Comic workshop
Handout comic creation
with the friendly permission of Eberhard Köpf
Presentation about the comic workshops
Promoting sustainability with old vegetables and comics
By Berthold Jürriens
Neckarbischofsheim. (bju) "Thinking globally, acting locally" is the name of the Erasmus+ project at the Adolf-Schmitthenner-Gymnasium (ASG), which deals with sustainability and climate change. Together with partner schools from Spain, Poland and Italy, these topics are to be made more aware. In addition to future exchanges with other European pupils, however, interdisciplinary projects have already been completed at the ASG. "Old Vegetables and Grains" was the heading over the topic of class 11b, taught by Vera Mayer. "Over the years, many plants have been lost in our garden and in the landscape. The loss of species is dramatic," Mayer informed. This was one of the reasons why the students dealt with the loss of biodiversity, its effects on life and some forgotten species. For example, they investigated the question of whether "strawberry spinach" would exist and old vegetable varieties were planted in the school garden and classroom. "One of the things we did in this garden project was to mix smoothies from our own grown microgreens." To get an insight into conventional and organic farming, the school class visited the Moserhof in Daisbach and also learned how to grow regional "Kraichgaukorn" without pesticides and herbicides. "The way our vegetable and grain varieties were bred was also part of our project," says Mayer. Identification exercises on different types of cereals, an analysis of the urine smell after eating asparagus or determining the vitamin C content of vegetables from our garden compared to supermarket vegetables rounded off the project. An e-book was produced in English documenting the project with pictures. Creativity was especially in demand in the second project of class 11b, which was to make the topic of sustainability more visible to the public. "We decided to use the visual language of comics to present the knowledge we had learned in biology and chemistry lessons," says Mayer. After attending a seminar at the Klima Arena in Sinsheim entitled "Ecological Footprint- deeper-learning", the young people learned how to link a content-related topic with a digital tool, in this case a digital comic. In two workshops with art teacher Frederic Roos and comic artist Eberhard Köpf from Helmstadt-Bargen, the ideas could be put into practice. "As a comic artist, showing someone what makes up comics and how to draw them is quite a different task," said Köpf, who, however, found the short-term switch to "teaching" exciting. Of course, a little theory was not to be missed, so that "comic grandfather" Wilhelm Busch and differences between comics were also discussed.