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Art as Influencer: The Reason my Orwell Unit Failed and Why it Matters for your Students

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I’ve been reading Kylene Beers and Bob Probst’s Disrupting Thinking: How Why We Read Matters this week, and one of their points that has really come home for me is how often the standards and the pressure to boil books down to skills leads to pulling plot-based facts and point-based evidence out of a book, blocking opportunities for students to think about what the book means in the context of their lives.

How it might change them, influence them, give them something new to think about in the way they approach the world.

It reminded me of a comment my son’s history teacher made recently, asking for him to focus not just on the events of history, but on “making meaning” out of them. I loved this directive, and at the same time, I knew a lot of follow-up was required. “Making meaning” out of what we learn is right up there at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy, a combination of “evaluate” and “create,” and not something that will just happen by itself.

So how DO we bring our students from memorizing plot details to creating a dialogue with books that helps to shape who they become?

Today I want to share a story with you, about a time I taught a novel without considering the implications in the lives of my students, and how their reaction changed me as a teacher.

As you’ll see from my story, helping students make meaning from reading isn’t as simple as some catchy acronym or a certain type of double-sided journal.

But I will share some ideas for starting points you can use in class, strategies, discussion questions, and project possibilities that can help students ask a text: what do you want from me? And why? What do I want from you?

You can listen in below, or read on for the written version.

Teaching 1984 in Bulgaria: Lessons on Art as Influencer in a Cultural Context

The first time I taught 1984 in Bulgaria it was a disaster. We moved through the text as I moved through most texts at that point, holding discussions, working on projects, breaking out to discuss related materials.

But there was this tension in the air.

A thick kind of uncomfortable chill.

I should have seen it coming, but in my defense I was still pretty new to teaching and still very new to Bulgaria. A country that was, in many ways, new.

Photos from my years in Bulgaria: Angel art installation at Christmas hovering near a statue from the Communist Era, Sofia, goddess of wisdom (and namesake of the Bulgarian capital), and Sunset over Mount Vitosha from our neighborhood, Mladost 1A

I knew, but didn’t really understand in the context of my classroom, that communism was quite a recent thing in the country where I was teaching.

I didn’t realize, that first year, that Orwell’s fiction text would read as a slap in the face to students whose parents mourned the end of communism, remembering it fondly in stories told at home.

That Orwell’s fiction text would read as a horrifying memory to students whose parents suffered during communism, who maybe lost family members, homes, or ways of life.

“IT WASN’T LIKE THIS!” one of my students all but shouted one day in discussion. She was furious, being made to read a text, day after day, that cast a (fictional?) cloud of grayish agony over her country’s history.

Other students felt it was exactly like this.

But they weren’t too happy to be reading it either, even if it did read like a black and white photograph of their parents’ memories.

I got through that day as best I could, unsure how to respond to either group of upset kids. None of my training had really prepped me for teaching Orwell in Bulgaria.

But as we finished up the unit, and I had time to reflect, I began to see the book radically differently.

I had always agreed with Orwell’s take on communism in Animal Farm and 1984, based on my understanding of history, so I saw his fiction as a helpful tool in questioning political ideologies, considering how knowledge is shared and truth is defined, and examining how power can be abused.

But under fire from my students, I began to wonder… Was Orwell’s book as much a piece of propaganda as a Big Brother poster?

Where is the line between ‘Art as Influencer’—art that shapes perspectives—and art as manipulation?

How is it possible to read a book with an intense political agenda and an emotional plotline and maintain a critical eye?

And is it OK to assign a book that pushes one political ideology so hard, without sharing any voices on the other side? Since, after all, it’s fiction?

The next year my 1984 unit had almost nothing in common with my first try. We began with an oral history project. Students interviewed family members about their experiences during communism, then brought their stories in to share in class.

One student’s mother had been the English translator for the party leader.

Another student’s grandfather had been disappeared by the party and never seen by his family again.

Everyone had a lot to say about how Orwell portrayed a fictional world of communism, and everyone wanted to talk about whether it was propaganda or simply an artist sharing his worldview through his art. About what it means to try to influence someone, and where the line is between influence and manipulation.

We explored Orwell’s ideas through the lens of ‘Art as Influencer,’ connecting them to real-world events and artistic expressions. But we held, at the same time, the knowledge of what he was trying to achieve with his fiction, where his own politics lay, how other voices might paint a different picture, and how art can influence us when we look at it uncritically (and when we look at it critically).

It was, unquestionably, one of the most interesting experiences I’ve ever had as a teacher. Waaaaay more meaningful than the same unit the year before, when we approached the text without consideration of its context and the individual histories and views of the students in the room.

It’s safe to say that I’ll never look at Orwell, 1984, communism, or Bulgaria in quite the same way again because of the opportunity I had to read the book with those kids. It changed the way I think about politics, about representation, about the canon, about teaching. I could go on and on. It gave me a chance to make meaning in a whole new way, and I hope at least some of my students felt the same way.

How to Harness Art as Influencer in the Classroom

So now let’s make a shift out of Bulgaria and into your classroom. I want to share a few ideas, starting points to help students make meaning of their own that goes far beyond plot and character development. I’m sure you’re already doing this, but I just wanted to sit next to you today and brainstorm more possibilities, because I know you’re likely being inundated by pressure to focus on standards, whittle book units down to selections, and COVER more material with less depth.

So here are some ideas to help you help your students get into a conversation with literature about how to live.

Dive into Research Rabbit Holes

A lot of texts bring up significant issues related to our world. Whether it’s civil rights, global warming, international relations, or something else, pausing in your text analysis to do a short related research project can help students engage with the larger issues and see how they connect to the world they live in. You might consider focusing a one day research project on a local iteration of whatever the issue is, so it’s even more directly tied to students’ own experience. Research can just as easily mean watching a mini-documentary, listening to a podcast, creating an infographic, going on a webquest, or scripting a 60 second podcast as it can writing a research paper. When you’re looking to intertwine nonfiction with your fiction in the quest to keep meaning front of mind as you read, one of these shorter options just might be your best bet.

(Looking for a quick research project idea? Check out past posts on infographics, social media carousels, or social media movement plans).

Ask Whose Voice is Missing

In my interview with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño about their book, Conscious Classrooms, back in episode 204, they suggested having conversations with students about whose voice might be missing in a text.

Maybe this is really the conversation I needed to have that first year when teaching 1984. It’s the one we ended up having when students interviewed their family members about their experiences with life under communism.

Imagine this conversation for The Great Gatsby, and how it might give students a chance to talk about Daisy and where that might lead.

I’m sure you can imagine many more possibilities for the texts that you teach.

Bring Modern Connections into Discussions

Whatever type of discussion you’re using – hexagonal, silent, Harkness, Socratic, or something else – try to gently bring in questions related to students’ own lives, their opinions about the actions of the characters, the way the book/documentary/poem/story/play/film is impacting their views on the world.

Consider a text like The Social Dilemma. Sure, it’s possible just to discuss the statistics and stories embedded in the documentary. but when the conversation grows to include how learning these things has impacted how students see their own devices, it becomes a totally different conversation.

Hexagonal thinking provides a particularly helpful medium for bringing in modern connections, as you can just throw in any modern terms or connections you want to bring into the conversation on hexagons and see what students do with them.

But you can seed any discussion with these questions.

The Authors as Influencers Project: Exploring Art as Influencer

Of course we know social media plays a huge role in our students lives, so what if you ask them to imagine the authors they’re reading are influencers? This could make a great project at the end of term, when you’re looking back over the different authors you’ve read. Encourage students to imagine these authors as ‘Art as Influencer,’ using platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or X to shape ideas and spark change. What would the authors be pushing? What big ideas would they share in their profile?

To extend the project, you might have students drop their favorite author-as-influencer “post” onto a Google Slide deck for the class and then have folks comment on the ideas. What would they say to a post from George Orwell about watching over their rights? Or a post from Jane Austen suggesting that they fight social problems with humor?

Create Connections with Collages

Another way to get students connecting contemporary life with the issues raised in any text is to invite them to create a collage of related news stories and images in combination with quotes and imagery from the text itself. This works especially well with dystopia, as authors of dystopia so often seem to be taking on a specific contemporary social issue.

The Quotation Collection

When I first taught the transcendentalists, I read about a teacher’s project to have students create “Transcendental Illuminations.” They’d choose powerful quotations from Emerson and Thoreau and then illustrate them in a booklet, including contemporary song lyrics to match. The idea was to create a book that illustrated the big ideas of the philosophy. I loved this idea, and had all my classes try it, wrapping up with a special Transcendental Party in which everyone shared their books. I wish I could cite that teacher’s work now, but twenty years have passed and the internet has a lot more on it these days…

While I love the Illuminations project for transcendentalism, especially since it’s a literary and artistic movement that really is about a philosophy of living, I’d like to extend the idea into illuminating quotations from across texts into a book (or wall display) of influence. Inviting students to look back across a book, a term or even the whole year and choose quotations that they found powerful, then illuminate them and explain why they believe those quotations deserve their time and thought would be a great way to help keep that dialogue about life going between students and authors.

Try Texting with a Character

This one would make a quick and fun discussion warm-up or reading check-in. Invite students to text with a character about a problem (something happening in the world, something in the student’s life, something in the character’s life). What advice would the character give? Would the student take it? What advice would the student give the character? The idea, once again, is to create a dialogue between the big ideas of the book and the evolving ideas of every student.

Try this Final Exam Question: Why does Reading Matter?

Finally, I’ll share one of my favorite ever final exam questions: Why does reading matter?

There are so many ways you could turn this question into a project or a paper, but in the end, it’s asking students to ask themselves how the texts they’ve read have changed them.

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I'm Betsy

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