🌸 Happy Teacher's Day 2026! 🌸
A Day of Gratitude, Reflection and Celebration
Teacher's Day is a moment of gratitude, reflection, and celebration, a day when students honour the invaluable role of teachers in shaping minds and nurturing futures. At Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, we, the students of the Department of English, are celebrating this day with creativity, scholarship, and heartfelt appreciation.
This year, I have put together a small digital offering that brings together literature, presentation, and reflection to mark the occasion.
🎓 WHAT'S INSIDE THIS CELEBRATION
Video Presentation
Klara and the Sun — AI & Posthumanism
Interactive Quiz
With E-Certificate
Ted-Ed Lesson
Discussion & Reflection
Slide Presentation
Four Theoretical Frameworks
🎬 Video Presentation: "The Machine That Watches Us"
AI, Emotional Labour, and the Posthuman Subject in Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is not just a story about a robot and a girl, it is a quiet, unsettling meditation on who or what deserves to be called a subject. For this presentation, I went through the novel closely and built an argument around one central question: what if the artificial being in the story is not the one being tested for humanity, but the one doing the watching, the caring, and, in the end, the judging?
The talk follows Klara, an Artificial Friend narrating her own story, as she is chosen from a shop window to care for a seriously ill teenage girl named Josie. Through Klara's observation, her belief in the healing power of the Sun, her quiet sacrifice, and her eventual retirement to a scrapyard, I try to open up four theoretical lenses:
🔬 FOUR THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
🧬 Posthumanism — through Cary Wolfe
🤖 Cybernetics and the Relational Self — through N. Katherine Hayles
💼 Emotional Labour — through Arlie Hochschild
💫 Affect Theory — through Sara Ahmed
Each of these angles points to the same uncomfortable truth, that the humans in the novel need Klara's care to feel real, even while they refuse to believe she can feel anything herself.
The presentation closes by returning to its own title:
The Machine — because Klara is manufactured, purchased, and eventually discarded.
That Watches — because her narration quietly reverses the direction of observation, so that we end up watching humanity through her eyes.
And Us — because by the end of the novel, "us" no longer means only the characters, it means the whole human system of economy, love, and cruelty that the story is really examining.
Video: "The Machine That Watches Us" — AI, Emotional Labour, and the Posthuman Subject in Klara and the Sun
📝 Interactive Quiz with E-Certificate
Learning becomes more engaging when it is participatory. To test your understanding of Klara and the Sun and the ideas raised in the presentation, and to make the experience a little more fun, I have designed a short quiz on the novel. Anyone who completes it will receive an e-certificate as a small token of appreciation for their learning spirit.
📝 TAKE THE QUIZ & EARN YOUR E-CERTIFICATE
Test your knowledge of Klara and the Sun — complete the quiz and receive your certificate of participation!
📝 Start the Quiz Now🎓 E-Certificate awarded upon completion
💡 Ted-Ed Lesson: Discussion and Reflection
Beyond watching and testing, real learning grows through dialogue and reflection. To carry this celebration a little further, I have also put together a Ted-Ed lesson built around Klara and the Sun. It invites participants to sit with the novel's harder questions, about care, disposability, and what "human" is even supposed to mean, and to share their own perspectives in a space built for ongoing conversation.
💡 JOIN THE TED-ED LESSON
Reflect on the deeper questions of Klara and the Sun — care, disposability, and what it means to be human — and share your perspective.
What is care?
What is disposability?
What does "human" mean?
📊 Slide Presentation
For anyone who would rather move through the argument at their own pace, I have also prepared a slide version of the presentation, covering the author, the plot, the characters, the four theoretical frameworks, and the closing thesis in a more visual, section-by-section format.
📊 VIEW THE SLIDE PRESENTATION
Move through the argument at your own pace — author, plot, characters, four theoretical frameworks and the closing thesis, all in one place.
🌸 A Tribute to Teachers through Learning
Teacher's Day is not only about words of appreciation, it is about embodying the values that our teachers instil in us: curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity. By engaging closely with a novel like Klara and the Sun, and by turning that engagement into a video, a quiz, and a discussion lesson, I hope to pay tribute to our teachers in the way they would appreciate most.
🎓 YOUR PARTICIPATION MAKES IT MEANINGFUL
Watch
the video presentation
Attempt
the quiz
Go through
the slides
Join
the Ted-Ed discussion
Together, let us mark Teacher's Day 2026 as a festival of knowledge and gratitude.
With warm regards,
Sanjay Rathod
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
🌸 Happy Teacher's Day 2026 — A celebration of curiosity, critical thinking and creativity 🌸 | Klara and the Sun | Kazuo Ishiguro | MKBU
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