Comics in the Classroom Update

[Andy]

I presented a demo for my writing class on "Comics in the Classroom". The instructor today asked me if I would speak at a conference on the topic! I said, yes, and I am already scheduled to speak on the same subject at a different conference for educators in October!

I think it is time for comics to find their place in schools. (I always put in a plug for Usagi!)

[Steve Hubbell]

Cool!
And congradulations

A couple articles you might find of interest...
http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/NR ... 4&Month=12%>

MSDE LAUNCHES COMIC BOOK INITIATIVE TO BOOST READING

INNOVATIVE PROGRAM INVOLVES DIAMOND COMIC DISTRIBUTORS, DISNEY IN UNIQUE PARTNERSHIP
BALTIMORE (December 15, 2004)

Maryland students will soon be able to take advantage of an unusual form of literature not often associated with schools as they strengthen their reading skills.

The Maryland State Department of Education, in partnership with Diamond Comic Distributors and Disney Publishing Worldwide, is developing an instructional toolkit that will allow schools to supplement traditional literature with comic books and graphic novels.

MSDE’s new reading initiative is being assembled by a creative team that includes award-winning teachers, reading specialists, educational administrators, library specialists, comic book authors, and publishers.

“Reading is a wonderful activity in all of its many forms,” said Dr. Nancy S. Grasmick, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools. “Our job as educators is to help children learn to enjoy reading, making it a pleasurable experience rather than a burden. By using nontraditional materials along with our regular materials, we believe students will become even more excited about reading.”

Maryland’s unique statewide project will not mandate comic books or replace traditional classroom materials. Rather, the program will provide options for teachers as they seek to encourage reading across the grade spectrum.

Pilot instructional projects began this month in Baltimore, Harford, Carroll, and Queen Anne’s Counties. In addition, the Jessup Correctional Institution is developing a pilot reading instruction program for incarcerated adults using graphic novels.

“Comic books offer a wonderful gateway to the joys of reading,” said Steve Geppi, president and chief executive of Diamond Comic Distributors. “They bring together art and literature to communicate ideas and spark the imagination—much like the best novels. This is an exciting program for Maryland schools.”

Diamond has given the State a $10,000 project grant to support substitute teachers and other costs associated with the pilot programs currently underway. The corporation also has provided thousands of dollars in materials to creative team members and pilot schools to help launch the project.

Disney has agreed to provide materials for the elementary school roll-out, and will be creating new titles for Maryland elementary programs.

Graphic literature has drawn increasing interest from educators. They can be used as powerful motivational tools, provide context for written text for students who have difficulty with visualization, and provide reluctant readers with the foundations they need to move on to more challenging materials. Comic books have found their place in both remedial and gifted classrooms.

An expert panel of K-12 educators, college and university professors, comic book authors, and others involved in the graphic novel field is selecting program materials for the project. Comic books considered for inclusion will be vetted by panelists to ensure their utility in the classroom. In addition, a team of higher education and reading experts will develop an evaluation of the program's content, motivational capabilities, and effectiveness.

Instructional components for the program are being put together for elementary schools beginning in grade 3, middle schools, high schools, and adult education programs. The initiative uses state content standards and is directly connected with Maryland’s Voluntary State Curriculum.

Plans are for the Maryland Comics Initiative Instructional Toolkit to be completed by June, with a roll-out of the program to state systems scheduled for fall of 2005.

Dr. Grasmick is scheduled to make a presentation on the graphic literature project before the International Reading Association in San Antonio this coming May.

and...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1012/p11s01-legn.html

from the October 12, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1012/p11s01-legn.html

'Hamlet' too hard? Try a comic book
It may be a shocking dilution of academics - or an ingenious way to hook reluctant readers.
By Teresa Méndez | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

At Oneida High School in upstate New York, Diane Roy teaches the students who failed ninth-grade English the first time around. Last year, on the heels of "Hamlet," she presented her class with a graphic novel - essentially a variety of comic book.

Comic books have long been deemed inappropriate classroom reading material. If they appeared at all, they were smuggled in, disguised within the pages of a physics textbook or a volume of Shakespeare.

It's this image - of comic book as contraband - that has endured in the popular imagination at least since the 1950s, when the Senate Judiciary Committee investigated the comic book's sinister influence and potential to inspire juvenile delinquency.

But now the books are turning up on some classroom bookshelves - especially in classes where teachers are desperate to engage struggling and reluctant adolescent readers. For a certain type of student - particularly those who are visually oriented and bright but may lack the motivation or maturity to succeed in freshman English - the graphic novel can become a "bridge to other things," explains Ms. Roy.

Today, the comic book - and its lengthier sibling, the graphic novel - are growing in scope and popularity. In 2002, the theme of the annual Teen Read Week sponsored by YALSA, the youth branch of the American Library Association, was "Get Graphic." Graphic novels can be found in public and school libraries, as well as bookstores, where entire shelves are often devoted to the genre. Manga, the Japanese graphic novels, have swept up teen readers.

And in July, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story positing that the comic book could become the next "new literary form."

Roy's experiment with the graphic novel as text struck gold when she assigned Art Spiegelman's "Maus," the story of his parents' experience in the Holocaust told as a cat and mouse allegory - a highly regarded work that won the Pulitzer Prize. From there, some students moved to graphic novels about Hitler, and finally made their way to traditional books about the Holocaust.

Each student was required to read five graphic novels. But "there wasn't a single student in this class of kids - nonreaders who don't enjoy reading - who didn't read double that number," Roy says. "They would read them overnight ... they were reading them at lunch, in the hallway."

Roy adapted her curriculum on graphic novels from a series developed for teachers by the New York City Comic Book Museum.

Literacy efforts have traditionally focused not on adolescents, but on younger students.

And some reading experts are worried that with most reform efforts being directed at students in the third grade or lower, another crisis is being ignored.

Even as elementary student scores on federal tests are increasing slightly, high school scores are declining. Only about one third of 12th-graders were reading at a proficient level in 2002, down from 40 percent in 1992.

Adolescent readers face a host of complicated problems, ranging from general reluctance to pick up a book to aliteracy, an inability to fully grasp the meaning of words. Proponents suggest that comic books and graphic novels can help.

For the reluctant reader, they are absorbing. For the struggling reader or the reader still learning English, they offer accessibility: pictures for context, and possibly an alternate path into classroom discussions of higher-level texts. They expand vocabulary, and introduce the ideas of plot, pacing, and sequence.

But such arguments remain unconvincing to many other educators who firmly believe this form of pop culture has no place in the classroom.

"Once kids know how to read, there is no good reason to continue to use dumbed-down materials," writes Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, in an e-mail. "They should be able to read poems, novels, essays, books that inform them, enlighten them, broaden their horizons,"

And there is always a concern about the appropriateness of content.

But just getting reluctant adolescents to read - anything - can be a boon to their discovery of the joy of reading, says Marilyn Reynolds, author of "I Won't Read and You Can't Make Me: Reaching Reluctant Teen Readers."

Ms. Reynolds, who worked for decades at an alternative high school for struggling students in a Los Angeles suburb, tells the story of a girl "steeped" in graphic novels whom she met at a library.

"That's probably all she will read in high school," says Reynolds. "She's a rebel. She's probably failing English ... because she doesn't conform, but she's got this fervor for that kind of expression. How much better that than not having any fervor at all."

Reynolds may be extreme in her belief that reading a comic book or graphic novel is a worthy end in itself. Most educators hold that the genre is best used as a bridge to more complex material.

For example, Wonder Woman comics could interest students in Greek mythology, says Philip Charles Crawford, the library director at Essex High School, in Essex Junction, Vt.

"The subject matter leads you other places and I think the majority of readers are going to read other things," says Mr. Crawford, who has written "Graphic Novels 101: Selecting and Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy for Children and Young Adults."

And graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi's memoirs, "Persepolis" and "Persepolis 2," have exposed readers to life in Iran in the wake of the Islamic Revolution. Ms. Satrapi recently spoke at Edwin G. Foreman High School in Chicago, where students read "Persepolis" for class.

But others worry that the comics versions of classics like "Frankenstein" or "The Odyssey" may come to replace the originals. Carol Jago, an English teacher at Santa Monica High School in California, believes this raises questions of equity in the classroom. "If we end up giving the real thing to our honors students and the comic books to everyone else, we're actually demeaning the nature of public education," she says.

Yet defenders of the comic book point out that many adolescent afficionados of the genre have gone on to excel at the written word.

For his book "Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!" editor Sean Howe collected essays in which established writers like Jonathan Lethem and Aimee Bender divulge their longtime love of comics.

Even Edward P. Jones, who won this year's Pulitzer Prize for his novel "The Known World," recently admitted that he was weaned on comic books. Until he was 13, he says, he'd never read a book without a picture.

Abayo...

[ziritrion]

...

This message brought to you by Steve Hubbell, Head Ninja of the Usagi Yojimbo Dojo Intelligence Service .

Seriously, your amount of images, articles and interviews regarding UY never ceases to amaze me.

[Andy]

Thanks, Steve. It seems like about once a week I see a new reference to the educational potential of comics. I print each article out and I'm always glad to find more!

[Andy]

Yesterday I presented my "Comics in the Classroom" presentation to teachers within my school district. Three times! I think it is more difficult to speak to co-workers than strangers! It was well received for the most part. A couple teachers have told me already that they intend to use comics in some way in future lessons now, and that they had not previously.

I did put in a plug for in each presentation as well.

[Stan Sakai]

It sounds like it went well.

Yes, it is more difficult when speaking to peers. You want to give them as much information as possible, but don't want to talk down to them.

I have a basic presentation, but I encourage questions from the audience because it helps me in knowing what their interests are.