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Graphic Novels Come Out From Under the Desk at Fordham University
On January 31st, FordhamUniversity’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) hosted Graphica in Education: Graphic Novels come out from under the Desk, a conference to discuss a pedagogical approach to the use of graphic novels and graphica in K-12 classrooms.
Keynote Speakers James Bucky Carter, Ph.D. and John Scieszka addressed the benefits of comics and graphic novels in teaching 21st century literacy skills. Carter, assistant professor of English education at the University of Texas at El Paso and editor of Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel (NCTE, 2007), learned to read from comic books at an early age and has found them to be an enormously useful teaching resource. He spoke of their ability to “reach multiple literacies and multiple populations.”
Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for the Library of Congress and author of children’s books The Stinky Cheese Man (Viking, 1992) and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking, 1989), discussed the importance of visual literacy and the need to reach kids with material that interests them.
The conference featured presentations and workshops and with prominent educators, authors and publishers including Dr. Michael Bitz, founder of the Comic Book Project at ColumbiaUniversity’s Teachers College; Jimmy Gownley, author of Amelia Rules; and Jim Salicrup, Editor-in-Chief of graphic novel publishing company Papercutz.
The inaugural GSE Graphica Excellence in Education Award was presented by Marshall George, Ed.D., associate professor of education at Fordham GSE to James Bucky Carter, Ph.D.
The new conference and award adds valuable exposure to the work that is being done with graphic novels in the classroom. “What these speakers brought to Fordham showed how incredibly intelligent educators have become about the impact graphic novels and comics will have on our system,” said John Shableski, sales manager for Diamond Book Distributors. “To call it anything less than a watershed moment would be an injustice.”
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