Comics and Post-Secondary Pedagogy Issue ImageText Now Live!

Click here to read essays from folks teaching comics across a broad array of fields and disciplines. Thanks to co-editor Najwa Al-Tabaa for asking me to guest edit the issue. I'm thrilled with how it turned out and know -- whether you're a K12 teacher, a teacher educator, a librarian, a graphic designer -- you'll learn from this issue.

Great essays; great reviews, and great resources for all interested in comics and education! What are you waiting for? Read! Read! 

Brian Michael Bendis on Diversity in Comics

He has a pretty interesting quote here, does the man who has probably made one too many white jokes in his comics but has done a great job of addressing the issues as he sees them. I'm using this post as a placeholder, because I've got something coming up for which this will be great, but you can enjoy it for whatever reasons float your boat.

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day!

May 3, 2014. Visit your local comic shop, pick up some comics for you or some friends, and enjoy this multifaceted literacy event.

Want to be Teacher of the Year Someday? Get Ready to Shill for the Common Core.

Click this link to see the connection between being a TOC and a CCSS-stoker. Recoil in horror if you assumed this was one process not yet tinged by corporate/political influence. All education is political, yo.

Live Twittercast on YA Novel *The Fault in Our Stars* Later Today.

Students from my YA lit class at Washington State University will be twitter-casting thoughts on the first 18 chapters of John Green's masterpiece The Fault in Our Stars today (4.22.14) starting around 4:15 Pacific.

Ellie and Emily will facilitate the discussion, and you can join them via #FIOSCoogs.  I think those two see the text much differently than do I, so I expect an intriguing discussion. I've even invited the author himself, so who knows who might show up!

At the very least, I expect the twittering to be....

Thanks to Teri Lesesne for putting the bug in my ear about twitter-casting. I know I'm late to the game regarding using twitter in education settings, but there has to be a first time for everything. The discussion is scheduled to run around an hour.

SANE Journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education Now on Facebook

The peer-reviewed, open-access, internationally-boarded, online journal on comics and education/literacy I founded in 2010 with absolutely no financial support from UTEP, my home institution at the time,  is now under new management and has a new host happily providing appropriate assistance.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will go live with the journal shortly, taking over from the originating  hosting organization, to which I'm eternally grateful, Scholarly Exchange (University of Pittsburgh; previously Harvard), and adding to the more than 50,000 downloads the journals' texts have experienced.

While the new hosting pages might not have gone live yet, Dr. Richard Graham, the new managing editor, has created a Facebook page for the journal, and I encourage you follow it. Great stuff is on the way, and previous great stuff will be archived once the new URL is ready for prime time.

Hear/Read Interview w/ Me on Comics and Education

Hot off the interweb presses, this article from Spin Education, written by David Cutler, includes an interview with yours-truly in which I talk about -- what else? -- comics and education. Take a look.

And, since Cutler integrated audio from our interview, you can listen as well! A multimodal literacy experience detailing comics and education: My favorite types of pedagogical experiences!

That he plays off the James Bucky Carter/James "Bucky" Barnes thing adds to my personal jouissance, but maybe you'll see it as "BONUS WIN!" too. :)

                                             (see more art like this from MisterHardTimes here)

My Statement for President-Elect of ####

Recently I was asked to run for President-Elect of a major literacy organization, and while I just learned I did not make it past the latest round of cuts, I think sharing my statement is worthwhile. Below, you'll see what I submitted as my "platform," so to speak. This isn't a mad post. I was happy to run and would have been thrilled to serve in the capacity of President-Elect. Kudos to whomever made it to the docket.

But, I just felt my statement was too good not to share. :)

Here it is:

James “Bucky” Carter, visiting assistant professor of English Education at Washington State University, serves ###’s Public Relations-, Censorship-, and “###-” committees and reviews for The #### Review. He began his service years ago as a state representative for Mississippi and Texas. He completed a three-year stint on the Board of Directors last year and served three years on the elections committee, chairing in year two. He served ######'s President’s Advisory Committee. He has published in ### and guest-edited the Summer 2010 issue.  Frequently, he moderates the always-popular graphic novels panels at #### Workshops. He has published with NCTE, ASCD, MLA and others. He advocates for YA literature, the right to read, multimodal forms (especially comics/graphic novels), and free, high-quality public education. He believes to remain a relevant, cutting-edge, leading organization, #### must evoke its revolutionary roots and embrace two hallmarks of revolution: Resistance and Advocacy. Resist strongly reforms which do not increase equity, harm students, families, and educators, and endanger public education; Advocate for reforms which acknowledge teacher expertise and YAL, embrace democracy, and strengthen social justice.

New Online Comic Urges Action Against Coming TransPacific Free Trade Partnership

See Economix Comix creator Mike Goodwin's comic on the in-process, secretive TransPacific Free Trade Agreement and why the US's corporate interests are pressuring politicians to agree to some things that might help line the pockets of the 1% but might prove unhelpful to the rest of us, like most policies supported by our two-party system and their profiteering puppet masters.

OK, maybe reading the comic has me cynical (Me?? No....!). Read for yourself and decide what actions you'd like to take. Here's the link!