The comic above depicts me teaching my Manga Workshop at the museum where I work. The Manga Workshop is a drop-in type Sunday afternoon monthly workshop that happened for years pre-COVID. This program grew out of the week-long “Advanced Anime” summer camp that I also taught. The students told me they wanted more and more anime and manga, and their parents were excited that their children seemed to have found a crowd where they fit in.

A surprising coincidence (I don’t know if correlation = causation or not) was the high number of students that self-identified somewhere on the spectrum of LGBTQ+. They wore buttons, rubber bracelets, t-shirts, and hats. They chatted and made jokes and exchanged emails, Instagram handles, and long lists of anime and manga recommendations. The percentage of students who self-identified in these workshops seemed much higher than any other class, even the Comic Book class, which drew students more interested in the Marvel Universe than My Hero Academia.

This specific incident depicted in the comic is one that makes me miss teaching these workshops in person. When we tried to run the normally sold-out workshops virtually, they failed to meet registration minimums, and both parents and students told us they would wait for in-person classes to resume. The workshops weren’t primarily about drawing anime. Those kids do that most of their day on their own. The workshops were really about community, and finding their people.

However, even though many of the students were exploring their gender and sexual identities, they often created art that reflected the cis-gender and heterosexual anime and manga that they consume. When they are interested in media that has LGBTQ+ themes, like the ice skating anime “Yuri on Ice,” even the most innocent internet search results in highly sexualized depictions of the characters. When I prepare references for them in class, most of the poses, books, and movies that are appropriate to share in class don’t reflect their identities or mine in a way that is normalized.

Ellen Isaacs (2013) notes in her Tedx talk “if your designing technology for people, you should watch them using it.” In observing these students in these workshops, I notice many gaps. First, the major lack of media for them where their experiences can be reflected to them. I also have noticed many students that drop in to these one-day programs don’t get a chance to build friendships and relationships over time. We have been building a relationship with a local queer youth center, and I think there is an opportunity to overlap these resources to fill this gap.

I have a spotty history of recording life and some teaching experiences in comic form, like this example I came across from a sketchbook circa 2014. I imagine as I move forward with my teaching practice, I’ll be using comics as well as journaling as a resource. While it may not be absolutely accurate, it can certainly record my perspective on events, and how I depict them may change over time. Karen Keifer-Boyd (2011, p. 8) suggests the strategy, “Use artmaking as a means to reflect on how our own understandings of self are both informed and misinformed by many complex discourses in the world, such as history, politics, power, culture, world views, feminism, silences and technology.”

I plan on making a dedicated practice of recording teaching outcomes that are both positive and difficult. Whether they are shared or not is ultimately up to me, but will serve as a record of both. I was impressed and inspired by Bill Doan’s dedication to making time each day to build his creative outlet (Doan, 2012). His process of using writing and memory work in journals as sources to later mine for poetry and theater is exciting and inspiring. Theater and comics have an overlapping goal of story telling, and I’m interested in exploring that connection more as well.

 

Doan, B. (2012, February 12). INTERVIEW ON DOAN’S NARRATIVE INQUIRY METHODOLOGY [Interview by K. Keifer-Boyd]. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/media_objects_iframe/m-4NyjXwZtWEadW4Pyj5Z3MpM78X3EE73i?type=audio

posted as a link in a canvas module for AED 815

Klein, S., Delacruz, E., & Keifer-Boyd, K. (2011). Educational Agents for Positive Change. National Art Education Association Women’s Caucus, 1-8. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2099647/files/119954315?wrap=1.

Performance by Ellen Isaacs, Ethnography: Ellen Isaacs at TEDxBroadway, Tedx Talks, 1 Mar. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV0jY5VgymI.