Teacher Comics: Fiction is the real one.
A rather long comic about where my head is round now in regards to teaching non-fiction. Two notes:
– Here’s where I pulled that statistic. While I don’t disagree with the findings, I hope the comic illuminates a little why I find implementing them frustrating.
– In the last panel, Henry is asking for “a witch book.” He’s referring to The Witch Saga by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, of which we read the first book, Witch’s Sister, to the boys. The author is mostly known these days as the writer of Shiloh but I think the Witch books are due for a resurgence in popularity soon. They’re uniformly fantastic
Teachable Moments 
October 3, 2016 at 3:09 pm
Excellent comic. I felt the same way about reading as a kid. Loved fiction; didn’t get in to non-fiction. I especially disliked historical fiction, which I felt was a non-fiction wolf in fictional clothing. 🙂
In my English education masters program, they definitely wanted us to put focus on non-fiction, and supplementing fiction with real articles was the solution that appealed to me the most too. But you’re right about how it can seem to bog down the good stuff.
I feel you, man!
October 3, 2016 at 4:16 pm
How about combining the best of both worlds with some great historical fiction? Like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
October 22, 2016 at 1:43 am
We’re having the same issue in higher ed. They have dropped the Writing about Literature part of the first-year comp series and have replaced it with Research Writing. I am firmly of the belief that our students need to read literature and too many of them “don’t read” as it is.