Photo Comics & Toronto Star Visit

It's been a great and crazy two days. Yesterday, I had two different classes. The first one was another comics class, but a much smaller, older and calmer class. They're really nice and seem to grasp the concepts of narrative storytelling well. I'm going to introduce them to more complicated storytelling elements next class.

The second class was totally suberb. This is a class called "Photo-Comics" which is more or less what it sounds like: telling a story in comic like form (series of still images in panels) but with photographs. This means that there is no dialogue, and all the "art" are photographs. This also means that that not only do the students take the photographs, they come up with the story ideas, create the script, and star in the comics. It requires a combination of acting, scripting and photography skills, and was just something Elena and I dreamed up one night of chilling.

It turns out to be my favorite class. The students are they type a teacher dreams of. I pictched the concept to the local centre director, who absolutely loved it. He managed to get 50 applicants in one day, narrowed it down to the best 14 students. So they all are fluent in English, engaged with the idea, and a joy to teach.

Today was English and Comics again. Comics was a media circus. We had Oakland Ross from the Toronto Star come in, which was great. He is the Middle East Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star, which is big press for Project Hope. So this meant that there was Oakland Ross, his minder, Jeremy Wildeman (the executive director), Kevin (a prof from Toronto involeved with Project Hope), Rebecca who spoke to Oakland about the comics project, Elena + Josh, who were taking photos and videotaping, the local volunteer acting as a translator/co-teacher, and Heba, Hakim and Rachel the new volunteer seeing a class in action. Oh yeah, and I think me and my 15 students were there somewhere.

It was pretty crazy, but went pretty well. Rebecca had a long ass talk with Oakloand, and he seemed really enthusiatic, which was suprising to me for such a seasoned reporter. I also spoke to him, but I doubt I'll make much of an appearance. Rebecca could easily be the star.

More photos to come hopefully.