Comic Books for Gallaudet Students?

Davila is on the right track with his vlog focused on the idea of strengthening the sense of community to improve retention at Gallaudet. Now we need ideas to improve academic skills. Students who arrive at Gallaudet with limited English abilities need help and motivation to improve fast. Time is short. College is just a few years, a blip in a lifetime.

So here is an idea I have based on my own experience. Use comic books to help and motivate Gallaudet students with weak English. I credit comic books for helping me to develop good reading skills at an early age. I read regular books as a young child, but my real love was comic books.

Casper, Wendy, Richie, Archie, Little Lulu - the "kid stuff" was easy to understand and fun to read. It helped me to build and reinforce a foundation of good English skills. The big words I came across in the comic books were intriguing, and I pestered my mother so much about what the words meant that she taught me how to use a dictionary at an early age.

I would like to see Gallaudet University library set aside a room as the "comic book room", filled with regular comic books, comic book digests, manga, and graphic novels. Students with limited English could spend hours reading those, enjoying themselves and improving their English at the same time. The simplicity of comic books would help to build their confidence in their English, and graphic novels can be as wordy as some regular books.

Comic books and comics come in a wide variety of genres. For students who might be embarrassed to read the "kid stuff," there could be a selection of erotic adult comics. For students who are struggling to understand literature, there could be Classics Illustrated. Romance, horror, superhero, and crime comics. They are harder to find, but there are also history -based comics, such as Maus and Barefoot Gen. Educational comics are another genre - I remember learning about electricity from Reddy Kilowatt, and about economics through another comic book. Ther are plenty of reprint collections of both past and present newspaper comic strips available.

There is just one problem with this idea of a comic book room in the library. Comics can be addictive! Just as the cafeteria has to chase out still-chatting students at closing time, the library could find itself having to chase out still-reading students at closing time.