Comic Relief

Aside from Get Fuzzy in the Sunday paper, the last comic I remember reading was on the back of a Bazooka gum wrapper.  I was sitting in my dad's truck driving to my grandmother's house when I read the comic.  I was intrigued by it, but at the same time, it did not make much of a difference in my reading life.  Since then, I really had no desire to choose comic books or graphic novels over another kind.  When I was younger, my brother was very into the Captain Underpants series, which was a collection of graphic novels for "preteens," you could say.  Both of us enjoyed those, but they only lasted for so long.

After reading this week's assignments, I realized that if more of my teachers incorporated this kind of text while I was growing up, I might have had a better appreciation for it.  Graphic novels were not encouraged in my school at all; in fact, I'd go as far as to say they were completely discouraged.  They, according to my teachers, served no literary purpose in the classroom.  Well, apparently none of them ever tried before, huh?

Having not been a fan of comics, I was a little hesitant to begin this week's reading assignments.  I was pleasantly surprised, however, after going through everything.  I particularly enjoyed American Born Chinese.  When it started, I was like "How does a monkey fit into this??"  I liked how the author split up each story and would go back to it after another one.  The funny thing I realized here is that even though the first story stopped abruptly, I was able to quickly re-enter it when the author started it up again.  Sometimes this isn't the easiest thing because we tend to forget what was presented first (Or, at least I do. Short-term memory loss is never a good thing).  More importantly, students of 12 or 13 would most likely forget, too.  The illustrations help the reader to jump back into the story.

As a teacher, I think a primary goal should be to find a text that your students can relate to or connect with.  I think American Born Chinese would do that.  Each story has a common theme -- the main character is struggling with identity.  Most students in middle school and high school (hell, even college) struggle to find out who they are.  I think the one that most of my students would connect with would be Jin Wang's story when he realizes he likes Amelia.  Who hasn't experienced that realization that the person sitting across from you is all of a sudden sooooooo cute?? While these students may not fess up to this in the front of the class, I could incorporate journal entries into the lesson.  This way, the responses would take a more personal approach and the students would not feel pressured to say what is right to impress the class.

I think including comics or graphic novels in my classroom is a smart choice.  First and foremost, I would definitely offer Dr. Mortimore's article on the technical aspects of comics.  This helped me understand comics better and led me to have a greater appreciation for them.  I'm sure if I showed this to students, they would have a greater understanding about the dimensions of comics, too.  What I would really like to do is have my students draw their own comics for a story, similar to how the article from NCTE described.  When I was in 11th grade, we were reading Beowulf.  My teacher had us make a comic strip about the story.  I definitely comprehended that story better by creating it for myself.  If I know that as a student I got it, I need to realize that my students will likely respond the same way.

Here are two links that describes some activities with comics.  The second one deals primarily with ESL students, which was discussed in YGBB Chapter 5.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/activities-using-comic-strips
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Derrick-UsingComics.html