Blog Post #8: Comics by Megan Williams
1. Talk about the overall claims of these two scholars (Versaci and McCloud). What arguments are they making about comics and their uses? Use examples from their texts to support your summary.
I think that using comics as an English lesson is a great way for students to really get into reading. Personally I am more visual so I loved having the pictures available to me while I read the story plot. I think that now a days, teachers are following the guidelines given to them that they have lost all sense of what the kids want to read and if they are enjoying it. As teachers, we should be helping them love a subject not despise it. My brother is probably the most stubborn reader I have ever met. Trying to get him to read was like trying to make a pig fly… impossible. However, he is very artistic and I think that if he had a lesson like we did with genre books, he would have enjoyed it much more. Maybe even understood it better because he would be able to make his own ending through drawing. This creativity that is lacking in our education system now is only hurting the children. As Versaci says, “Adolescents and teenagers today are surrounded by diverse and increasingly complex media, and some will often find classroom materials to be dull, irrelevant, or both. But by placing a comic book-the basic form of which they no doubt recognize-into the context of a classroom, teachers can catch students off guard in a positive way, and this disorientation has, in my experience, led students to become more engaged by a given work” (Versaci 62). Kids learn what they like and what they don’t like really early, so why not get them excited about on subject! And a fun little fact… English isn’t the only subject this could be used for! Currently I am reading Art Spiegelman’s Maus 1 and Maus 2 graphic novels and they are historically based on the Holocaust. To spice up a lesson of the gruesome Holocaust, teachers could have their students read these two graphic novels and get an understanding of what it was actually like. These books allow for open interpretation that a textbook can’t.
2. How did reading your text from the genre series compare to other reading we’ve done to date? How did it change how you read? How can you imagine using drama, comics or graphic novels in the classroom?
I really enjoyed my genre series choice! Not only am I a huge fan of Rapunzel but she kicked ass in that book which made it that much better! It was a quick and enjoyable read and quite frankly it didn’t feel like I was reading. The book kept me engaged because I had to match the pictures and dialogue with how the order went! Sometimes I got lost but it wasn’t too hard to get back on track. I am going to use graphic novels in my future class because I feel like it will be a great way for the kids to enjoy reading but be creative! I will probably find a couple of graphic novels for them to choose from and then they will read it. Then I will probably have them write a different ending to them and they can add their own pictures! I really liked Rapunzel’s Revenge because SHE did all of the fighting and SHE rescued herself. It was very empowering for me to see a woman in that type of a role and I think it would be a good choice for some of my younger female students to read! Maybe boost their confidence up!