Kickstarter

I am one of the directors of the upcoming New England Comic Arts in the Classroom Conference (www.necac.net), taking place on March 26, 2011 at Rhode Island College in Providence, RI. I submit that with visual media production and consumption on the rise, educators from the elementary grades through college are finding it increasingly vital to work with visual texts in their classrooms and to offer their students opportunities to read and to represent ideas visually. The growing popularity of manga, comic art, and graphic novels among readers of all ages, and particularly among adolescents, and the growing credibility of comic art as literature, has fueled a movement dedicated to bringing comic art into content area and literacy-rich classrooms.

In other words, comics in the classroom as a viable and valuable resource have been ignored for too long. We seek to help educate teachers and media specialists on what graphic novels are and how they can find their way onto classroom and library shelves.

In order to help fund our upcoming conference, we are creating an anthology with help from our friends at the Boston Comics Roundtable (www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com). The anthology, called "Show and Tell" will feature short stories (in comic form) about teaching and learning. We are accepting submissions now - email me for more information. We need assistance paying for the printing of the anthology, which will be sold at the conference.