Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge: English Teacher on Trial

Sometimes as a budding English teacher, it's hard not to feel a twang of guilt for every classic lying dormant and dusty on the shelf. While I've been trying to shake this feeling off and own my individual tastes, I recently dipped my toe back into reading from lists or canons. You see, I rediscovered the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, based on every book mentioned or shown in Gilmore Girls. Rory was a truly epic bookworm; the teen worked her way through more books in the time the show ran than most would in a lifetime.

I have been trying to let myself enjoy reading and not see it as a race or competition to the top of a mountain of old white dudes, but I couldn't help sizing myself up against the fictional Rory. As a bonus, I'm going to be using her list to get some tips on what bookish teens might enjoy as recommendations aside from YA. Girl has good taste, I'll give her that.

List after the jump. For reference, I've crossed out those that I've read (71 out of 339).

On collages

Last semester I made this haphazard collage of what "being an English teacher" means to me. At the time I didn't understand how I was supposed to know what kind of teacher I was, because I hadn't yet taught anyone anything (English or otherwise). It gave me fascinating insight into what I (rightly or not) believed an English teacher should be and could be. I still don't know where I sit. It's like trying to put ourselves in subculture baskets, which have always confused me. Am I rockabilly-indie-hipster-nerd or a hippyrockaster? I don't want to teach my students to reduce their complexity to neat boxes, and I don't see the need to do that with my professional practice. What kind of English teacher am I going to be? The confused kind, the kind that changes what kind they are, the messy kind.

Techno-test: Online Comic Makers in the Classroom #2

In part one I tried to tame Make Belief Comix and Comic Master for use in the classroom. It went as well as could have been expected-I find Pictionary a complex artistic challenge. I then butchered Pixton and Strip Generator.

Pixton

The good: Pixton is a self-contained digital community that doesn't mind drop-ins from the big cities of Facebook and Twitter. This means it's a relatively safe space for students to create and share work amongst themselves. It is also intuitively designed, with a high level of customisability. A Pixton character can do a handstand with two clicks of a button, which is more than I can say for myself. (Available poses include: frightened, bragging, kicking, pointing and, of course, karate.Karate is apparently a stance where you put your arms at right angles and look alert.) The design is relatively no-frills, but that can be a positive when you need to keep it simple, stupid.
The bad: Pixton is expensive to licence for use in education. Private users can ride for free, and they have a teacher trial pass that lasts around a month. It seems to run on the same economic system as Candy Crush Saga and meth: lure 'em in with free goods that they don't yet know are sub-par, them make 'em want to pay for the top shelf product. Got me again.
Frustrating? Nope. It makes sense.
Time-consuming? Even after messing around with combinations-what does a "boastful" face look like with a "vengeful" pose (patent pending), and what even is an "inside joke" expression or a "bad news" face?- it only took 10 minutes to sign up, figure it out and make a strip.
Rewarding? I got to make a Shakespearean character that was "kneeling" in a Boogie Nights pose while "weary". What else do I want? A medal?

Strip Generator

The good: This tool is as quick (no sign-ups needed) and free as a bird. One of the ones that can fly pretty quickly, and  is able to roam freely. Yeah, perfect.
The bad: The overall style and rigidity (though effective) limits what your students could produce with this tool. For simple, informative strips, though, it's bang on.
Frustrating? A little, but I didn't hate it. The tool bar is a Photoshop-Pinterest hybrid that sounds much worse than it is.
Time-consuming? No, as there are only a few things to choose: what 'My Family car sticker' type figure do you want, and what are they going to say? Oh, there's no room for the text box without painstakingly resizing everything? A little less talk, a little more action, then.
Rewarding? I don't feel an overwhelming sense of pride in my comic, but I'm not questioning the life choices that led me to create it, either. Even-Stevens?

Trialling comic makers helped prove two things. 1. I will do anything to avoid pressing deadlines. 2. Visual and stylistic choices impact on meaning created and interpreted just as much as textual ones. Maybe when students rightly pick on my questionable sense of design I'll tell them it was a deliberate choice to obfuscate the meaning to test their semiotic skills. The things I do for these hypothetical kids.

Techno-test: Online Comic Makers in the Classroom #1

I have learnt this week that something helpful in small numbers can reduce you to a frustrating mess of misplaced rage when the market is overpopulated. There are roughly 215,003 different comic making tools and applications that claim to be useful in the classroom. I dreamed a dream of students engaging with texts through witty, satirical comic strips that deepen their understanding and allow for a creative outlet. "How hard could it be?" I thought, actually shrugging my shoulders and looking quizzically at my cat. We all make mistakes.

Online comic makers are flying at teachers like the energetic fish in Life of Pi. I wanted a meal, not a broken rib, you scum of the water-world gill-breathers. (Once rage is misplaced, it's awfully hard to align it again. Stupid fish.)

I don't have a tiger to tear the sub-par tools to shreds, so I was forced to test and reject them on my own. Note to self: get a tiger. In the meantime, here are a few samples I knocked up on different comic strip makers, and the details on how time-consuming, frustrating and rewarding it was to use.










Make Beliefs Comix 

The good: You don't have to sign up to create or save your comic.
The bad: Pretty much everything else, if your students are over the age of 10. You can only work on three panels at a time (and the format is preset), and I hope you like black and white images and strangely formatted dialogue boxes that automatically translate punctuation into gobbledegook.
Frustrating? I wanted to die by the third panel.
Time-consuming? By the time you figure out the counter-intuitive format and find a character that doesn't look like a stranger who'll offer you free spiritual counselling or teach you the birds and the bees, its been half an hour and you just want a lie down.
Rewarding? Not really. After all that effort trying to recreate the opening scene of Macbeth, this comic strip is telling the story of a secret meeting between three ageing misfits at a quiet corner of a Nimbin commune. I guess that's pretty cool, but not really the intended outcome. With a bit of explicit teaching this would be a good tool to use with primary students. Just don't try anything fancy.

Comic Master

The good: The graphics are insane (and come out high-res A4 sized), and the style is decidedly more 'modern'. You don't have to sign up to print/save as PDF, but it's a good idea because it's free, and you can store and edit multiple pages.
The bad: There are only a few character options, and all are 'superhero' types. Backgrounds options are similarly sparse. This would be a hindrance to creating 'serious' narratives or creative responses to texts with, you know, human characters. I just can't see Liesel in The Book Thief with blue hair. Maybe it's me.
Frustrating? This was pretty intuitive for anyone who has ever used photo editing software, or even Paint. I didn't make more than two frustrated sounds in the process of making this, so I'm going to take that as a win. Secondary students should be able to pick this up pretty easily.
Time-consuming? Because it was easy to navigate, it took all of 6 minutes to knock this up.
Rewarding? I might be naive, but this looks like an actual comic book strip to me. The characters look like they're engaging with each other and the style is spot-on. I feel like I want to print this out and stick it on my fridge.

Next up: Pixton and Strip Generator. Plus a final verdict if I don't smash my computer first. I'm looking at you, fish fingers.