Charles LaGreca became a comic book fan early in life after he discovered a copy of Captain America lying on the floor of his brother’s closet. “To a little kid, that not only opened my eyes to a new world but to reading itself,” he told the Denver Post in 2011. Later as an adult, he spent time working for DC Comics, Disney, and Nickelodeon, and even produced his own comic book podcast. Suffice to say, comic books were more than mere entertainment for LaGreca but ingrained into his DNA as well.
Charles LaGreca also discovered the educational value of comics at a young age. Not only did they facilitate his desire to read but comic books also introduced him to words he later came across in school, including antimatter, submarine, laboratory, and villain. The experience inevitably led to an epiphany on his part – “What better way to promote literacy and vocabulary among underserved students than through friendly learning tools like comic books and graphic novels?”
As a result, LaGreca teamed with Frank Romero, David Vinson, and Kevin Vinson in 2010, and together they founded the non-profit Comic Book Classroom in Denver. With the help of local educators Illya Kowalchuk and Christina Angel, the organization then developed a Storytelling Through Comics curriculum, which was being used in a dozen elementary and middle schools within two short years.
Storytelling Through Comics is a six-week program that teaches the vocabulary of comics and a stylistic approach to reading them, as well as how to write stories about one’s own experiences. After learning the fundamentals of comic books, students are taught story structure, character development, and narrative flow. The idea is to not only enhance reading and drawing skills but teach the art of storytelling. As a result, students begin to think about their communities and personal identities in new ways. The comic they then craft from their personal experiences is published as part of a class collection.
Realizing that it wasn’t just comic books that could be used for education but other forms of popular culture as well, Comic Book Classroom officially changed its name to Pop Culture Classroom in 2014. While the name may have changed, however, the focus of advancing literacy and sparking creativity remained the same.
The non-profit also discovered the perfect fundraiser for the organization – Denver Comic Con, which officially launched in 2012. “That’s the intersection of the two programs,” Illya Kowalchuk explained at the time. “The work we’re doing during the school year and the summers in education outreach dovetails really well into what we’re doing at the convention.”
Pop Culture Classroom put its own spin on the convention concept to better tie the con in with their education efforts. The first day of Denver Comic Con was proclaimed Educator’s Day, for instance, with a slate of panels geared towards teachers, librarians, and administrators that showcased the ways pop culture can be used in the classroom. Hands-on kid labs were added, and to ensure that all youths in the Denver area had access to the convention, Pop Culture Classroom granted “scholarships” so that anyone could attend, regardless of their economic status. Fan groups and community organizations were also encouraged to set up tables and booths, resulting in a large chunk of the convention floor devoted to something more than the traditional buying and selling of merchandise.
Attendance at Denver Comic Con climbed over 100,000 by 2015 but the 2019 event ended up being the last. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 convention and although plans were underway for 2021, Pop Culture Classroom was forced to shut down all future cons for financial reasons.
“Considering the impact that the pandemic has had on our organization and budget, it just won’t be possible in 2021 to hold the kind of show people have come to expect,” interim executive director Adam Kullberg announced in an email to supporters. “Without the planned revenue for the event in 2020 – and now 2021 – we’ve also been forced to eliminate staff positions related to the annual event. We are shifting our efforts and staffing to focus on our core educational mission going forward and will be providing as many opportunities for pop culture-based education, instruction, and creative community connection as we can in the face of a challenging public health environment and serious budgetary constraints.”
Supporters of Pop Culture Classroom quickly jumped into action, making donations to the non-profit and offering support for its programs. In May 2021, Fan Expo – a for-profit company that holds pop culture conventions in Toronto, Boston, and Dallas – not only purchased the rights to the Denver con but named Pop Culture Classroom the official event charity. The non-profit was also allowed to continue its Educator’s Day programming and community efforts in conjunction with the newly named Fan Expo Denver.
After the success of Storytelling Through Comics, Pop Culture Classroom expanded its education efforts. In 2014, the organization received a $26,000 grant to improve the literacy and art skills of inmates between the ages of 18 and 24 in the Denver County jail system. Called LEAD With Comics – “Literacy Education in Adult Detention” – the program followed the same format as Storytelling Through Comics, with a special emphasis on literacy.
“Over 60 percent of people that are in the correctional system are functionally illiterate, which means they can’t read above a fourth-grade level,” Illya Kowalchuk said in 2016. He added that inmates who took part in literacy programs had a sixteen percent recidivism rate, while those who didn’t were four times more likely to return to jail after being released.
Then in 2017, Pop Culture Classroom launched Colorful History with a two-page comic book focused on Colorado native Scott Carpenter, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. The comic was free to download and contained a teacher’s guide with classroom questions and historical reference photos. The ongoing series continued to highlight Colorado history for forty issues before expanding both its scope to general history and number of pages to four.
Two years later, Pop Culture Classroom partnered with the ECDC African Community Center for a Connection Through Comics program that collected audio recordings of refugees in the Denver area. Two-to-six-page comic books, available for free download like Colorful History, where subsequently created based on the interviews.
“Our goal with this project is to communicate the value of refugee stories, both to the refugees themselves and to those of us who want to learn from their stories,” Adam Kullberg explained at the time. “By using comics as a medium to tell their stories, we are able to help refugees overcome boundaries of communication and demystify their stories. This project is really interesting in its infusion of the refugee experience into a cornerstone American art form.”
Since its inception in 2010, Pop Culture Classroom has developed innovative ways to use popular culture as an educational tool. Its Storytelling Through Comics curriculum has since been joined by a tabletop gaming version called Game On!, while its website is filled with graphic novel teaching guides to assist educators. Add Colorful History and Connection Through Comics into the mix – as well as programming at Fan Expo Denver – and Pop Culture Classroom will no doubt continue to thrive well into the future.
Anthony Letizia