Teacher Comics: You take the test, you pass the test

My favorite moment of the entire week. I’ve never seen anyone so excited to know what second person point of view was in my life!

Teacher Comics: Geez

I hope this doesn’t come off as complaining as schools have been given a really bad hand here when it comes to administering this test. As far as I’m concerned, my school does a damn fine job of figuring out to give this test to hundreds of sophomores while still attending the needs of the rest of our student body.

If I were to play pretend I was the guy in charge, here’s what I would do: I would stagger these tests so that there wasn’t a five exam marathon pileup in the middle of March. That’s not good for anybody. I’d give each exam its own day, maybe one exam every other week for… 10 weeks, let’s say. March through April. That would give students space enough to prepare a bit. Schedule those testing days on a Friday and give all the students NOT taking this test the day off. Get them out of the building and allow administration and proctors to focus on the task at hand. The students taking the test would get a half-day; when they’re done with the test, they can go home.

Even in writing this I know why it wouldn’t work… bussing would be expensive, the scheduling of days off and half days would put a strain on budgets, grading the exams takes time, and a dozen other reasons that have nothing to do with giving students the optimum opportunities to do well on these exams.

Oh well, what do I know. I’m just a teacher with ten years of experience…

Teacher Comics: Oh Gee Tee

“This week” is code for “last week,” which is when the majority of these comics were drawn. They were drawn, in fact, DURING the OGT testing time, for which I was a proctor along with another teacher. Two teachers, 17 students and ABSOLUTELY NO use of electronic devices equalled a lot of productivity for me, sketchbook wise!

2010-2011 school year: day eighty one

I don’t know if this comic’s a success or not… but it’s true.

2010-2011 school year: day twenty five

Today’s comic mirrors a previous comic. Go back into the vast archives and see if you can figure out which strip I ripped off!

2010-2011 school year: day fifteen

I don’t know whether this is oversharing or not, but I wanted to have it on the record somewhere that getting away from elaborate backgrounds (or as elaborate as my pen scratching can be) is a conscious choice. I’ve been looking at a lot of my favorite newspaper comic strips in the past two months and one thing I’ve noticed about them is their judicious use of background elements.

Part of this is function over form: newspaper comics get shrunk down to the size of postage stamps, so you don’t want a lot of noise in the background that takes away from the action of your characters… but I also think, in certain cases, it brings a certain elegance and focus to the ideas of a comic strip.

My reason for saying this is that I struggled with the first panel of this strip, and I guess I feel better pointing it out myself.