Education

When Teachers Learn From Comics

By Bryan Toporek — April 14, 2010 1 min read
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Harking back to his high school days, Mister Teacher recently tried applying a lesson he learned from old-school comic books to his classroom.

In a nutshell, 5 or 6 of the top villains got together and decided that they were tired of constantly getting beaten up by their archnemeses. Spidey knew all of Green Goblin's moves, so he could always defeat him. The Fantastic Four had faced Dr. Doom so often, they could handle him without issue. The villains decided that they should swap dance partners to defeat the heroes. Magneto would pick a fight with Ironman, who had never fought him before. And why they never thought of THAT one before, who knows. etc, etc.
I was thinking a few weeks ago how possibly this strategy might work for us at school. One of my teaching partners is having trouble with some of her kids. They are used to her, but what if I came in and worked with them? Basically doing the same things they've already heard in class, but coming from a different voice.

Much like the Marvel comic villains in the Acts of Vengeance storyline, Mister Teacher found that a fresh perspective is sometimes all a student needs to succeed.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.