Editorial Cartoons

Ian Kirner's cartoon concerning the Pokemon Go craze

Throughout the year in World History, our class will be keeping up to date on current events.  Earlier in the year, I encouraged students to download a variety of news apps onto their phones.  They were encouraged to download a local, national, and international news app.  If they wanted to take it a step further, I encouraged them to allow one of the apps to accept push notifications so that breaking news would appear across the home screens of their phones!  It has been fun to see students excited to ask me about breaking news to see if I had already seen it yet or not during our current events discussion that usually occurs on Monday or Tuesday at the beginning of class.

Jenny She's cartoon providing political commentary

To go along with our continued investigation of current events, we discussed the role that editorial cartoons play in allowing writers / cartoonists to make statements concerning events that are happening in the World.  It was stressed that cartoons should really go beyond the descriptive and should reach for the analytical.  In other words, they need to attempt to say something with their cartoon.

Georgia Zimmerman's cartoon this year's Nobel Prizes  

I gave the class the chance to test out their editorial cartoon making skills by creating a cartoon that was related to any New York Times article they could find.  Students were allowed to pick any topic found in the NYT that they thought was interesting and most importantly had something to say about it.  Finally, I chose some of the very best to compete in the NYT Learning Network's Second Annual Editorial Cartoon Contest.  We are currently awaiting the results of the contest and are hoping to have a winner or two from among the thousands of entries that they receive from across the nation.  Last year, BHHS had two cartoons that were chosen for recognition!

Mari Lynn's cartoon concerning the demotion of Pluto