UA master’s students teach writing project

FAYETTEVILLE — Antha Johnson held up two brown paper sacks, one labeled “characters” and another labeled “theme.” She instructed her students, who worked in groups, to draw a slip of paper out of each bag to use in developing a story accompanied with comiclike drawings.

Johnson, 24, and Elizabeth Melton, 24, worked together on the 20-minute writing lesson for a summer course for their University of Arkansas master’s in teaching program. They each have bachelor’s degrees in drama and are preparing to be drama and communications teachers.

Johnson will begin an internship in the fall with Rogers High School, while Melton will be at Bentonville High School.

“That was my first time teaching teenagers,” Johnson said. “It was a little nerve-wracking.”

They taught a group of 16 students entering the eighth grade through recent high school graduates attending a week-long Teenswrite writing camp on the University of Arkansas campus.

The camp featured writing lessons from teachers-in-training, giving them a chance to practice what they are learning about lesson planning in a university methods course, said Chris Goering, associate professor of English education and director of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project. The project acts as host for the annual Teenswrite camp.

The groups of teenagers quickly got to work Wednesday morning after drawing their characters and themes. The lesson provided time for them to develop stories, illustrate them on a sheet of paper and share their work.

Surveys of students in Teenswrite showed that many had an interest in visual arts and graphic novels, which often are book-length comics, Johnson said. Melton and Johnson chose to focus their lesson on graphic novels.

“We wanted them to practice writing in a different medium,” Melton said.

One group drew “reunion” as a story theme with a main character described as a male who is young, clumsy, tall and “gangly.”

“We didn’t realize the meaning of gangly until it was too late,” said Cayden Woodside, 16, before explaining the group’s graphic novel. Woodside will begin his sophomore year of high school at Rogers New Technology High School.

Thinking “gangly” referred to gangs instead of a someone who is tall, thin and awkward, they developed a story about a reunion of two rival gangs in Florida, said 13-year-old Jessica Dachauer, who will be a ninth-grader at Woodland Junior High School in Fayetteville.

Their graphic novel centered on a Colombian gang and a Cuban gang, with the Colombian gang hiding out in an ice cream truck on a beach at night to attract the rival gang, Woodside said.

The resulting mini-graphic novel included a drawing of an ice cream truck.

“It’s a way to express your thoughts and your writing in a picture,” Woodside said.

Olivia Moore, 14, worked with a partner on a graphic novel that hit on the theme of “immortality” and featured a middle-aged woman described as short, sneaky, fast and graceful.

A drawing of a subway train provided inspiration, and the result was a story about a middle-aged woman who sees a boy standing on the tracks of an approaching subway train, Olivia said.

The woman says, “Oh, no. Because I’m fast and graceful, I’m going to go and get him,” Olivia said.

The woman pushes the boy out of the way but gets hit by the train, Olivia said. The woman survives because she is immortal.

“I love the drawing,” said Olivia, whose used pencil and a purple pen in her drawings. “I love visuals like graphic novels.”

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