Comic Books and Other Hooks: 21st Century Education

Teachers and parents are always looking for innovative programs that address the multiple levels of ability and differentiation found in every classroom. Language Arts is a discipline where the range of student abilities has a tremendous scope, and often some intricate variables. Enveloped in the power of the imagination, the artist in all of us, and the crucible of media literacy, these initiatives will work wonders in the classroom, for all students. How many parents have heard, “But mom, I am finished!” The same, but perhaps muted response, occurs in the class room and leads to reluctance and resentment when it comes to further performing the writing competency in school or on crucial writing assessments. So how do we solve these issues for our children? Teaching writing is not an easy process, especially if one holds some of the aforementioned supposed truisms as some type of dogmatic gospel truth. Undoubtedly, the follower of those supposed principles will have dashed the hopes of future writers on the rocks of inflexibility and lack of vision. Recognizing writing as a process, rather than a product is a salient first step. Summative driven writing instruction at best affirms those who have some ability and freezes the potential of those who may not have any natural inclination toward the subject. The good news is that all children have fantastic imaginations and the ability to be creative. Don't scuttle that on the rocks out-dated educational practices. Initially provide a broad ranging subject that all children can identify with; for the purposes of this article, the hero. Every child has a hero: real, imagined, in the home, or in their mind. Take the students through a process of brainstorming the entire character, do this collectively! Have the students think about powerful words to describe the character's actions, reasons for doing things (motivations), personality, how that character would act in different situations, and finally their physical appearance. Congratulations, you have just done a character sketch. It is surprising that when asked to do a proper character sketch, most elementary school students will simply draw you a picture and leave it at that. The curricular component of media awareness may now be addressed. Break up the classroom structure and create groups of five students, give each of them a real emergency situation that actually occurred in the media (obviously filter out any graphic or disturbing images) and just have the students discuss what that hero, given the sum of their persona would do. Students should be talking about books they are reading, so too, should there be a significant amount of “writer talk.” Now that the modeling is under way, have the students strike out on their own; independent thought scaffolded by process is powerful. Once students have repeated the process for their own hero, have them present their results to the class. It is not unusual that the genders will view this phase differently. Keeping in mind these are not absolute truisms, but female writers often think their work is not as good as it really is, and male students often regard their work as pure gold until it is presented in the light of day. Oral presentation of this part of the paradigm is valuable in that it quenches that psychological need for the elementary school child's brain to say “Ta da! I am finished.” It also equates those problematic notions of gender perception of work. Have students place that work in an identifiable folder. Do not be afraid to review basic building block functions of topic sentence construction with supporting sentences and then clearly explain how a narrative chronological structure might appear. Draw a graph if you need to. Technical infusions of skill sets in the process is critical, often educators fail their students in making assumptions about what they should know given their respective grade levels. If you are going to make an assumption, assume they don't know. Most language arts dinosaurs would now assign the summative, STOP! What about the big picture? Students may have generated wonderful characters, empathized with them, even made the jump to the fourth dimension, where they could become the character and act accordingly to that creation's motivations, but no story exists. Without a narrative, this would be akin to putting a robust character in a theatrical production that might be presented in a food court. Students need to visualize the world behind the story and literally see it mapped out. Enter the graphic organizer. Beginning a piece of writing is easy, because everyone has some initial idea, but like a cross-country race and those who sprint at its commencement run out of gas. The graphic organizer mimics a process which should be occurring when a student is reading: the compartmentalization of salient information about all aspects of the text into to neat divisions of thought and memory that allows for contemplation and analysis, not just mere surface knowledge. Enthusiastic readers are able to do this in their active consciousness making reading enjoyable as their thought processes can ebb from the past to present and even to future predictions with the benefit of reflection and synthesis. Reluctant readers cannot perform such a task. Thus, having one's pupils construct compartmentalized graphic organizers as found in comic book panels would have the following twin effects: those students who learn to physically create these intuitive blocks of plot, character, setting, conflict, and mood and match them with a visual image can later do so without the benefit of pen and paper when reading. The inverse effect is that when reading, this component the of the writing process has the hermeneutic cascade effect of breaking down pages of written text into these same compartmentalized graphic/text units within the conscious and subconscious of the reluctant reader. What was part of an instructed process now naturally becomes intuitive for students who practice this process of writing. Guidance regarding assessment must still be a part of the student's schema of tools required by the writing process.