Working on a Light Box

The page I am tracing with blue non-photo pencil is from my notebook. I am in the process of learning how to transform my pencil sketches into polished comics.

the light box cost $25 and the non-photo blue pencils are about a dollar a piece.

Process: lots of drafting and revision of a script simultaneously with pencil sketches of the script—transfer the sketches to art paper via light box and non-photo blue pencil—go over the blue pencil with ink—scan the black ink panel into Adobe...I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve never done any of this before.

I have been teaching myself by reading a lot of graphic memoir and art books as well as participating in an online graphic memoir course through the Sequential Artists Workshop. -/

Imperceptible Growth

Our growth as artists, writers, friends, leaders, humanitarians, athletes, spouses, sons and daughter, parents and grandparents —no matter our age—is more than likely a series of imperceptible shifts and changes rather than one momentous leap.

No algorithm can predict how much capacity for love or art or change we have within us.

The journey is greater than inn for many reasons...including the reasons we can’t see or predict.

Writing Instruction & Momentum

Positive and/or negative changes build momentum.

I started my career in 1995. Let's assume the teacher I replaced put in a 30 year career in that same classroom. He/She would have started their career in 1965. James Britton's seminal research behind the call to for language and writing across the curriculum did not meet the masses until the early 70s.

I have been thinking about how slowly some changes comes in education.

Furthermore, when, if at all, did the work of Britton, Shaughnessy, Graves, Calkins, Emig, et al. reach the teachers and administrators (any decision makers) who preceded us? What momentum has carried over from the teachers who paved the paths we have maintained, extended, and branched away from?

Has energy and momentum from our predecessors in the classroom become our stubborn habits and traditions?

Twenty-five years in has brought some substantially unwieldy changes to the profession. Yet, I wonder how much writing instruction resembles the practices, habits, and traditions established by our predecessors? Is it better? Worse?

Will writing instruction, as it stands today, continue on its path?

Where is the momentum taking us?

Where will the momentum take the next generation of teachers, those who replace us?