Getting Into Good Trouble

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: "The Only Light We've Got": Storytelling and Critical Literacies as Method and Antiracist Praxis

Abstract

Context and Purpose
In 2019, a year prior to the death of Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Ayden, the co-author of his highly celebrated graphic memoir series March, proposed a new project. His idea was to create a series of comics in the tradition of Congressman Lewis that explore important justice-oriented issues across the country, elevating and sharing projects that are not receiving the attention they deserve. The project, which became Good Trouble Productions, is in the process of creating its first book, co-written by Mari Copeny, otherwise known as Little Miss Flint, and her work around the Flint water crisis.

This paper outlines the intentions of Good Trouble Productions and the creators’ intentions of using their work to help teachers through the development of justice-oriented comics for a variety of classroom environments. This organizations’ content is co-created with the adolescents who are directly impacted and engaged with the issues, such as Mari Copeny. As an academic consultant for Good Trouble, I will examine the value of using comics in the classroom, how to effectively do so, and why it is significant that these stories are being told in the graphic format. Additionally, I will discuss the resources and content requested by teachers and students who have been surveyed on behalf of Good Trouble in order to help develop the most beneficial content for them.

Theoretical framing and methods
This work expands on criticisms surrounding cultural capital as proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, while borrowing from the pedagogical work of Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008) regarding the dismantling of the hierarchies that separate popular culture from so-called “high culture.” Recognizing the value of comics in the classroom as a truly transformative medium, specifically in the materials produced by Good Trouble Productions, this paper discusses how this work assists students in recognizing their place in the world. As Freire (2005) wrote, “And the better I understand myself in such completeness, the more it will be possible for me to make history, knowing that I too am made of history...I exist in the world and with the world” (p. 95).

The work reflects Gloria Ladson-Billings’s framework around Culturally Responsible Pedagogy, as she states (1995), “A next step for positioning effective pedagogical practices is a theoretical model that not only addresses student achievement but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that school (and other institutions) perpetuate” (p. 469).

Scholarly significance
Traditionally, the materials used within classrooms, especially within social sciences, have been produced and developed by corporate giants, such as The College Board and Pearson. In the context of Good Trouble Productions and the curricular materials that will be outlined in this paper, that approach is being inverted, allowing the communities of the students to tell the stories and create the materials that will be used within the classroom. This “alternative” method of storytelling creates opportunities for students and teachers to examine how they view the world and their place within it.

Author

• Anya Prosser, Teachers College, Columbia University