I had a wonderful time observing my students give each other feedback on their comics last week. Note: This piece is from last spring.
For their magazine project, we do NUMEROUS writing pieces: features, opinion piece, book review, creative writings... and a comic. My students always ask if they can use Comic Life or some other computer program to draw their comics, because they say their drawings stink. I always say, "NO. How many times are you going to be asked to draw COMICS in this life? You are LUCKY. This is the probably the last truly fun thing you'll ever be asked to do in school. And why on earth would we want to see comics that all look alike? I don't care if you draw stick figures. They're cute."
They have a hard time accepting this; they are perfectionists. I consider it my role to break them of the need to have everything perfect and instead I praise their progress. "Wow!!!" I say, actually meaning it. "This is so much better than your first draft!"
You never know what kids can do until you push them to do it. Your fourth time drawing the comic? Guess what: I bet your attention to detail has REALLY IMPROVED. I am often incredibly impressed with their inventiveness as their drafts progress. After they finally GET that they WILL get a failing score on the comic if we can't read their teeny, messy writing, or if all the speech bubbles are in the wrong order, they buckle down and start to get serious about their comic as a piece of art and logic.
Last week's feedback session made me giddy. To hear the types of intellectual discussions the kids were forced to have, in explaining WHY they did not find some of their groupmates' comics funny or how their classmates could improve... it was a type of discussion I feel like kids rarely have. They were analysts, they were critics, they were creators, they were collaborators. They laughed, they shouted, they insulted each other in the best-natured of ways. I could see how we'd built an environment of trust and teamwork over the past 6 months. I'd never be able to do comics in October or November. We have to do comics after we know each other, after we can tell each other, "I'm sorry, that's just not funny," and not worry that the person's self-image is going to be ruined. We can be pretty brutal with each other. Some of my challenge is helping a couple kids be less brutal, but that is totally the lesson they need in life, trust me.
Last week's session was so awesome because I reorganized the feedback groups. I got some inspiration from Project Runway and put kids in pairs based on an "unlikely duo" theme. It worked so well because the kids got a fresh pair of eyes on their comic, which was in its second draft, already having been critiqued (read: ripped apart) by a group of kids they were used to working with. Our new duos spawned some hilarious discussions. In the morning class, I wished I'd had my video camera. They were saying the funniest things in complete seriousness, discussing how it simply was not clear that Superman had death-rayed the basketball player, or that it wasn't funny at all that a terrorist had blown up the airport, because that's actually real, and do you just not understand what a comic is?
In the afternoon class, we had some moments that warmed my heart because I felt like my students were stretching as people in their efforts to communicate with people they don't usually talk to.
"I don't know how to end my comic," my cool girl says. She's used to being fed the answers; she's also afraid to take risks. Comics are all about risks and strangeness.
"Oooh!" says my slightly awkward girl. "How about she parachutes down into an island full of dead people?"
My face lights up. "That's brilliant!"
"And there's like, skeletons and bones sticking out of the sand."
"Yes, yes!" I scream.
My cool girl is smiling because she finally knows how to end her comic. This new groupmate has helped her in a way her friends couldn't, because they don't dare be weird enough, and I have started the seed of a potential new partnership. These two girls now have a relationship and a history based on ideas, and they know they can help each other.
I've done comics ever since I started teaching 15 years ago because I've always done zines (mini-magazines). Comics used to be the easy throwaway that I graded easy and didn't pay much attention to, but over time I got more comfortable pushing the kids and giving them feedback to help them be funnier and have more creative ideas. As this happened, I raised the bar for what I expected, because I saw what they were capable of if I pushed them.
It is SO FUN to have a slightly less "writing"y form of writing, too. It takes the pressure off in a certain way, and adds it in another, and I think it's good to have a little variety in life.
Oh- and I always show them Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side, 'cause those are the only books I have around, and that works fine. Great comics.
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