An awesome cartooning memory

Cartooning has been my curriculum focus the past few weeks. I thank Mrs. Edwards at Nichols Sawmill Elementary for letting me work with one of her 5th grade classes. We had a few drawing lessons, discussed some very creative story lines and started our own small comic books. Unfortunately, the end of the school year is next week so the students won’t be able to finish and share their books but we did set them all up so they could work on their books at home.

Today, I found a wonderful surprise as I scanned my Goodle Reader Feeds that has to deal with cartooning. Langwitches entry spurred such a great memory that I had to post about it. I copied my comment that I left at the blog site below.

“This brought back such a great memory!!! Both of my kids (now 23 & 25) attended Woodlake Elementary in Mandeville, LA. This was probably around 1994. Mike Artell came to share his enthusiasm with the students in the school’s gym. He was all set up at one end of the gym, the students sitting ‘criss-cross applesauce’ on the gym floor armed with a pencil and paper. Each time Mike Artell drew something, every child bowed down to mimic him. It was nearly a religious experience – not one child misbehaved – not one peep came from their mouths. Every child was drawing!

At the end of his presentation, he happily autographed a book for my daughter which she still treasures today and my son developed his own snake cartoon series that he worked on for most of the year.” Here is a link to a short presentation of his approach to doing a school presentation.