On December 4th, the Emerson High School English 4 classes will travel to Spyscape in New York City, an interactive spy museum focused on surveillance, code-breaking, deception, and intelligence. The field trip was designed to help students deepen their understanding of George Orwell’s 1984 novel by engaging with real-word themes of secrecy and control.
The experience at Spyscape will allow students to step directly into activities involving lie detection, hacking simulations, and surveillance challenges – concepts that mirror the world of 1984, where citizens are constantly monitored and truth is manipulated by authority. From tracking movement on hidden cameras to attempting to decipher encrypted messages, students will be placed in environments that will force them to think like both observers and the observed.
Senior English teacher Ms. Pasqual chose Spyscape specifically because it connects academic learning with lived experience. By participating in challenges centered around watching and being watched, students confronted the novel’s biggest questions firsthand: Who controls information? Can we ever know what’s real? And how much privacy do people truly have in modern society?
“Constant surveillance is one of the biggest things that I evoke in the classroom itself and it’s supposed to be an immersive experience rather than in class,” English teacher Ms. Pasqual said.
Her approach reflects Orwell’s world intentionally: instead of treating 1984 as a distant fictional setting, she encourages students to feel the pressure of being watched, questioned, and evaluated – just as the characters in the novel do. By taking students to Spyscape, she aims to push that theme outside the traditional classroom setting, giving them a chance to experience surveillance not only intellectually, but physically and emotionally. This hands-on method, she explained, helps students understand how quickly behavior changes when privacy becomes uncertain.
“There is a lot of reality that goes into literature. Hopefully they get the message of what it means to predict the world based on our current setting and the climate of change,” Ms. Pasqual shared.
When Ms. Pasqual talks about “a lot of reality” in literature, she highlights that novels like 1984 aren’t trying to predict the future – they’re warning readers about what could happen if certain patterns in society continue unchecked. By connecting core lessons to current events, she encourages students to recognize the parallels between Orwell’s world and our own, not just as a prediction but as a caution. Through this approach, literature becomes a tool for self-awareness, prompting students to question who holds power, how information is controlled, and what happens when people stop paying attention.
The impending bus ride back to school may mark the end of the trip, but not the conversation. The Spyscape experience will definitely highlight how the themes students have read about in class connect to real conversations happening in the world today.
