“I have been worried that students are losing their creativity, their energy, their excitement, because schooling kills it. I wanna keep pushing them to freedom, dream a world which is envisioned, a world in community without oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, classes, and etc. Not just what we’re fighting to resist, but what we’re fighting for. I was able to use this resource to have students use graphic novels as a way to present stories about their own communities, and that whole thinking creative process is what really stuck with me… If someone’s like, you need to make your class more rigorous, I don’t know what else could be more rigorous than using more resources that’s based on a scholarly journal, a theoretical framework, and to create something from it that’s accessible and meaningful to students”

“For a lot of teachers who have grand visions of what it means to do justice work in the classroom, which may be tied to the savior complex, they might expect to see their students engage in these grand gestures of politics, going to protests, walkouts without realizing the tensions between the risks and resistance, all of these multiple images and dynamics of what it means to be political. Whose safety is on the line? I think there’s something that comics as a pedagogical resource offers… the slowing down, the questioning and the pauses, the eye contact, the facial expressions, the emotional reactions! This slows down a moment in a way that feels more real and tangible than what a traditional academic article can do… This gets to the interiority of this work in a powerful way, and parts of politics, resistance, and agency that teachers don’t always see or are in our purview. I’m definitely going to use this in my other classes.”