I was fascinated by comics even in my childhood. I started as a passionate reader, but of course, as time passed I wanted to draw something myself too. My dream as a boy was that even my comics were published somewhere. That dream came true later and almost everything which I had drawn by then was published in journals and magazines so that children and adults could watch and read those comics at my – and I hope – at their own pleasure.
As soon as I became a primary school teacher in Vranje's Primary School “Svetozar Marković“, I was thinking about how to pass the love toward comics on my students, how to use a comic in teaching.
It is known that children have a strong need for drawing and it would be a great pity not to use in modern school that child's wish for expressing himself/herself through drawing
A comic in teaching looks like a game, fun and, in fact, it makes teaching units through the connection of text and drawing be learnt faster and remembered for a long time in an effective and efficient way.
We make comics with students in the classes of the Serbian language, art, free-time activities, within comic workshops on various topics as well: ecology, children's right: based on fairy tales, fables; based on the texts of famous children's authors or the grammar content which students aquire easier through comics than when they are taught it in a classic, traditional way.
Comics ennoble children in an amusing way, because precious life messages are passed unobtrusively through comics.
When I was chosen by the Associaton as one of the Best Educators of Serbia of 2017, I used the financial part of the prize for the printing of the collection of children's and my educational comics under the title of: “To Draw for You!“ In this way I found myself with my students in the same book.
In the introductory part of the collection I write about the endless possibilities of the use of comics and comic material in teaching and I support this by appropriate examples; then children's comics and my comics come up next in colour.
In the book you can also find students’ comics which won first place in state art competitions and some of them were shown at the 20th Balkan exhibition of young comic writers among the works by the authors from the whole world.
The collection “To Draw for You!” was created in teaching and it is intended for teaching, so I believe that it will serve as a useful reference book, as useful teaching material in the work with future generations of students.
Wishing that the educational comic book reaches as many readers as possible, I have given the copies to my students, colleagues in Vranje and across Serbia, the city library, school libraries, kindergartens… I do not want to make me rich, I want to make the readers rich!
Of course, comics are not almighty. They can be used in almost every school subject and numerous and various impacts on children are achieved by using them. Comics do not require great investments or expensive technical devices during their interpretation but only the good will and talent of a cartoonist (talent is not crucial because it is possible to use even other people’s appropriate work). This is why we should make the effort to pull comics out of the shadow of more expensive, but not certainly more powerful teaching material.
The use of comics in teaching (TV appearance):