Where to Start with YA Fantasy Literature
Where to Start with YA Fantasy Literature By Katherine Scott, PCC Instructor Five books to start your YA Fantasy Lit Adventure! Listen, when it comes to real life, things are weird right now. Dystopias have dominated the Young Adult Fantasy genre for a long time, and...
Pop Culture Classroom Teams with Mega Manga Publisher VIZ Media for Summer Book Clubs
Colorado nonprofit partners with #1 U.S. manga publisher for #GotManga Summer Book Clubs to unlock educational potential in Japanese-style comics Resources engage kids through popular manga titles like Beastars, Naruto, and My Hero Academia (Denver, July 6) — Pop...
6 Anime to Keep Kids Learning Over Summer
6 Anime to Keep Kids Learning Over Summer By Terra Necessary, PCC Instructor Summer vacation makes it easy to sprawl out, throw on an anime, and let the day melt away. Binge-watching is an anime fan’s favorite pastime, and in the summer of COVID-19 there’s lots...
Quarantine Cosplay: Upping Your Costume Game at Home
Quarantine Cosplay: Upping Your Costume Game at HomeBy Katherine Scott, PCC Instructor If you’re anything like me, all this time in quarantine means new books, movies, television shows, and developing new skills. I never learned how to cross-stitch, and with the...
The Best Tools to Create Your Own Comic
The Best Tools to Create Your Own ComicBy Dion Harris, Pop Culture Classroom Instructor There are so many reasons to create your own comics – career aspirations, social and emotional learning, literacy building, the love of art and storytelling. And there’s even more...
Children’s Comic Contest
Children's Comic ContestPop Culture Classroom is proud to launch our fourth comic book contest for kids! Calling all parents, educators, and comic book fans! Pop Culture Classroom is launching our fourth comic book contest for kids, and we're asking for your help to...
Pop Culture Classroom Launches Fun, New Distance Learning Page
(Denver, April 24, 2020) — Pop Culture Classroom, the Colorado-based educational non-profit and community group behind Denver Pop Culture Con, today launched a new, resource-rich webpage dedicated to distance learning. "So many of us engage with pop culture on a...
How Dungeons and Dragons Can Slay Isolation and Educate
By Faith Ojebuoboh, Pop Culture Classroom Instructor Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just a game — it also helps develop educational and social skills! Using probability to think about the chances by sneaking around a fire-breathing dragon? Cooperating to solve a riddle to...
Kids Stuck at Home? Pop Culture Classroom Has Free Comics, Lesson Plans, and More.
(Denver, CO) — As schools and libraries close across the US, Pop Culture Classroom is working to help provide educational content for students in the face of uncertainty over class scheduling. In addition to the free comics and other educational resources currently...
Family Fun at Denver Pop Culture Con — and It’s Affordable!
Denver Pop Culture Con 2020 is the place to be for affordable family fun this July 4 weekend. Pop Culture Con a centerpiece of part of our education and community-building work here at Pop Culture Classroom, so we’ve packed this incredible event with exciting guests...
Classroom Review of Raina Telgemeier’s Guts
By Madison Greenly Guts, Raina Telgemeier’s highly anticipated graphic novel and companion to Smile and Sisters, was recently released on September 17th. Based on a true story and geared towards an adolescent audience, Guts features Raina Telgemeier as she starts the...
Five Ways Fan Fiction Can Help Your Classroom
By Madison Greenly Fanfiction, or fan-created stories based on books, movies, TV, etc., has become increasingly popular on the internet. Creators use it to explore new media, to share ideas, and to connect with stories on a personal level. But fanfiction can be used...
Using the Incredible Hulk to Teach Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
What makes a monster? This topic was part of 19th century Gothic fiction when Robert Louis Stevenson put pen to paper, but if you ask a fan of Marvel Comics, they may instead respond, “gamma radiation.” Eventually, such a fan might get to the question that is the...
No Support – Now What?: Where to Turn and What to Do in the Face of a Less-Than-Supportive School Administration
In the spring of 2016, I had the opportunity to draft and present to my school district a class focused on the use of the Comics medium in the instruction and application of literary theory. I had grand plans: I worked to ensure that my list of materials was varied...
Teaching Disability Awareness With Disabled Comic Book Characters
One of the great things about school is that, just as students learn about different subjects, they also encounter different types of people from different walks of life. That being said, not every student has the opportunity to attend school with someone who is...
Comics to Catwalks: Bridging High School Theatre and Pop Culture
When I started teaching at Temecula Valley High School in 2009, I was as new to the field as I could be. I’d scarcely had my teaching credential authorized before a position became available in my hometown. Before I had much time to process what was happening, I found...
How Harry Potter Can Help Teach About the Salem Witch Trials
The Harry Potter books are all about a society of witches and wizards who inhabit a world adjacent to ours, and yet deliberately, wholly separate. That’s why it’s such a shock to Harry Potter when he finds out that he’s a wizard. Raised by Muggles (non-magical...
Superpower your weekend with Rocky Mountain PBS at the 2019 PCC Kids’ Lab!
Please help us welcome first-time Kids’ Lab exhibitor Rocky Mountain PBS into the Pop Culture Classroom Kids’ Laboratory for 2019! Swing by their booth throughout the DPCC weekend to take a picture with Word Girl and help RMPBS kick off the “Summer of Space”...
Katie’s Korner: Graphic Novel Reviews for Schools and Libraries
Gender Queer: A MemoirPublished by: Lion ForgeWritten by: Maia KobabeIllustrated by: Maia KobabeColors by: Phoebe KobabeISBN: 9781549304002Ages: 13+ Review “Having a nonbinary or trans teacher in junior high would have meant the world to me.” - Maia Kobabe After...
Submit, Submit, Submit! Or, Why You Should Submit to the 2019 EGL Awards Program.
All of us at Pop Culture Classroom (PCC) are so excited to be celebrating a new year and the 2nd annual Excellence in Graphic Literature (EGL) Awards! Submissions are open NOW through February 15, 2019, and we invite publishers and creators to submit your titles for...
The Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards 2018 Winners
Sitting on stage as part of the Excellence in Graphic Literature (EGL) Awards ceremony last year, I experienced a lot of different emotions. On the one hand, I was really excited by all the energy in the room and all the positive attention the awards were receiving...
Katie’s Korner: Graphic Novel Reviews for Schools and Libraries
Otherworldly Izkaya Nobu Volume 1Published by: Udon EntertainmentWritten by: Natsuya SemikawaIllustrated by: Virginia NitouheiISBN: 9781772940671Ages: 13+ Review I first heard of Otherwordly Izakaya Nobu this past October at New York City Comic Con. Only an...
Using Deadpool to Teach Narrative Voices (1st & 2nd person, etc.)
We are all storytellers! And yet, many people—young and old alike—feel intimidated at the prospect of sitting down and writing a short story, novel, or comic book script. That’s understandable! Writing is fun, but it’s also undeniably hard work. After all, there’s a...
Exhibitor Applications for PCC Kids’ Lab 2019 Now Open!
The Pop Culture Classroom Kids’ Lab is back and better than ever for Denver Pop Culture Con 2019 (May 31-June 2, 2019), and we are excited to announce that the application for the PCC Kids’ Lab exhibitors is now live! Apply now through December 10, 2018 for the chance...
Katie’s Korner: Graphic Novel Reviews for Schools and Libraries
Son of Hitler Published by: Image Comics Written by: Anthony Del Col, Geoff Moore Illustrated by: Jeff McComsey Format: HC, Color, 192 pages, $24.99 ISBN: 9781534302242 Ages: 16+ Review Did Adolf Hitler have a son? Based in some of the most engaging rumors...
Using Han Solo to Teach “The Hero’s Journey”
Teaching writing is more than stringing together words. Stories have a structure. Good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Great stories teach us something about life and ourselves. Timeless stories; those that affect generations and change how the world...
How Can I Get My Kids Started Making Their Own Comics?
Visual literacy—the ability to interpret and create visual images—is an important 21st century skill. Kids are exposed to imagery from the internet, video games, television, film, and advertisements every day, and it is important that they are able to think critically...
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