St. Benedict’s teachers present panel at NYC Comic Con’s Professional Day
New York City Comic Con organizers invited teachers from St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark to host a panel about the benefits of incorporating “geek culture” in high school classrooms.
About 60 professionals attended the panel — co-hosted with faculty and students from International High School in Prospect Heights — on Thursday, Oct. 6, titled “Case Studies: Building Multicultural Spaces in Schools Through the Power of Geek.”
The panel featured a lively conversation about how to leverage the world of fandom to build community with students and colleagues. Panel participants discussed how “geek culture” can be used as a socio-emotional learning tool to create safe student spaces. They discussed how teachers can develop pop-culture-centered extracurricular activities and alternative assessments and how administrators can support these initiatives.
Panelists included four faculty members from St. Benedict’s Prep: Michelle Tuorto-Collins, who teaches meteorology and environmental science; Ivan Lamorte, who teaches psychology and serves as School Psychologist; Jim Duffy, who teaches Ancient Roman and Medieval History and serves as Dean of the Middle Division; and Rich Molina, who teaches physics and coaches fencing.
“We had a nice turnout of educators and librarians who came to hear us talk about leveraging the ‘power of geek’ in the classroom,” said Michelle Tuorto-Collins, Associate Headmaster for Academics and a science teacher at St. Benedict’s Prep.
Tuorto-Collins said that by sharing her passion for “geek culture,” she has connected with students on a more personal level. She said that teachers at St. Benedict’s Prep incorporate pop culture into the curriculum using graphic novels and alternative assessment techniques that utilize digital media.Alternative assessment is any assessment practice that provides a continuous gauge of individual student progress and is designed to provide a more accurate idea of specific skills or milestones the student has achieved.
According to Tuorto-Collins, incorporating pop culture into the classroom is about connecting what the students learn at school to the modern world. “At the panel, I spoke about using digital platforms, such as podcasts and YouTube shorts, as alternative assessment methods for students,” she said.
There are also plenty of opportunities to incorporate “geek culture” in cross-curricular instruction, which many teachers at St. Benedict’s Prep seem to embrace fully, Tuorto-Collins said. St. Benedict’s Prep art teacher Pamela Wye-Hunsinger incorporates literacy and vocabulary practice into her classroom by having students create graphic novels in art class, Tuorto-Collins said.
But art class is not the only place St. Benedict’s Prep students are encouraged to embrace the “power of geek.” St. Benedict’s prep encourages its teachers to find new and creative ways to connect with students on a personal and academic level. Tuorto-Collins said that St. Benedict’s educators can decide what texts and materials to use in their classrooms. The goal is to make students feel comfortable and accepted to foster a more inclusive learning environment.
“Our goal with our teachers is creativity and responsiveness to the students in front of them,” Tuorto-Collins said. “If it is appropriate and serves their classes’ goals, we encourage teachers to use it.”
This year is the first time St. Benedict’s Prep faculty have been a part of a professional program at NYC Comic Con, but they have been sending their faculty to the convention for over seven years. Tuorto-Collins said that every year, the New York City Public Library pays for a handful of St. Benedict’s educators to attend the convention’s Professional’s Day for free.
While Comic Con will not return until next year, Tuorto-Collins said, the faculty of St. Benedict’s Prep and the audience members they connected with at their panel will continue to stay in touch via email to share ideas, methodology, and news throughout the school year.
Featured photo: St. Benedicts’s teachers left to right: Jim Duffy, Dr. Ivan Lamourt, Rich Molina and Michelle Tuorto-Collins. (COURTESY ST. BENEDICT’S)
