Brenda graduated with a B.S. in Elementary Education from Edinboro University and has been cheerfully teaching in the Williamsport, PA, Area School District for the past eight years. Currently she is teaching our future generations in the fifth grade at Sheridan Elementary. Usagi Yojimbo. Getting Graphic. Spyboy. Electric Girl. Graphic Novels: The POW!-er in the classroom! A Teacher's Perspective by Brenda Pennella When it comes to finding new methods and instructional tools, teachers are forever initiating enormous archeological digs through text, educator sites, garage sales and the Internet. Sieving desperately through dunes of information to discover even one tiny bone or artifact designed to make their classrooms come alive! Well, if you’re in the business of teaching today’s generation, graphic novels just might be the find for you! Graphic novels have traveled a long way back towards education since their near-fatal bashing in 1954 by Psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham. Even Dr. Wertham had to come around though, in his later, more mellow years, when dealing with this incredible genre; in his book, The World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communication, He praises the efforts of comic-book readers, and presents graphic novels as the very model of non-violent communication by bright young people. Considered a hobby to some, these graphic novels can be more than triumphant edification material for us! Back in the 1940’s entire curriculum was built around comic books; in the 70’s, teachers like Richard Campbell, incorporated comics into his fourth grade reading lessons. Now, using national and state standards as a guideline, it is easy to find tributarial connections to nearly every back eddy of the graphic novel genus. Despite the less serious nature of some types of graphic novels and like-designed text however, there is now a high incentive for teachers to research all of comics’ ability to inject high-voltage into day-to-day lesson plans. If you hop a plane west to visit English professor Rocco Versaci in San Marcos or to the University of Minnesota and look up Physics professor James Kalalios, you would find two educators who have brought comic books directly into their teachings. Versaci asks students to “critically examine the very definition of literature” using comics; whereas Kakalios offers an intro to Physics course called “Science in Comic Books.” Even museum world has made room in their archives for graphic novels; the NYC Comic Book Museum has been celebrating the graphic novel’s educational impact with an eye-popping eight-lesson curriculum for k-12 students. It uses comics as the catalyst for reading and writing activities – once again kick-starting those national and state standards to life. You can find this information at www.teachingcomics.org along with some other great information on keeping graphic novels alive in the teaching field. Teachers today are given the daunting task of contending with HBO, Nickelodeon and MTV. And while I’ve reminded my own students that if I could entertain like Beyonce or Puff Daddy, I’d be making “mucho dinero and wearing masses of seriously high-level bling-bling”. The truth is I/we still do need to put on the boxing gloves and step in the entertainment ring if we truly want to reach kids and vie for the Literacy Title. Literacy does make sense with graphic novels. We, as educators of young and old alike, have always known that reading is a series of skills: questioning, visualizing, inferring, predicting, connecting and responding to name a few. With graphic novels, the scaffolding necessary to build solid readers is in the architecture of the genre. The illustrations not only support the text, they are a part of the text. Students are given context clues within the subtle and sometime not so subtle expressions, symbols and actions of the characters with in the story. Vocabulary is also supported within the illustrations and text. The framework or grid layout of this art form lends itself perfectly to the predicting strategies needed to reach higher-level understanding in reading comprehension. As Elizabeth B. Thomsen, of 100 Graphic Novels for Public Libraries writes, “Visual communication is rich, evocative, and immediate, and transcends barriers that language sometimes raises. When pictures and words are used together to communicate, the result can be much greater than either alone could produce”. The pioneers before you have blazed the trail; the information Conestoga has delivered the goods and we’re now off at jet-speed, continuing the trajectory towards a universe of zest and inspiration in the classroom. Today’s learners are bombarded with “lights, camera, and action;” let’s give them the “Zap, Blam and the Pow-er in the classroom that only graphic novels and comics can bring!