We are excited to announce the 2017 winners of the first-ever Pop Culture Educator of the Year Award! Each of the award-winners below has demonstrated innovative use of pop culture as an educational tool in…
PCC Partner Sterling Correctional Facilities Wins Will Eisner Grant from the ALA
Pop Culture Classroom is excited to announce that our partner Sterling Correctional Facilities (SCF) has been awarded The Will Eisner Graphic Novel Growth Grant from the American Library Association (ALA). This grant provides support to…
Pop Culture Classroom showcased in National Council of Teachers of English Spring Journal!
We are pleased to announce that Pop Culture Classroom’s (PCC’s) comic issue, Discovering Literacy Through Comics, has been featured in the Spring Issue of the National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE’s) Voices from the…
Inspiring Lifelong Readers: The Literary Power of Comics
Despite their rising influence across movies, TV, film, and literature, comics are still considered by many to be simple, low-brow superhero tales that lack any real-world impact. Even teachers using comics in their classrooms can…
Workshop Spotlight: Whittier Elementary
Pop Culture Classroom is dedicated to offering students in classrooms all across the Front Range dynamic workshops exploring educational topics through the lens of pop culture. The latest of these was an exciting 8-week comic-creation…
MARCH Review
By Eric Kallenborn Last August, I was privileged enough to hear Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, co-authors of the award-winning graphic novel trilogy March, speak at Evanston Public High School in Evanston, Illinois. It…
Littles Need Comics, Too: Comics and Graphic Novels for Early Readers
By Ronell Whitaker “Are there any comics or graphic novels out there for the primary grades?” This is a question I get all the time from fellow teachers. It seems simple, but for years I…
PCC and Action Lab Comics! Extend Partnership to 2020
Pop Culture Classroom is pleased and honored to announce the renewal of a continued partnership with Action Lab Comics! PCC’s arts and literacy curriculum Storytelling Through Comics (STC) is greatly supported by Action Lab, and…
Pride of Baghdad Review
By Michael Gianfrancesco Brian K. Vaughan’s and Niko Henrichon’s 2006 masterpiece Pride of Baghdad combines fact and fiction in a way that not only creates an impactful and poignant story, but also makes serious and…
Pop Culture Classroom’s Director of Education is speaking at TEDxCU
Pop Culture Classroom’s Director of Education, Illya Kowalchuk, M. Ed., is speaking at TEDxCU! As part of the event, Mr. Kowalchuk will give a must-see talk about PCC’s innovative program LEAD With Comics, a unique…
The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
Written by Johnathon Hennessey Art by Aaron McConnell Appropriate for Grades: Middle School and up REVIEW In interesting times such as these, the laws and traditions of the United States are finding themselves hotly…
Finding Inspiration: Comics as a Pathway to Reading
By Michael Gianfrancesco, Comics Education Outreach “Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.” —Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, A Survivor’s Tale When I first began teaching comics in the classroom over a dozen…
Looking for Focus Group Participants!
Calling all educators! Pop Culture Classroom is looking for participants for a focus group! PCC is starting the Graphic Novels Lending Library, a program where educators can rent graphic novel libraries for instructional purposes. We…
Lumberjanes, Volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy
Written by Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis Art by Brooke Allen Appropriate for Grades: 3rd grade and up REVIEW Full disclosure: When I was growing up, I was obsessed with all things related to summer…