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Storyboarding About Life Events
Mr. Pennington's 10th-grade English class followed their study of Khaled Hossini’s The Kite Runner with a unit on the best selling graphic novel Persepolis, which takes place during the Iranian Revolution. In both books, the people of Afghanistan and Iran experience enormous cultural and political shifts. "Both are told from the perspectives of children, and uniquely convey the jarring effects of war and regime change," says. Mr. Pennington. "As the main characters come of age in each story the cultural, religious, and political themes resonate through a loss of innocence."
"In order to harness the powerful format of the graphic novel, students applied the storyboarding method to events in their own lives," Mr. Pennington explains. "These included their experiences with distance learning, the presidential election, and racial injustice protests that echoed through the country this year. Students brilliantly used juxtaposition, imagery and irony in order to amplify their experiences. Others offered commentary on the pandemic, the presidential election, and racial injustice."
