Exhibition at An-Najah University

The long-awaited finale of the university graphic novel is here and I have to say, its too soon. The students have worked day and night to finish their images. After contacting the local printing house, Hujawi Printers to scan the images and begin the process of digital editing to construct a compiled novel, the students eagerly got together to plan the exhibition at the university. With minimal materials to work with, we chose large, movable posting boards and black backdrops for each of the five-page stories.

With the help of Project Hope's directors Jeremy Wildeman (Canada) and Abdul-Hakim (Palestine), we sent out a massive press release to all major media in the region. I am pleased to say that not only did local media show up to report on the event but major Canadian media station, the CBC also came equipt with cameras and reporters. You can watch the clip at tp://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/making _canada_proud/project_hope_1.html

The exhibiton was a wild success with the room full of students, faculty, parents and foreign vistors. Each student was able to discuss their story with members of the public and receive a certificate of graduation from the course, delivered by Project Hope.

Comics Class at Dar Al-Fnon, in Nablus

Here are some images from my "good" comic class. By good I mean not only re the students exceptionally talented and quick to pick up on the concepts of comics, but also are very sweet, and mercifully quiet (in comparison to the controlled bedlam of my students at Al-Safeer). The first day was just introducing the medium to the students, and alot of them decided to draw stories about accidents for some reason.

The first class, unintentionally, had revolved around silent comics, so on Monday I focused on the interplay between words and pictures. The first exercise was the picture book creation described in this blog post, which was great. I didn't get any stories as creative as the one about the family factory or as touching as the lonely girl, but on the other hand they were very good at figuring out interesting ways to move the story foward, and immediatly grasped the interplay between text and images, going so far as to jump the lesson by incorparting dialogue (rather than simply the descriptions and prose story used in picture books). This was fine, as the next exercise I forced them to use panels with diagoue and panels with no text at all.

Today, the class focused around using different amount's of space or number's of panels to tell a story, as well as different angles that can be used to show a story. These were not quite as effective as before, but I think the students may have (hopefully) grasped the lesson itself, even if the execution of these ideas was not as great as some of their previous work.

Finally, they have begun drawing their final project: a great day in their life. This will use multiple panels and hopefully be a dynamic and creative final story.

Long Awaited Photos

Here finally are some of the long awaited promised photos. These first are from my semi-disastrous art class that I taught on the second day of class. First exercise was "I am emotion" and "I like _______". The pictures were supposed to depict them doing these things and feeling that emotion, but that didn't quite pan out. Some pretty pictures though.

Seeing the limitations of their English, I tried to teach them a basic lesson: conjugation of the verb "to be." Boy that was a disaster. They really did not want English lessons, because, as I later discovered it was not an English class, but an art one. Ah. Well, then I tried to teach some comics based lessons. As an example of sequential art, I drew a brief story on the board of me coming to Nablus. The first panel shows me boarding a plane, the second panel the plane in the air, and the third me arriving in Nablus. Simple enough, I thought. Instead, I got about 7 versions of this:

They all drew people getting on planes! Not the creative outpouring I was looking for. I did however elicit this striking image, making this class (the only one I taught) quite worth it:

Evidence: The true effects of war on children

Wednesday fortunately deserves little attention. My quiet talented comics class was unfortunately cancelled, leaving only my Photo Comics class. Normally this is a fantastic class, but the centre was making a huge racket by together flags and posters for some anniversary. This made the class almost impossible to teach. Nevertheless, the students did quite, experimenting with telling the story with the photos in front of the class, using props, and then Elena and I offering our thoughts. As frustrating a day as it was, it nonetheless highlights the changeable nature of events in Palestine. This is a teaching impediment for the most part, but helps to explain the somewhat chaotic nature of the education students receive, hardly surprising given how little control they often have of their own lives. As a teacher here, you really need to take fluctuating attendance, cancelled classes and outside distractions as a given, and plan accordingly.
Thursday was an exceptionally sucessful day. With the young comics students, I focused on teaching picture book style stories. I draw a distinction between comics and picture books. With picture books, a story is told through prose words, and is for the most part completely comprehensible were the story to be told without the pictures at all. The pictures serve to enhance the theme or tone of the story, as well as provide visual clues to the comprehension of the written text. Comics, by contrast, require the juxtaposition of words and images for comprehension. The tone of a person's voice or the setting of a scene is usually communicated entirely visually, with the only text being dialogue or occasional narration. It's a somewhat subtle distinction without examples in front of you, but in terms of how a story is told it makes a world of difference.

The lesson began with me reading a passage from Neil Gaiman's The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. I explained how the story can be understood entirely with words, and that the pictures just help. I then had the students write a four sentence story, entiteled "My Dad Goes to Work."

Most of the stories were pretty simple - Dad wakes up, dad eats, dad goes to work, dad comes home from work. I then had the students show me what they planned to draw, and then they drew it up on four full pages, with the text at the top. I also gave some suggestions - many drew near identical panels for dad going to and coming home from work, so I suggested some varriation, as well as occasional changes in the shot or encouraging the kids to use more of the whole page.

The exercise went really well, took up the whole class, and produced some excellent stories. Two bear special mention. The first was from my favorite student in the class, a girl of maybe 10 named Noor. She has grasped the concepts of comics so well, and always goes above and beyond the assignment specifications. In this case, she asked to do a story about a family at work. The first panel shows a family hard at work, with the text explaining they own a sucessful factory. On the second page, disaster strikes - a fire burns down the factory, and the excellently drawn firetruck is not enough to save the factory. Instead, the mother/wife goes to work as a lawyer, with the the final page showing the closeup of the mother, and explaining that due to her hard work the family was able to maintain a great standard of living. The art is really well drawn, but more importantly uses different angles/shots and really supplements the story. But I am most impressed with the story itself. I'm not sure whether it is real or fiction, but either way it is remarkably creative.

The second story I mention is somewhat less uplifiting. The art is not particuarly captivating - the dad driving away from the house for work, the girl alone in the home - but the text itself is heart-wrenching. The story goes approximately like this:

1. My dad doesn't love me he abandons me when he goes to work.
2. I hate my dad I wish he wouldn't leave me all alone.
3. I get very frightened when I am left all alone in the house.
4. I wish my dad loved me more and wouldn't work so much

Wow. I was really speechless. This is an issue that goes beyond checkpoints and explosions, and touches upon simple but none-the-less powerful childhood neglect. I'll speak about my thoughts on what are role is in this situation in a future post, but for those who have thoughts on how to approach this issue, please let me hear them.

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.

The Schedule and General Plans

Basically, Rebecca and I have split into two different but affiliated projects. Her University Course, which just concluded, focused on creating polished professional 5 page comics, getting the students to express themselves in English and understand the mechanics of the medium. The work was really fantastic, testament not only to the student's talent but Rebecca's teaching chops. Her remaining time here will be coordinating the publication, exhibition and promotion of the students work.

As for me, I am focusing more on younger kids. The objective here is not about creating a beautiful final comic that can be shown to the world, but rather for the kids to have fun and lighten the load of their stressful lives with creative expression. I teach two courses which are comic specific, which will be small fun exercises. If the students are really advanced, they may create more elaborate stories. I'm teaching a conventional English class, where comics might be used as a teaching tool, but are more likely to be sidelined in favour of games relating to basic vocabulary and using conversation. And finally, there is one final project, beginning tommorow, which I have dubbed photo comics. Co-taught with Elena (also co-teaching English) this will focus on using still images taking by photography in a sequence to tell a story. Basically, the photos operate like comic panels. The students will come up with a script, star in the comics themselves and take all the photos.

First Day of Class

I had my first official day of classes today, which went quite well. The first class was "comics," which I put in quotations only because whether it is an art course, or writing one, or an English one, is never fully clear. But the objective for me is for the students to be introduced to the medium, and creatively express themselves. We are exceptionally fortunate to have translators in the form of local (Palestitinan) volunteers. Mine is the wonderful Raed, who translated Rebecca's class, as well as being accompinied by Hiba, who is the coordinator for the programs that are not language lessons. Despite some small hiccups - students being 8-10 not 11-14 as planned, the power going out mid-class, and students arriving late - the class went really well. I had people explain the concept of comics, and then gave them a few to read. After that, it was a small exercise drawing a single panel, about something from their life. Talent and how well the students grapsed the material ranged tremendously, form one student turning the single panel handout into a three panel comic, completiting it 10 minutes, and then finishing two more exercises I gave her, while another student needed to be taught how to draw stick figures and said he didn't like me and wouldn't be coming back.

This shows one of the great difficulties of teaching - how to balance the needs of different students. One of them is so so good, and I don't want her to get bored and leave her behind. But if I give her extra treatment, I take away from the other students. Even giving her other activities means that the students sometimes do not want to finish the one she has completed. By contrast, the difficult student obviously has some trauma. He was quite aggressive, but said he didn't like any violence when I tried to engage him with Spiderman. So I sat down to teach him how draw stick figures, hoping he would feel better knowing how to draw. I tried to reassure the class that they could all draw better than me, but he said I could draw. Obviously he feels he can't. Boy do I sympathize. I really hope he comes back though.

The english class was somewhat more conventional, but it too had its quirks. Again, I had much help with the English coordinator Tharwa, my local translator Yasmeen, and another international, Elena from Spain. All were a great help, and though Tharwa will not be in the classes any,ore, Elena will co-teach with me with Yasmeen's translation. I had about 12 students who ranged from 6-12! This means that their levels were all over too. How do I possibly engage all the different students? I've somewhat abandonded using comics to teach them, as it requires some comibination of a more experinced teacher and greater english to get the full effect. Instead, I did fun exercises, going over numbers and expressions (happy/sad/angry) in games. The basic objective in this class is to get them really familiar with very basic conversational sentences, so they can engage foriegners. This will hopefully reinforce lessons they have already (in theory) learned, and make English seem fun.

The rest of the day consisted of finalizing projects for tommorow, a wonderful chat with Tharwa about the mechanisms of comics (someone please remind to write more about this!) and some chilling out.

One final thing: the students produced some great work. I will be sure to post some of their stuff when I have a chance to scan it.