Implications For Teachers And Teacher Educators

By Author: Amandda
Total Articles: 60
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Darah and Heidi taught this unit on comic books in a summer school class for Deaf students, all of us argue that secondary English teachers in both middle and high school need to take a closer look at the advantages provided by a unit on comic books and graphic novels for all of their students. Comics and graphic novels appeal to today's visual learner because they provide unique and interesting combinations of text and graphics that engage large numbers of students. Librarians and teachers have found that comics attract kids and motivate them to read. In particular, boys who often shun reading are motivated to read through the use of comic books (McFann, 2004; Smetana & Grisham, 2007). Teachers who provide Vibram Fivefingers Shoes materials in which students can see the forms and features the written word can take and the link to visual images may help to create more enthusiastic readers.

The rich, complex plots and narrative structures of comic books engage advanced readers. Schwarz (2002) indicated that comics may be used to teach literary terms and techniques such ...
... as dialogue and that using comic books can enhance student media skills. Thus, students can explore elements such as how color affects emotion, how angles of viewing affect perception, and how realism, or the lack of it, plays into the message of the work.

The research literature is beginning to reflect that some heretofore neglected genres (e.g., science fiction, comic books, Internet sources) may provide the basis for teaching critical and analytical skills to students (Grisham & Wolsey, 2006). It is not necessary for teachers to love a genre or to be technological experts to support academic learning. As Frey and Fisher (2004) noted, "These forms of popular culture [graph-Jc novels] provided a visual vocabulary for all sorts of scaffolding, writing techniques, particularly dialogue, tone, and mood" (p. 24). Tackling difficult subjects is another valid use of comic books. For example, chwarz (2002) wrote explicitly about Spiegelman's Maus as a way to scaffold the Holocaust. Schwartz noted, "An important benefit of graphic novels is that they present alternative views of culture, history, and human life in general in accessible ways". I Initial teacher preparation programs should consider the inclusion of graphic novels in literacy methods courses and children's literature courses, highlighting their usefulness in teaching reading—particularly to struggling readers, ELLs, and boys. For example, a common practice is to use a comic book version of a "classic" such as Romeo and Juliet to scaffold the storyline prior to tackling the original's Elizabethan English. Comics can introduce students to literature which they might not otherwise encounter (Schwarz, 2002). As with the unit Darah and Heidi Vibram Fivefingers Shoes taught, bringing comics into the classroom can also stimulate the exploration of the medium itself, increasingly a computer-assisted effort, as noted by award-winning graphic artist, Gene Luen Yang (Smetana & Grisham, 2007).

Teachers may use comic books in many ways to support student learning and scaffold reading and writing and for other important educational purposes: stimulating critical thinking, providing alternative views of history, and for problem-solving in various content areas. There is more to discover—but first, we must begin to use this genre and become comfortable with it. As a case in point, Heidi and Darah, both 30-something teachers, are quite comfortable teaching this genre. Linda and Dana, teacher educators who are a bit older, learned a great deal through the process of writing this article and now include comic books and graphic novels in the courses they teach in their university teacher preparation programs. They continue to engage in research about the efficacy of using graphic novels in the classroom.