This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 126 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, we're going to talk about the surprising benefits of student-written graphic novels.

Every now and then, a teacher shares something with me that so completely blows me away,

and I know in an instant that I'm going to be sharing it on my site.

That happened this past March when I shared an old post on Twitter about graphic novels.

A teacher named Shaveta Miller just happened to see it and responded by telling me not about the graphic novels she and her students were reading,

but about the graphic novels her students had written.

My students have often used their graphic novel projects to explore a private aspect of their identity, she wrote.

The genre allows our young writers a language they can use to describe complex emotions and concepts before they have the skills to do so in narrative form alone.

I was intrigued, so I asked her to tell me more.

Through direct messages, she started showing me images from a graphic novel one of her students had created, and right away I saw exactly what she was talking about.

The story, simply constructed with just a few words, basic lines, and stick figures, was deeply personal, and it was told with a kind of minimalist elegance I had never seen in my own years in the classroom.

The more Shaveta talked to me about the reasons this form enabled so many of her students to put out work like this, the more I was convinced she was really on to something, and we needed to share it here.

So that's what Shaveta and I are going to dig into today.

How teaching students to write in the graphic novel form can produce some incredible results.

It not only enables students to tell richer, more personal stories, but it also helps teachers understand their students on a completely different level, making the graphic novel form a powerful tool for social emotional learning and relationship building.

Before we get started, I want to thank Learners Edge for supporting this episode.

Learners Edge is a leading provider in continuing education and professional development for educators.

They offer affordable online continuing education graduate credit courses that have helped over 100,000 teachers meet their license renewal and salary advancement goals.

When you complete a Learners Edge online course, you'll get graduate credit from your choice of their accredited university partners.

Countless teachers have applied what they learned in their Learners Edge course to their classroom immediately, helping themselves and their students succeed.

Best of all, you never have to step foot in a classroom for a Learners Edge course because they're self-paced. You work on your course wherever and whenever you'd like, even at home in your PJs.

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