Unit 3

 Unit 3 Blog

The first article that we addressed in this unit, Graphic Novels: The good, the Bad, and the Ugly, was a pretty straight-forward article essentially introducing what graphic novels are, their origins, how they caught on, how they vary, and how they can be used in a classroom. The author is an educator and regularly gives speeches at conferences, but realized during a question one day that he simply knew nothing about comics and decided to get educated on them. The article is presented as a Q&A-type read, with common questions being presented and then the author answering them afterwards. It is a great read for anyone looking to become more informed on what comics/graphic novels are, how they can be useful in classrooms, and why they haven’t been fully implemented or embraced by a lot of educators and school districts. This is a great read to start the unit off, filling in any unknowns for students as they have the information about comics presented clearly to them in an organized method.

The next article, titled Comics, the Canon, and the Classroom, addresses how teachers tend to hold on to canonized text-based literature when it comes to their lesson plans, and seem to struggle to implement newer media styles and texts. The author presents reasons for this, such as teachers not having enough info or studies to show the positive effects of graphic novels in the classroom and simply not knowing enough about graphic novels in general. They also address that policy may have a big part to do with it, not feeling that parents respect graphic novels enough to support them being implemented within classrooms, and the education boards fearing any potential backlash or negative responses that may come from doing so. But, the author gives examples of how to implement graphic novels in both English and History classrooms, and the values that using the readings and visuals can bring to the students (such as an additional sensory input to digest and understand what they are reading). They make a great case for the benefits of using comics within classes, and call for additional research and studies of graphic novels to bring more support and publicity to their benefits when it comes to education and student interest. As well, they recommend making canonized literature into comic books, to implement both at the same time, and to then show how such graphic novels can help portray the canonized material in a different/new/alternative way for students. After reading this article, I have begun to search for different varieties of canonical texts that have been made into graphic novels. While I have my own opposition to teaching certain canons (such as the obtuse language used in them and how many students don't feel they apply to them today), I believe that using comics to share the story may help more students feel interested and engaged, as well as giving them a visual to work with when trying to understand the language.

Learning Language Between the Panels: Comics, Performance, Shakespeare, and ELL was the third reading of this unit, which addressed how students can develop analytic and storytelling skills by being taught how to view and understand what happens between panels in comic books. The author talks about how students can act out what they think is happening between the panels, mentioning using performance and plays like Shakespeare to convey what is not shown in the comics. These gutters serve as a “prompt for student creativity,” and help students in creating their own versions and understanding of what happens within the comics. The article also provides links to several different comic-creation websites where students can create their own dialogue to go along with premade comics, as well as making their own comics from scratch, further fueling their creativity and teaching a new way for students to express themselves and their ideas. These reasons alone are enough for me to want to implement these types of activities within my class, especially with the easy access that they have (so long as my students have computers at home or provided to them in school).

The next article from this unit was Using Graphic Texts in Secondary Classrooms: A Tale of Endurance. This article was somewhat similar to the first one of this unit, Graphic Novels: The good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in that the author addresses things they learned about comics as their knowledge expanded, including listing the different titles that have been used to refer to them (comics, comix, sequential art, graphic novels). The author also mentions how they discovered that it takes just as much time to read and digest a comic as it does plain text, saying that it took her twelve hours to fully comprehend and read this "lazy reading" as her husband referred to. When properly done and focused on, comics are not easy or lazy reading assignments. She mentions too that when it comes to collected graphic novels to use in class, the best sources are people who have read comics and are familiar with them themselves, which means the students themselves at times. The same thing goes for employees at comic shops, who will have more knowledge about the comics and can guide teachers to good recommendations on what to use in class. She expresses concern over the hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine visualizations that comics bring, and how it can create uncomfortable but necessary conversations within class (which I feel is especially important noways with how ingrained the youth are in social media and showing off their bodies/trying to look like a certain celebrity or influencer). The author mentions how comics were able to held her students comprehend such grand happenings such as the Vietnam War and the holocaust in WWII, how the extra visuals helped to communicate the scope of things and give students a visual to work with along with the texts. Using what I learned in this article, I can make sure to apply the right kinds of graphic novels to use in class, as well as was able to become better informed on the history and styles of graphic novels. I have ready several comics in my life, but did not realize exactly how expansive the graphic novel universe is.

The last article from this unit is titled I Got This: Visual Methods as a Restorative Practice. This article addressed how using alternative teaching and inclusion within the classroom helps students participated and become interested, where they were not at all interested or participating before. The article talks about overcoming "classic" teaching models and making sure to integrate new types of teaching and involvement in the classroom, which helps pull students into interacting who may not have before. For example, using graphic essays instead of longer typed/written essays makes sure to bring in students who may not have confidence in their overall skills as writers (and thus may not put a lot of effort into the work). I feel that this article and its example with Jason is invaluable to giving me evidence for why I should break the traditional mold of how we should educate our students, and further supports my desire to include all my students and provide them with a plethora of options and projects styles, instead of sticking to the classic papers-only projects that I grew up with and that we continue to see perpetuated in many school systems.

This week's articles addressed utilizing comic books in the classroom, what has hindered their use up to this point, how to overcome those hindrances, as well as introducing unique lesson plans to implement them into the classroom and help students expand their learning experiences. If it were not for these readings/this unit, I may not have thought about using comics within my future lessons.