At the beginning of second semester, posters with a picture of the AP Literature teacher Stephanie Bray and text that read “SENIORITIS IS BAD” and “BRAY IS WATCHING YOU” appeared on all the halls at Santa Fe. 

Similar to the book “1984,” Bray turned into “Big Sister Bray,” having an authoritative, intimidating, all-seeing and emotionless attitude. Her room turned into the city of Oceania with no privacy, no truth, no freedom and enforcing obedience. Students turned into the thought police that enforce Party loyalty by detecting and punishing rebellious thoughts and ideas. 

“It is a total immersion into the world of ‘1984,’” Bray said. “I start this project before we begin reading to help them anticipate and become interested in the political themes.”

1984 by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about a futuristic society in a city called Oceania, where the government has total control over people’s lives. This society is ruled by an all-powerful state led by Big Brother, an omnipresent ruler, who is constantly surveilling citizens with screens watching them and microphones listening. The government rewrites history making the “truth” what favors them at the moment. Language is manipulated through Newspeak, a shirked version of English that limits the range of thoughts in individuals. 

Bray begins the simulation by becoming “Big Sister Bray,” being more strict; motivating students to get rid of the common affliction “senioritis,” the decline in motivation, academic effort and attendance experienced by students in their last semester of high school. Her change in behavior surprised students as it was very noticeable.

“They kinda freak out because my classroom environment changes almost overnight,” Bray said. “They aren’t used to Big Sister Bray—she’s not as fun as regular Bray.” 

Bray convinced students that senioritis was a current issue at school and motivated them to work on bettering their academic performance. Every day at the beginning of class, seniors had to complete a Google Form with questions about their senioritis. 

“Senioritis is just a ruse to mimic how authoritarian governments will create a common enemy or manufacture a problem to get everyone focused on that while they slowly strip rights from citizens,” Bray said. “I hope students learn to never blindly follow a person in authority and question everything.”

In the book, citizens were spied on by the party through telescreens, a two-way video device that could watch and listen to citizens at all times. Bray simulated this in her class by assigning every student a different person in the class to spy on and at the end of every class period each would answer a Google form with questions about the student they observed and their senioritis, based on their attendance, ability to engage and participate in class activities. 

Bray motivated students to report or stop any rebellious acts that were against her movement. This simulated the “thought police” in the book that secretly observed behavior and arrested people for “thoughtcrime,” any rebellious acts or ideas against the party. 

Days later, posters against the anti-senioritis movement appeared on the halls and classroom with pictures of history teachers Drew Mcneil and KC Williams, math teacher Vanessa Palmer, chemistry teacher Barry Derennaux and Principal Jason Hayes with texts justifying senioritis. This was used to simulate The Brotherhood, a legendary underground resistance movement that aims to overthrow the totalitarian regime of Big Brother in “1984.” 

“This year they are way more rebellious. It usually takes them a few days to figure out what is happening, but the rebellion started quickly this year,” Bray said.

Following the rebellion acts, Bray motivated her students to take off the sabotaging posters off the walls, thus simulating The Party’s violent elimination of the material and harsh punishment for those involved. 

“I personally was on the side of whoever was funniest at that moment,” senior Averie Knapp said. “I hung posters for both Bray and the rebellion.”

Bray’s dedication to the simulation allowed students to fully understand and grasp the content they were about to read.