2. Experimenting with Reality
"We can all bend reality. We can turn the improbable into the everyday ordinary." ~ Sean Hill
The Lesson
Within dystopian literature, authors experiment with reality and create worlds that distort current reality by fixating on a current issue in the society and amplifying it into world where everything has gone wrong. It is filled with oppressive governments and revolutionary citizens. War, overpopulation, and disasters are common in its pages. Dystopian fiction often appeals to adolescents because it offers these young people the opportunity to think about how they might re-envision the world just as they are re-envisioning who they want to be. These stories allow them to consider the parts of the world they would keep and the parts they would discard. Dystopian novels also empower youth to right the wrongs of adults, which can appeal to adolescents who are beginning to question the adults in their own lives.
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For this lesson, you are to research and read a dystopian novel written for adolescents and published since 2019. This list from Amazon provides some potential titles. This is a great starting point, but you are also welcome to do your own research.
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The Challenge
One way to disrupt student thinking is to help them learn to empathize with others. Through empathy, our students can build connections with others because they can better understand how others are thinking and feeling. Characters in dystopian novels provide rich opportunities to practice empathetic thinking because the novels feature characters who are driven by a cause. Empathy maps provide one way for students to get into the minds of others--in this case, into the minds of the characters.
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For this challenge, using the image below as a guide, create an empathy map for one of the characters in your dystopian novel. You may download the map, fill it out, and then upload it as a PDF to your portfolio. Or you may recreate it using a digital tool such as Popplet or Padlet.
Upload, post, or link your map to your portfolio by 4:00pm on Jan. 23rd.
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