Navigating Comics in Teaching AP
By JOHN REBATO NERI
Teacher III
Butuan City Special Education Center
Education plays a vital role in the life of a person. Through education, pupils will develop their critical thinking, creativeness, collaboration, and communication. That’s why the role of the teacher is critical because it demands greatest commitment in order to develop the child holistically.
Intriguingly, the attitudes and interests of the pupils nowadays are different compared to the pupil’s decades ago. Most students now are more engaged in a variety of technologies even at a very young age. In fact, even as three-year old child can operate a cellphone. Children now have been described as wired or digitized learners and even their way of communication is digitized.
In the 21st century-teaching arena, teachers had been challenged by these kinds of learners since learners are more engaged in technology. Teachers should find ways to enhance their pedagogy in teaching so that learning would likely be fun and pupils will be more motivated to love and learn the subject.
Unfortunately, there has been a report about the attitudes of pupils towards learning Araling Panlipunan (AP) subject where most pupils viewed the subject as one of the most underappreciated subjects. This is because the content of the subject is highly objective in nature wherein it should be taught factually and comprehensively as possible. It has been found out that the most common students’ attitude towards learning AP subject is lack of interest in the lessons, their inattentiveness in the class discussion, not motivated to learn and failure to do subject’s tasks.
Additionally, the reason also why pupils have misbehavior towards the subject because they are having difficulties in memorizing the facts and have struggling coping with the teacher’s strategy wherein they aren’t motivated to learn anymore. And so the students are usually having low or failing grades in the subject and their academic performance was greatly affected by their behavior towards the subject.
In fact, the true essence of teaching is not merely to teach pupils how to memorize the facts, but leading the pupils how to understand and apply the concepts into practice and in a real-life situation. According to Mark Anthony Sy, Department of Education (DepEd), learning Araling Panlipunan doesn’t have necessarily to memorize everything including dates entirely but learners have to understand the situation and apply the lesson from past to present.
Therefore, effective teachers acknowledge the fact that teaching strategies and the use of instructional materials should always be improved (Shulman, 2018). Teachers should analyze and evaluate their teaching practices so they can focus on what works and improve students’ attitudes towards learning and academic performances. And so, teachers are highly encouraged to use a variety of supplementary materials to make teaching activities more effective and enjoyable for learners.
The best supplementary materials in teaching must support students’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development. One of the best supplementary materials that are essential in teaching AP concepts combined with visual communication is the use of traditional comics strip. Marquez (2019) emphasized that comics can provide images of stories. It offers simplified words and sentences or constructions of thoughts that are perfectly attuned to the tastes and styles of the pupils. In fact, Gardner (2012) stressed that comic is one innovation that is now taken seriously in academic institutions that can be used as a learning tool in different subject areas, especially in teaching Araling Panlipunan.
Long before that comics had considered an effective teaching materials for learners. Hutchinson (1949) stated that comics have a positive effect on students’ motivation and participation in the subject. There is undisputable evidence that learners visualize what they are reading and children show a natural interest when they see few text to read coupled with images. There is also prevalent result that the visual images of comics had made positive effect and make atmosphere more fun and exciting for learners.
Comics aren’t just about superheroes and villains. They’re certainly not just for boys only but are spread across many different genres and suited to all ages. Comic is considered the best tool for teaching history, events, and narration and increases pupil’s inference. Therefore, to make AP subject more interactive, interesting, and motivating to learners try to use comic to make learning be fun. ###
