2011-2012 school year: lou dobbs

If you haven’t seen this nonsense, check it out. I’m not going to embed it because it’s nonsense. I should mention that I’m aware Lou Dobbs is more of a commentator than a journalist. I didn’t hold him to any journalistic standards in my lesson.

2011-2012 school year: a walk down memory lane

To be clear: There were a lot of incredibly valid reasons not to vote for Bob Dole in 1996. His age should not have been one of those reasons, but I was 15 and a total ageist. God bless my parents for putting up with me.

Sad news: Jan Berenstain passed away yesterday. I recently wrote about one of Jan and her husband’s earlier collaborations, a bawdy comic collection titled Office Lover Boy. She and Stan were a big part of my childhood and she will be missed.

2011-2012 school year: liberals, lawyers, and nerds

You may remember that a week ago, we left off my journalism class talking about bias. If you don’t, the handy link will deliver you to that strip.

Also, I should mention that I took the spine of this lesson from Ms. Judy Bolton and her “Coping with Bias” lesson posted on HSJ.org. HSJ has been an invaluable resource to me this year and I really wanted to shout it out.

chalkboard drawings: the “mustache fallout” edition

First off… Elliot came to visit me on Thursday and he wrote his name. Cute, right?

thrift store finds: still a few bugs in the system – a doonesbury book

Today we’re looking at Still a Few Bugs in the System: A Doonesbury Book by G.B. Trudeau, published by Holt, Rhinehart, and Wilson in 1972. Original cover price was $2.95. This is the first in the original series of Doonesbury trade paperbacks; the comic would be collected in smaller books like this until sometime in the late 1980’s when the strip would switch to what was a more traditional format for the time.

odds and ends

You may have noticed this week was the first in about a month and a half that did not zero in with laserlike focus on my journalism class. I decided to take a slight detour because of the abbreviated nature of the week and my excitement/depression over my mustache. Rest assured, we’ll be right back to where we left off this coming Monday.

I don’t pretend the comic strip has much momentum in regards to storytelling or content, but it may please some of you to know that I’m planning my first print edition this summer, to collect all the comics in this second half of the school year.

At any rate: onwards and upwards.

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Quick reminder/plea: I’m a little under $300 dollars away from having this DonorsChoose project funded. If you’ve enjoyed the comic at all and are interested in helping my classroom out… well, now you have a way. Use the checkout code ZONKER and your donation will be matched. I only need to get about $15o dollars pledged to get all those cool new graphic novels for my students. Help if you can… there are only 3 days left!

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Hastings seems mainly to traffic in books and movies, but they also sell a variety of video games and toys. I have a Wii and it doesn’t get played all that much. A lot of the male students and faculty at my school are obsessive about their video game playing but I never got the bug. I enjoy playing my old games quite a bit, but even when I got the Wii, I couldn’t quite get a grasp on any game made after 1997. Even those I do enjoy (New Super Mario Bros, Epic Mickey) are firmly rooted in the traditions of the earlier games I enjoyed.

Case in point, this past week I bought Batman: The Brave and the Bold from Hastings for like $8 bucks.

It’s a slick side-scolling, beat ’em up game like Double Dragon with some very nice animation and (as far as I’ve played, which isn’t far) some decent writing well in step with the cartoon on which its’ based. A more skilled video game player would likely scoff at my choice but I’m not looking for an immersive video game experience. I want something I can play for half an hour and then turn off.

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From the “I Found This Unintentionally Funny” Department:

Bully, a new documentary from The Weinstein Company, focuses on the epidemic of bullying (of course it does). The movie was filmed in high schools across America and was designed in part to be used as a teaching tool for students of that age.

Bully has received an R rating from the MPAA for the excessive use of profanity captured by the documentary filmmakers. Let me be clear: the profanity used by young people in our middle and high schools is too excessive for the Motion Picture Association of America.

I find this to be absolutely instep with what I hear in my school’s hallways everyday. Kids feel freer about cussing today than I know I felt when I was in high school. Full confession: I was often made fun of by my friends for NOT cursing, as they found my restraint odd. I can stand outside my classroom on any given morning and hear “the F bomb” dropped at least half a dozen time in casual conversation…. and this is casual conversation in front of a supposed authority figure!

…at any rate, Harvey Weinstein is appealing the decision and I’m interested to see what becomes of of Bully.

2011-2012 school year: mustache!

I know the facial hair thing is a little weird, given how I normally draw my beard as just a random zig-zag line. I will also ask that, starting next week, you just forget about my mustache. I shaved it off immediately after making a splash with my “asshole movie producer” character during the students’ presentations.

I guess I could have said this yesterday, but that “character” I do is basically Irwin Mainway, the shady businessman character Dan Aykroyd played on Saturday Night Live. You can see why I’d want a mustache for that, right? Right?

Would you like to se some of the Romeo & Juliet posters from this year’s 9th graders?  Check behind the cut.

2011-2012 school year: a tactical mistake

TO BE CONTINUED

…or, if you’re interested, you can go back and look at some of the comics I did about this very fun project. It’s seriously one of the highlights of the year for me and students seem to remember the project fondly after they move up to the 10th grade and beyond.

2011-2012 school year: plip

I hope you can agree that, in general, I’m a pretty positive guy when it comes to my job. I love working with young people. I love teaching English. I choose to teach in high need schools because I feel my talents are best used there.

That being said, when you can’t close your door because of a leaky ceiling… and when you look down the hallway and see FIVE buckets out in the middle of the hallways because of other leaks in the ceiling… it’s easy to get discouraged.

sketchbook: doin’ bad things to nice fictional characters

Seeing as its’ President’s Day, it’s sketchbook day. New comics tomorrow.

Remember that show Ugly Betty? Of the soapy TV Ellen watches, that was one of the shows I could most tolerate. I liked how over the top it was; almost a parody of soap operas. I also loved how stupid the conceit of the show was, since clearly the actress playing Betty was far from “ugly.” In the other versions of Ugly Betty syndicated around the world, the character was actually portrayed as being sort of hideous… but I guess Americans couldn’t handle that.

At the bottom, a Frank Miller version of one of Elliot and Henry’s favorite cartoons, Super Why. I am NOT a big fan of Super Why, which often seems cloying and silly to me. I have such high standards of television, huh?

Give me Word Girl any day of the week, and twice on Sunday!