I’ve been doing a lot of teaching since my last post eons ago. I’ll be teaching a Graphic Novels Lit class at Cornish College of the Arts next semester, and am TOTALLY excited about that. (FYI: community members can take classes at Cornish, too – you don’t have to be a Cornish student.)
In the past few months I’ve also taught and given talks at at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, West Auburn High School, Whatcom County Library, Teen Advisory Group at the Seattle Art Museum, 826 Seattle, and Shoreline Library. I think teaching helps me a lot with my public speaking – especially since I get really clumsy in my gesticulating enthusiasm when I’m teaching. I haven’t yet split my head open (knock wood) but definitely have figured out how to recover from a stumble and keep talking. I can also say, “Interesting question! You know, I really don’t know,” and not feel like an idiot. I love teaching – it’s become a major part of what I do as a comics professional.
My Advanced Comics class at Cornish last semester was just dreamy – they worked really hard and the comics they came up with were fantastic. Here’s a class picture (we really wished we had one of those placards like in kindergarten photos), posing with their final projects, minicomics of all the work they’d done during the semester:
I also told them to make faces – I always think those photos come out best!
