“Teaching With Graphic Novels” by Brigid Alverson

 

       One of my choices for the Midterm/Final project was the use of graphic novels to help struggling students learning science, I used the book “The cartoon guide to chemistry by Larry Gonick” for the project because It was readily available, covered most of the chemistry subjects we were teaching,

“Teaching With Graphic Novels” by Brigid Alverson addressed the pros and cons of using graphic novels within the classroom. Addressing things, I did not think much about and some of the concerns I had in looking for a suitable graphic novel for my class. The biggest issue with choosing graphic novels is the fact that they are usually full of violence, profanity, sexual content, and crime. Some school districts “remove all copies of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon, 2003) from their classrooms” because it contains “powerful images of torture (Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett)”. Factors like these make it difficult to choose graphic novels for any classroom setting. Since part of teaching is proper moral behavior. Even my choice “The cartoon guide to chemistry” you could identify very mild sexual content and profanity. But this was suitable, the girl was a fully dressed student and the teacher wore a wizard’s outfit portraying men as smarter. But it was NOTHING like graphic novels like Batman, that show half naked women, blood and gore.

The other factor of concern is that vocabulary is often advanced and rarely offer any terminology to struggling students to translate. But “For weak language learners and readers, graphic novels’ concise text paired with detailed images helps [them] decode and comprehend the text,” But in “The cartoon guide to chemistry” being a science book this was not always the case. Several of my students addressed that the article had words they were unfamiliar with and made it actually harder on them. So, the images do not necessarily help. I am not sure if its because of the subject ‘Science’ or in general that certain words address issues but being Science I would have to say subject. So, I would recommend to authors to toss in translation breakdowns and definition of terms just to add extra understanding to such students.

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Graphic novels on the other hand offer some solid advantages in reading education,  they “ offer a different type of reading experience while modeling concise language usage”  providing easy reading in the way of less words used and are “useful for teaching new vocabulary, visual literacy, and reading skills. Student did address that they felt the understood chemistry better, but due to the Covid 19 closures (Mar-May 2020) I was unable to assess if it actually made any improvement to their grade.  ”Alverson  states that “Research shows that our brains process and store visual information faster and more efficiently than verbal information,” So, if we process images better then why do text books have so few pictures?

I agree with Brigid Alverson in the use of graphic novels in the classroom, especially  since we “store visual information faster and more efficiently than verbal information” Ive stressed hands on instruction, now I see one of the reason why it’s so effective.  Seeing is more efficient for learning than reading. The combination of literature incorporated into visual art is a powerful tool for the classroom.  Publishers are starting to see this and producing more children friendly graphic novels for schools. Going as far as to provide lesson plans, information on curricula, and tie-ins to the Common Core! Graphic novels are even more common in classrooms and school libraries than ever before. But work still need to be done to incorporate graphic novels into classrooms other than literature class. If graphic novels/ visual information is as powerful as Brigid Alverson addresses in her book “Teaching With Graphic Novels”, this could help millions of struggling students to overcome issues they face within the classroom.