Comics in the Classroom
By Adam Umak
Back at West 40 Middle School, Mike Pampinella’s seventh-graders are having an incredible conversation. This time Pampinella started the argument.
The class is having a debate. After reading about Marvel Comics’ Civil War-propelled Superhero Registration Act, students took positions on both sides of the issue: those in favor of superheroes keeping their secret identities and those opposed to privacy. The majority of Pampinella's students get into the debate quickly; these students are very adamant that heroes' identities be protected. A smaller percentage of students insist that the act was put in place to protect people without powers.
"Admittedly, there was another small faction that said, ‘I can't believe we're doing an activity based on something six-year-olds would read.’ Some of these kids are still shut off to reading," said Pampinella.
Now in his seventh year of teaching, there will unquestionably be more opportunities for Pampinella to use comics with his students. In fact, he is already planning for an upcoming unit on Edgar Allan Poe. The student objective is to compare different adaptations of the same text. After the class reads and discusses "The Raven," they will then read an artistic interpretation of the same poem in a sequential art format. The graphic version helps the students to unfold some of the difficult word choices embedded in Poe's language. Not to be outdone or leave any aspect of popular culture behind, Pampinella finishes the lesson by screening a clip of The Simpsons’ now-classic animated interpretation of the poem. By building upon the base text, in theory, the poem can become more accessible to the students from one format to the next format. The students will fill out an organizer to help them collect their thoughts on paper before they compare and contrast the three formats. The lesson plan is solid.
Pampinella thinks that his students can access the material better because he has refined this and other lessons from year to year. While he is working on lesson plan revisions, he begins to talk about a former student named Adonnis. Like many on his seating chart, Adonnis came to West 40 with the "at-risk" label. Adonnis lived in an area of Illinois in which gunplay, gang life, and drug use was common. His teenage peers frowned on school performance.
"He never sat still, but always managed to pull A's in my classes. I decided that if he was going to squirm and still do well, he might as well have something that holds his attention. I handed him a stack of Spider-Man and told him to read those whenever there was downtime. I wound up buying a whole series of digests simply for him, because he couldn't get enough of it," said Pampinella, "He decided that Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four were a better escape for him. That has always meant a lot to me."
The time spent in class evidently meant a lot to Adonnis as well. Before class was over on the last day of school the last thing he said to his teacher was, "Mister P, I think I want to be a comic nerd like you."
Adam Umak teaches eighth-grade language arts at Thurmont Middle School for Frederick County Public Schools in Maryland. He is a co-host of The Legion of Dudes Podcast that can be found on iTunes and at http://www.LegionOfDudes.com. He and his fiancée, Jamie, live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
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