geek.teacher

In celebration of Free Comic Book Day, here’s a nice bit from Tom Brevoort’s blog.  A teacher in an inner city middle school recently wrote to him to let him know he recently started a comic book club.  My favorite bit is that even with it just being an informal after school gathering, the teacher still planned a lesson.  He took the time to get them hooked and present them with relevant background knowledge before diving in to the reading material of the day:

We watched the web trailer for Secret Invasion, I went through a powerpoint presentation of some of the main characters from the story, and then I gave away a half dozen of Secret Invasion (the reprints that came out today) that I bought for them, and we read it.

In my classroom, I have a few of the Marvel Essentials books.  My lowest level readers especially love them, as the pictures provide a lot of context so they can actually look at a story and at least get a rough idea of the events happening.  They also love to trace and try to mimic the art in the books, so there’s a lot of crudish representations of Kirby art floating around my room some days.

Between this story and all the techie goodness from yesterday, it warms my heart to see so many teachers doing plenty of interesting things with stuff kids actually relate to.  

Update 4:00 I hit a couple of comics shops, Showcase Comics in Bryn Mawr and Effin Comics in Drexel Hill and got the following loot for my students:

Update May 5: Gave them to my kids today, they loved them.  I let them pick out one at a time until they were mostly gone.  Anything Iron Man was a big hit after the movie this weekend, with Spidey and X-Men following close.  One of my Disney-obsessed autistic students was able to get all three of the Disney comics, and my lone female student took Mickey Mouse, then was confused, so she took Owly and Little Archie on my suggestion.  One boy refused to take any comics.  He said the paper is too thin.  Kind of weird, especially since he’s my most artistically talented student.