Comic Relief

I suppose I have always assumed a stuffy superiority to graphic novels.  Thirteen years in my English classrooms had conditioned me to segregate them into the minuscule group of literature.  In fact, American Born Chinese is the first graphic novel that I have ever read.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Actually, I was shocked to see how engaging it is.  I read it in two sittings; I could not put it down!

The greatest asset of graphic novels is that they meet students where they are.  Frey and Fisher discuss multiple literacies, which translates to the fact that we live in a very visual world.  (I absolutely love the concept of a "visual vocabulary" that they introduced.)  I was talking about blogging with a friend the other day, and she told me that she preferred Tumblr because it allowed her to express herself with videos and pictures as opposed to words.  She told me: "I'm better at expressing myself with pictures and music than words."  This idea still astounds me.  My thoughts are always the most free and complete when I put them into words, and until very recently I believed that was the same case for everyone (except for super talented artists and musicians).  I was telling another friend of mine about how we are going to learn to teach graphic novels in our future classrooms, and I showed him American Born Chinese.  He opened the novel and read it right then in one sitting!  These two examples show how this generation is already engaged in multiple literacies outside of the classroom.  (So then, why don't we bring what they enjoy outside of the classroom into the classroom?  Just a thought that I have picked up through the readings.)

The readings this week were very informative for thinking about how to graphic novels in the classroom.  Frey and Fisher discussed how they studied "techniques the artist had used to convey meaning" and "brainstormed descriptive vocabulary."  The Shades of Meaning activity was awesome, and definitely something that I want to try with my students.  I also really respect the way they engaged student imagination, by allowing them to determine the endings of stories and creating the illustrated stories.  These activities model that graphic novels can inspire critical thought.  I see myself using most (if not all) of these techniques in my own classroom.

I never thought about the depth contained in the style of graphic novels.  The "gutter" is probably the style with the most potential for student engagement out of all of the mediums that I am aware of in terms of independent responses to a story.  To illustrate this: I believe that television is at the bottom of the chart because the imagination does not have to work very hard; the picture is clearly set before the viewer.  Written vocabulary novels stimulate the imagination, but the picture is still provided.  The reader simply needs to translate words into images.  However, the concept of the "gutter" in graphic novels demands the most imaginative exercise because it requires the reader to be a "silent accomplice" in the creation of the story.  This is active reading at its best!

One concern that I have about teaching mediums such as graphic novels is fielding resistance from parents and administration.  Frey and Fisher stated: "[h]aving begun with the idea that graphic novels were comic books at best and a waste of time at worst, we now realize the power they have for engaging students in authentic writing."  Indeed, the examples of student writing found in their article is more creative than a lot of the responsive writing that I remember doing in my English classes.  The results Frey and Fisher found should require English education communities to seriously consider literacy beyond "words and language" in the classroom.  The two friends I referenced earlier demonstrate that culture has already embraced this shift to multiple literacies.  It is time for our classrooms to follow suit, but will the parents and leaders outside of the classroom agree?