Comics Wake Up an Unengaged Class

The new national Common Core standards for education promote the reading of the same old selection of books by dead white guys. But good teachers know that in addition to appreciating the classics, students need to read literature that connects thoughtfully with their lives now. Teacher Robert Plonka describes how that works in an urban classroom.
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The number of students I've lost to gun violence outnumbers my years as a teacher. I walk around my classroom and pose a question: "Are you safer on the streets of Chicago with or without a gun?" Students erupt with enthusiasm, three jump to their feet, and two begin yelling. In their hands they hold a copy of Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty, a graphic novel, a true story of an eleven year-old boy who accidentally kills an innocent girl in 1994, becomes a fugitive, and is slain by the very same gang he was trying to impress. This was the liveliest discussion about a book I have ever had as students debated firearm safety, gun laws, social justice, and a reality they face every day.

Some may question the appropriateness of using a graphic novel in a high school curriculum. However, comic books have allowed me to captivate my students' attention in order to expose them to a wider range of other texts and ideas. My students have evaluated chapters and speeches from Du Bois to Dr. King, discussed contemporary and historical issues, and argued political perspectives. Each year I try to empower my students with the critical literacy skills necessary to compete in this economy and navigate through our democracy.

Though my students may be fervently debating characters and conflict now, many had entered my class disengaged and unmotivated. It is no wonder a teenager would be detached from the classroom when everything being taught is so disconnected from their daily lives. In addition to suffering the violence of Chicago's Southside and the barriers of poverty, they were also far below grade-level performance. In this particular class I had students as old as 21 with the literacy skills of the average eight-year-old. I find it ironic that those who are most directly affected by gun violence have the fewest tools to participate in the policy that affects it. In my six years as a teacher I have had students who were parents, providers for their families, caretakers, homeless, hungry, abused, and yet above all resilient. Some of my students have been shot, and some have shot others. I taught first generation high school graduates, dropouts who dropped back in, and non-readers who grew into readers.

When I first handed out 30 copies of X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, students gasped in excitement. Once we read the opening scene in which a man of the law guns down a child because he is a mutant, they were all hooked. We could not help but draw ties to the Holocaust and the massacre of African American youth today. We wrote essays in which students compared quotes from characters like Professor Xavier and Magneto to speeches by Martin Luther King and Malcom X. We compared the 1960's civil rights struggles to the battle for gay rights today (a theme that Bryan Singer expresses in his film adaptation of the X-Men). Aaron McGruder's comic strip, The Boondocks, was a springboard to an honest conversation about race, culture, politics, and social issues. My students and I shared our experiences to further understand the reading and the world around us.

It is often insulting for young adults to endure a lesson on phonics, but graphic novels became a vehicle for delivering that necessary instruction. We dissected the letter sounds of words like "kaboom!" and "Sssshinkt". Students volunteered to read aloud as we performed and analyzed pages. When we took a fieldtrip to a comicbook store downtown, their faces lit up at all the possibilities of interesting characters and plotlines to explore. They were shocked that their favorite show, Walking Dead, was also a graphic novel. As a culminating project, they created their own graphic novels. They were enamored with this assignment. These students were the ones struggling the most as readers in the school, but they were authoring their own stories.

Andrea was one of the lowest readers in my class. She read below a first grade level, and yet she came early and stayed late to finish her project. She wrote a biography of her idol, Beyonce. This project motivated her to create an email address, learn how to use Microsoft PowerPoint, send emails with attachments, and use a variety of resources for research. She read her own written work with enthusiasm and investment.

Dequan was finally able to channel his love for art and manga to tell an original mythological hero's journey. Jonathan wrote an autobiographical comic about his childhood. Through a computer program, he transformed his Facebook pictures into cartoons. The narrative details the conditions of his environment, the fights he saw in school, the friends he lost, the teachers that tried, and the family members who helped.

I cannot count the number of times a student has said, "You know, that's the first book I've ever ACTUALLY read." Whenever students told me they hated reading, I saw it as a challenge to spark an interest. I resorted to what worked for me as an adolescent . . . comics. Each student who contributed to that class left witha few more literacy tools that would help him or her beyond high school. Over the years it has become my passion to first engage the disengaged and then to educate the under-educated. I think I have done that for at least some students.