Edgar Allan Poe

Many of Edgar Allan Poe’s text contain extremely deep levels of meaning that can be difficult to analyze but offer a great amount of satisfaction when finally discovered. The short story Silence- A Fable is one that falls into the category of confusing readers of the meaning Poe is attempting to portray. Nonetheless, there are tons of useful teaching ideas that teachers could take advantage from to develop fun ways to learn. For one, Silence- A Fable could be used to help students determine why certain themes exists in the story and be able to find evidence that supports their claims. Loneliness and isolation plays a major role in this story, but it would be difficult how those are perceived if students couldn’t make the necessary connections to those virtues in their own lives. There is also benefits to teaching the view point of the story and which eyes it is told through. Once I figured out the view point, I created a bunch more connections to the themes which help me understand the text a lot better.   

I have learned that class time is very limited, making it tough for teachers to get through content if the lessons entail a lot of reading. Also, consistent long reading homework assignments are difficult for adolescents to complete daily, creating a frustrating learning environment. There are fixes for these situations, though. Since a lot of the stories in the book are short, teachers can create both deeper and engaging lessons to where the goals are being actively pursued instead of having to spend precious class time reading.

I think it would be difficult for teachers to give this content out if their students hadn’t had a chance to explore the elements of poetry. At the same time, Complete Tales and Poems offer an opportunity to explore poetry lessons with tons of material to use. I also had some challenge with the vocabulary that I see could create problems with high school age students trying to analyze the text. Based on the uniqueness of Poe’s writing, I think student’s will be challenged but ultimately greatly benefit in their abilities to analyze text for meaning.