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Guest post: Cartooning and Confianza

As a teacher, having confianza with my students has always been of the utmost importance. In fact, it’s always been my main priority: I just figured the content-learning would come if I could get my students to trust me. Teaching, I think, is about managing human relationships. ...read more

Guest post: The silence of cartooning: observations from the front of the room

A few weeks ago, I had my students draw comics. I paid special attention to the silence in the room. What I learned is that the silence is not just an aural quality, but a posture, and, perhaps an embodiment of cartooning, and one that offers particular advantages in the classroom. ...read more

Guest post: The jam comic: introducing comics in a writing classroom

My students are never artists, are always timid and shy about their drawing abilities, and have very little or no experience with comics (most of my students say they have never even held a comic book before!). But the jam comic lets us jump right into sequential art in a way that promotes creativity and removes the academic pressure of what my students believe they ought to be doing in a college classroom. I like to think of the jam comic as a kind of secret weapon against the stuffiness of academia: I can pull it out at any moment, in any class, and the classroom instantly turns into a place of play and creativity. ...read more