very heavy book and will take a lot of discussion to make sure that the students get more from the book than the initial sadness. There is also great strength in the narrator fighting through all of the hardships to stay with his father and live although everything was against him. Discussing with the students bravery and strength through adversity is something that could be done to alleviate some of the sadness. But the sadness is also something worth touching on. A book does not have to have a happy ending or happiness in it to still be an excellent book. Discussing the abrupt ending and having the students question what they think would happen next be an interesting activity.
If there is not a history class that would be teaching this material at the same time as this book is being read, it would be important for the students to know about the history of the holocaust and have background knowledge of Jewish culture and the different places that the main character ends up. A good activity to do would be to have the students look up another person that had lived during the holocaust and follow their lives and see what happened to them to get more exposure to all of the different lives that this event affected. This book is so good and important for students to read and learn from and there is so much that can be discussed even though it is short. I would definitely want to teach this in class if I could.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Book Talk

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick

Description

• Dystopian future fiction. Year 2021 after World War Terminus, Most people have evacuated the dying planet to Mars where they are given androids as incentive to live there. Those who stayed on Earth are the poor, the ones too affected by nuclear fallout, and the ones whose jobs make them stay. Rick Deckard’s job is to hunt down androids that have escaped from Mars and “retire” them.
• Owning a real live animal is a status symbol, and some people own realistic-looking electric animals to keep up the façade
• Penfield mood organs: the mood organ can induce any desired mood in the people nearby, such as "an optimistic business-like attitude" or "the desire to watch television, no matter what is on."
• Religion: Mercerism makes a cultural push for greater empathy as a technology-based religion. Mercerism uses "empathy boxes" to link all users together to a virtual reality of community suffering, centered on a Christ-like victim, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with stones.
• Empathy Test (Voigt-Kampff Test) A toll used by Rick Deckard for identifying androids posing as humans since androids lack the ability to feel empathy.
• Two perspectives throughout the story: Rick Deckard (hard, straight-forward, hates androids) and J. R. Isidore ("special," simple-minded, oblivious)

·       Plot Summary:

Bounty hunter Rick Deckard signs on to a new police mission to earn enough money to buy a live animal to replace his electric sheep for himself and his depressed wife, Iran. The mission involves "retiring" a group of six Nexus-6 androids that went rogue and fled from Mars to Earth after their creation. Deckard visits Rosen headquarters in Seattle to confirm the validity of his question-and-answer empathy test. Deckard is greeted by Rachael Rosen, who quickly fails his test. She was built to try and discredit his test, but she does not fool him.

Deckard soon meets a Soviet police contact, who turns out to be one of the disguised Nexus-6. Deckard retires the android, then flies off to retire his next target: Luba Luft, an opera-singing Nexus-6. This android, however, has him arrested by a police officer he has never met and taken to a police department he has never known. An official named Garland accuses Deckard himself of being an android. After a series of increasingly mysterious revelations at the police station, Deckard for the first time ponders the questions his line of work raises regarding android intelligence, empathy, and what it really means to be human. Phil Resch, the station's bounty hunter, finally gets testing equipment to determine if his coworkers as well as Deckard are androids or humans. Garland reveals that the entire station is a sham, completely staffed by androids, including Garland himself. Resch shoots Garland in the head and escapes with Deckard and they travel together to find and arrest the android opera singer, which Resch retires in cold blood. Deckard takes the empathy test for himself and for Resch, which confirms that Resch is just a particularly ruthless human being, and that Deckard is also human, but with empathy for androids.

Half of the story is told through the events that happen with John R. Isidore, a radioactively-damaged, intellectually slow human classified as a "special." One of the 3 remaining Nexus-6 android fugitives, Pris Stratton, moves in to an apartment building where Isidore lives and he tries to befriend her. Roy and Irmgard Baty, the final two rogue androids, visit the building, and they all together plan how to survive.

Meanwhile, Deckard with his reward money buys Iran an authentic goat. After quitting work, Deckard is pulled back in after being notified of a new lead and experiencing a vision of the prophet-like Mercer confusingly telling him to proceed though his mission is immoral. Deckard calls back upon Rachael Rosen, since her own insider knowledge as an android will aid his investigation. Rachael reveals that she and Pris are the same exact model, meaning that he will have to shoot down an android that looks just like her. Rachael coaxes Deckard to have sex, after which they mutually confess their love, but she reveals she has slept with multiple other bounty hunters in order to convince them to stop their missions. After threatening to kill her, Deckard deserts her.

Isidore develops friendships with the three android fugitives, and they all watch a television program giving definitive evidence that Mercerism is not real. Roy Baty tells Isidore that the show was produced by androids to discredit Mercerism and blur the distinction with humans. Suddenly Deckard enters the building, with supernatural warning visions of Mercer appearing to both him and Isidore. Deckard becomes legally justified in shooting down all three androids without testing them, since they attack him first, and he successfully does so. When Deckard returns home, he finds Iran grieving because Rachael Rosen recently showed up and murdered their goat.

Deckard goes to an uninhabited, obliterated region of Oregon to reflect. He climbs a hill when he is hit by falling rocks and realizes this is an experience similar to Mercer's. Rushing back to his car, he stumbles abruptly upon a toad, an animal previously thought to be extinct, and one of the animals sacred to Mercer himself. With newfound joy, Deckard brings the toad home, where Iran quickly discovers that it is just a robot. While Deckard is unhappy, he decides that he at least prefers to know the truth: whether the toad is real or artificial, remarking with an exhausted reflection upon the events that have taken place that "The electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are".

Rationale

·       Most students need to do a dystopian unit, and this book an entertaining and challenging read that brings up a lot of important questions to debate and discuss. The class should be taught at a junior or senior level to be able to discuss the deeper meaning of the book and make sure the students can comprehend the more difficult parts of the text. The book touches on what it means to be human, equality, the importance of religion, following the norms of society, life and death, emotions, and the age old question of “should AI be treated like humans.”

Teaching Methods

·       Discussion: Plenty of things that will need to be talked about throughout the book as the students read it and could lead to some very good discussion like the use of the mood organs, religion, the importance of fitting into society, what it means to be human, the deterioration of the world, etc.

·       Debate: There are also plenty of topics in this book that are worth having a class debate over. The main one being “should AI be treated like humans?” This could be expanded for this story to include the “special” people as well.

·       It would also be a fun activity to have the students take a test to see if they are human or not, for fun, and talk about their results. Or make a game where some students are androids and other students have to ask a series of questions to see if they can figure out which students are androids or not.

·       Listen to the audiobook: Gives a real feel and atmosphere to the book and helps understand the story a bit more. Listening to the audiobook can help break up the story for the students so they don't get overwhelmed with reading the entire thing.

·       Watch the movie: Bladerunner is critically acclaimed but notorious for being very different from the book. I think it would be a good lesson at the end of the unit to watch the movie and compare and contrast the book and movie and discuss why those changes were made and ask them what they would have done differently.

Obstacles

• Mild language

·       Complex concepts: mainly Mercerism and the empathy box

·       Sex scene between man and robot: Isn’t explicit but sex is discussed a few times in the book and will need to be talked about.

·       Religion: The book focuses heavily on the religion of Mercerism and how people feel about it. At the end of the book it is proved to not be real, but people still worship it anyway. Religion is always a hard topic to teach.

·       Mild violence: the only people who die are androids, but they are very lifelike so some of the details are a little excessive

·       The ending is a bit anti-climactic and weird: build up to the final showdown that turns out to not be as exciting. There is a supernatural element that comes into play that is a bit out of nowhere. And then just kind of ends.

·       Could be considered a classic at this point (written in 1968) and should be easy to get administration to approve it, but may have difficulty with parents with the religious aspects

Readicide

Schools are killing the want to read in students in a thing called Readicide. Schools are so focused on teaching to the test, making sure students score high on the test, and get rid of parts of the curriculum to prepare students for the test that important reading is lost on students. Reading the statistics of students that stopped reading or didn't know how to read was shocking and knowing that schools are not attempting to fix these issues was insane. Schools focus too much on multiple-choice testing which focuses heavily on shallow answers and prevents struggling students to learn and stop struggling. This book suggests changing the system and getting students to love reading, even if the reading isn't something they love, and making sure that they are prepared for reading in their life past your classroom.

But, this is no easy task. It needs to start with the faculty and getting them to accept that there is an issue that needs to be fixed before anything will actually get done. As a student teacher, I can see the problems that Gallagher brings up and want to try some of his strategies, but it isn't my place and the school needs to start making changes before real changes can be made in more than just one classroom. Students need to be exposed to more reading not only as a class but on their own. I remember in elementary school the trips down to the library every week or so to get a new book, look at all the books, and the time spent in class to read our own books. I remember my English teacher in 7th grade that, at the beginning of every week, would have three books that the students would vote on that she would read from for 10 minutes at the beginning of class each day. This made students interested in those books and made us want to read them. I also remember the small amount of time I spent in the library at high school and that I don't think I checked out more than 5 books in the 4 years that I was there. The more exposed students are to reading, the more they will read. Gallagher says that the three things needed to create a reader is to have them be interested in books, be given the time to read, and have a place for them to read their books.

But, it doesn't just stop at giving the students personal reading time. Students are also struggling reading their assigned readings for class, and it goes beyond the obvious reasons of why they aren't reading and understanding. They need to know the value of reading academic texts first and foremost. Also, something that the book focuses on is that students do not have enough background knowledge to understand everything they read. More exposure will help this, but framing the books you teach will help this more as well. Give the students the background knowledge they need to understand, don't just throw them in blindly. It is hard to find the "sweet spot" of not over-teaching a book, but not teaching a book enough to lose comprehension. I can remember how frustrating it was to read books that the teacher would chop up too much and I would lose interest because we weren't able to just read the books, I will definitely have to use the big chunk to little chunks method in my teaching when I can. That method being that you have the students read big chunks of the book on their own, and then go back to a class to focus on small chunks that they have read to analyze it more and let them get more from the book.

I agree with the 50/50 approach that the students should only analyze and work through their academic texts but be allowed to freely read their own books they are reading. You want students to enjoy reading and not feel like it is always a school assignment. I grew up in a school where Accelerated Reader was used and I was the top AR reader in the school for 4 of the 5 years that I was at that school. I contribute Accelerated Reader to why I still love reading so much and why reading is a big part of my life. I do understand the point of not making the books about points or assignments and just have them enjoy reading. The more they read for fun the better they will do on their testing as well. I just have a special place in my heart for AR I suppose. What is important is that we get students reading more for enjoyment and understanding than just to take a multiple choice test. Having good grades and doing better in school will follow with the more the students are exposed to some good reading.

*Looking through Appendix A I saw the book I am the Messenger which is crazy because I read that book years ago when I randomly picked it out of a shelf at Barnes & Noble because of the cover and the blurb. It was just happenstance that I found that book and thought nobody else had heard of it and I read that book numerous times. And apparently it is a popular book and people know about it. I am going to have to read it again now. And people who haven't read it should read it too.