2020 Beacon Award Winner
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The winner of the 2020 Beacon Society Award is David Fake.
Dave has been a teacher at the Tulpehocken Junior High school for 34 years. He has taught all grade levels, but primarily 9th grade, in the Language Arts Curriculum. In each of his teaching years, Dave has included a least one Canonical story as required reading in his classes. For the first 25 years, Dave’s classes read and discussed “The Adventure of the Redheaded League” along with Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton stories. For the last 9 years, Dave has added additional Canonical stories to be read and discussed. In 2016, Dave received a Jan Stauber Grant from the Beacon Society. Denny Dobry met Dave 5-years ago when Dave saw an article in the local newspaper about Denny's 221b Baker Street sitting room re-creation. Dave asked if he could arrange a visit for his class, and Denny, of course, consented. His classes have now visited 4 times. On their last visit, Dave had the class read 6 Canonical stories, and Dave informed Denny what stories had been read. Because the class was 18 students strong, the class was divided into 2-groups, ‘The Hounds’ and ‘The Baker Street Irregulars’, to limit how many students would visit the sitting room at a time. In addition, each group was broken up into teams of 2 students. Upon arrival at the room, Denny handed out a quiz and the teams competed with each other by identifying artifacts in the sitting room. The winning teams was presented with a set of Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Every class has had several students who were very enthusiastic about the visit and discussing the Canon (see included photos). Dave estimates that in his 34 years at Tulpehocken Junior High, he has taught 151 sections including A Sherlock Holmes story, with an average of 18 students per section. That computes to 2,718 students being introduced to Holmes in Dave’s classes - AND COUNTING! Although Denny has never been in one a Dave’s classrooms, it is very evident by the attitude and demeanor of the students during their visit, that Dave is respected and liked by them. Denny looks forward to Dave’s class visit every year. Denny is encouraged that Dave’s efforts will result in developing new young Sherlockians. Dave told Denny that he often meets ex-students and they often comment on their Sherlockian memories in Dave’s class. Dave Fake is certainly successful in “Keeping Green the Memory of the Master”! Dave, on behalf of the Beacon Society we are proud to present you with a certificate recognizing your accomplishments over the years as a purveyor of ideas in keeping the memory of the Master green for young people. Along with the certificate the award consists of:
Congratulations again from all of us in the Beacon Society for your well deserved recognition. |
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