In the waning weeks of summer break, four Oak Lawn Community High School teachers headed to McCormick Place for the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, not only as fans, but as presenters on bringing the power of pop culture into their classrooms as a teaching tool.
“My philosophy of education is we need to be listening more to our students and meeting our students where they’re at,” said Eric Kallenborn, chairperson of the fine arts department at OLCHS. “Anything we can do to incorporate something that is more engaging for the students is going to make a world of difference.”
Kallenborn is part of a cohort of teachers and librarians known as Lit-X, which helps educators use music, film, games, comics and more to teach in the 21st century. He first got involved with programming at comic cons and educational conferences roughly a decade ago, while teaching at Shepard High School in Palos Heights. Though Lit-X is not an official nonprofit, its members all volunteer their time. ReedPop, which runs the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, commonly known as C2E2, reached out to the cohort to curate educational programming.
“When we get opportunities to put on educational programming at these shows, I try to bring as much local talent as we possibly can,” Kallenborn said.
He found plenty of talent for this year’s expo in the fine arts department at Oak Lawn Community High School. Jennifer Clark and Ailysh Cooper were among those who joined the group this year at C2E2, leading a bobblehead-making workshop in the Family HQ area of the convention. Cooper, an art teacher starting her fifth year at OLCHS, said she went to C2E2 last year on a field trip with Kallenborn and a comics class she was teaching.
“I really loved it, and when Eric asked if I wanted to come back and present, I was super happy,” Cooper said. “I believe in a visual culture education, because visual culture is what students experience. … They’re inundated with artwork, with design on social media, in their video games, in their movies. Basically, everything that’s happening at C2E2 is a great part of visual culture education that they won’t necessarily get just by studying older masterpieces.”
Bob Habersat, a music teacher with 10 years under his belt at Oak Lawn, applies a similar philosophy to his classes. Pop music plays an important role, though many teachers shy away from it, seeing it as overly simplified.
“I think that the best way to reach students is to reach them where they’re at, which is incorporating pop music into everything, whether it’s classic guitar ensemble, percussion or piano,” Habersat said. “We’re all starting with pop music to get kids hooked. The same nutritional elements that you get out of studying something like Mozart or Beethoven, you can still get that by studying Bieber or Katy Perry.”
Habersat has a website where he creates materials for music teachers, and he created animations for it. So when Kallenborn asked him to consider topics the general population might enjoy, an “Easy Animations with Keynote” presentation quickly came to mind. Habersat said the Saturday afternoon presentation was well-attended by teachers and librarians, as well as a few people who wanted to learn how to make animations for presentations. The experience of presenting there for the first time was unique.
“I give clinics at conferences all the time, but they’re always to a music education audience, and it was definitely a different experience at C2E2,” Habersat said. “Definitely a bit of a culture shock, but the community is so supportive and welcoming of anyone. It made me really happy and bubbly as soon as I left the convention. I was like, ‘Wow, this is a really bright spot of humanity — all of these people who are really into their thing that everyone’s super open about.’ … I can’t wait to do it again next year.”
Cooper echoed Habersat’s sentiments about being involved with C2E2.
“It’s just a really fun atmosphere,” she said. “I feel like C2E2 is just a really safe place for people to be themselves and enjoy what they’re doing. … I had a good time and I love that I was able to be there with my co-workers and have an extra little enriching thing at the end of the summer.”
Kallenborn, in his fourth year at Oak Lawn Community High School, curated and participated in a number of panels throughout the weekend at C2E2, including an improv workshop on Friday. He said not a lot of schools are involved with the programming at the expo, but a lot of teachers, librarians and other professionals attend on Friday, so a good amount of educational programming takes place then.
“Lit-X is by far one of the biggest groups bringing that,” Kallenborn said. “One of the things we like to do is help teachers find avenues where they can teach with music, movies and comics that just make things more interesting and engaging for their students. It’s not always going to work 100% of the time, but if we can help teachers be more engaging and come up with more engaging lessons, that’s extremely important in this day and age, as well.”
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C2E2 is expected to return to its pre-pandemic usual schedule of March in 2023, so Kallenborn said they are already looking at some possibilities for programming for that. When Lit-X did C2E2 this past December, the cohort was able to get some students involved in the panels, including the comic creation course with Cooper.
“The teachers and librarians that came to that panel got to hear firsthand from our students why this medium is important and engaging,” Kallenborn said. “I try to bring as many real-world experiences as I can to the kids. … I think it’s really important for us to get our students these experiences not only because it’s going to be awesome for them to remember but it gives them real-life experiences in presenting and talking to people about educational ideals. I think that’s super important.”
Kallenborn hopes to get students involved again in the spring.
Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.