Stories We Live By: Exploring Graphic Novels With High Schoolers

Abstract

This article explores the graphic novels that emerged within the context of a pre-college course for high school students. After providing an overview of comics and graphic novels within education, I highlight pedagogical strategies and approaches for making comics and graphic novels. I then examine student work from the course with a particular focus on the final graphic stories they told, why they chose to tell those particular stories, and how they went about doing it. Examination of student work revealed that the self was a starting point for their narratives, students continually explored and pushed conventions of the artform, and students remixed dominant narrative arcs. The stories and artmaking strategies that emerged as a result of the course highlights how comics and graphic novels provide students the space to explore and voice what matters most to them, making them a valuable component of K-16 art education.