To Teach: the journey, in comics

I really enjoyed this book and I think it had a lot of great points for all types of teachers. It was an interesting and fun read! One of the themes it really focused on was the challenge of good classroom management and how to balance standards with your own teaching style. One example of this that really stood out to me was when the administration came in to observe Bill and make sure he was following standards and policies. He struggled with this internally because he felt that if he fell into this mundane pattern of requirements, he would risk losing focus on the student. I can see this as being a huge challenge in teaching. You want to make it interesting for the student and have their curiosity help drive their learning, but you are also in charge of making sure they are understanding and learning all the material. I think Bill achieved this easily by having students do real-world and hands-on activities to learn the material. It's nice because in art, students are always doing hands-on activities that can be combined with real world problem solving. Another challenge that Bill faced that I found interesting was the "Keeping Track" chapter about assessment and evaluation. I liked Bill's story he told about the test he took where most questions were very simple to him, but if English wasn't his first language he would've struggled majorly. It's important to remember that our students have all sorts of different personal backgrounds and experiences. We need to be aware of where they are in their learning journey and how we can assist them to achieve their individual learning goals. He also reminisced about his own students in his class and thought about the different challenges and opportunities and how much they can vary from student to student. Depending on their home situation and their parents' job and lifestyle, some students have more advantages than others. He gave the example of Clinton and Genesis. Clinton was lucky enough to have had very supportive parents who were very active in his education. I'm sure Genesis' mom wanted to be more active in her daughter's education, but had to supported her in other ways by working more jobs in order to have enough money. When Bill was talking to the administration about test scores, he noticed a significant difference in Clinton and Genesis' test scores. The administrators made it seem like Genesis's low scores were due to special needs, however he knew his students and their abilities and realized it wasn't because Genesis wasn't smart, she just didn't get as much help and focus on her as Clinton did. I think it's Bill's role to help Genesis boost her scores by working extra with her and putting in more time with her. This is important to realize as a teacher. You are there for your students and your main goal should be to help them be successful.

I think comics and graphic novels are a great way to grab students attention, especially those that don't necessarily like reading. It's a great interdisciplinary tool to connect art with reading and writing. It also introduces different art styles and techniques. In the reading on elearning, Williams makes some great points on why comics are great by saying, "(1) There is a great deal of student interest in this genre; (2) They are inexpensive to obtain; and (3) The vocabulary is not difficult so they are easy to read." I did a comic book lesson with my 7th grade middle school class recently in my Level III field experience and they created some really awesome comics! Comics are a great way to introduce contemporary artists. When I presented the introduction to the lesson with middle schoolers, they were surprised to hear that there were female comic book artists making comics currently. When teaching the lesson and watching the students work on it, I realized many struggled to come up with a flowing storyline, but when it came time to turn in their pieces and do a gallery walk they really had some great artwork! 

Here's an example of one of my 7th grader's artwork: