Stages of Edu-Twitter: A Comic

When I get (what I consider) a good, solid idea for a comic, all I want to do is work on it. Dinner prep be damned! This particular idea came to me during a workshop I gave this past week through the UNH Professional Development & Training program on using comics, picture books, and graphic novels to inspire writing. After a morning of engaging in some inquiry around visual composition, I was encouraging my colleagues to try their hand at making a comic, and I began sketching this out:

Making myself chuckle is always a good (if slightly narcissistic) sign, so I quickly began to jot down my thinking about each panel, since, at this point in my life, I can produce written language so much more easily than I can visual language. (Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that our youngest students experience the opposite phenomenon?)

This jotting helped me to hold onto the ideas I had at the time, which I didn’t want to lose. (I’m 42 years old. ‘Nuff said.) I was forced to abandon my comic for the rest of the day, but two days later I had a good chunk of time during which I could continue to work on it. In all, it took me approximately five hours from start to finish to compose it in its entirety, and as is almost always the case, I still have some things I would revise if I had the time (and the energy) to continue to work on it.

If you are an educator, and are on Twitter, you will hopefully find at least some aspects of this comic to which you can relate. If you can relate to a lot of it, please share it with your colleagues! For those of you who might not be able to relate, I hope you are still able to find some enjoyment in the comic. It was really fun to write.

Like what you’ve read here? Check out my debut book from Stenhouse Publishers, Renew! Become a Better–and More Authentic–Writing Teacher, which you can preview in its entirety here. I am donating 50% of my royalties for the first year of publication to 826 National, a wonderful organization that provides opportunities for children who live in traditionally underserved populations to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills.