If you’ve ever seen someone dressed up in a Spiderman costume under a typical dress shirt and pants on the Gunn High School campus, that can only mean two things: The Art of Visual Storytelling students have begun their Superheroes unit, and Gunn High English teacher Terence Kitada is the cosplayer. 

Kitada created the The Art of Visual Storytelling course from scratch as a coupling between his “nerdy” passion for comic books and enthusiasm for teaching, he said. This semester-long English elective, which was first introduced in 2017, has tripled in size since its launch. Currently, it’s exclusively offered at Gunn High and is a unique product of Kitada’s experiences: growing up in the Bay Area and a college summer internship doing sales and marketing at Marvel Entertainment, LLC. 

As with all superheroes, we have to start at the beginning: Kitada’s origin story. When Kitada turned five years old, he stumbled upon his first comic book — the 1991 series of X-Men — at Brian’s Books in downtown Palo Alto. Kitada said the colorful nature of the graphic novel combined with its popularity was a cultural novelty. Now, Kitada said he appreciates the layers of that story and its theme of prejudice, especially as a person of color. 

Kitada’s experience as an English major at Occidental College equipped him with the toolset to understand the efficacy of novels and the literary freedom they offer. Even then, he finds visual storytelling as a more powerful tool for him. 

“With visual storytelling, there’s more of a direct connection because you can visually see something on the page,” Kitada said. “An author doesn’t have to describe something as much because they could just show it.” 

Junior year of college was Kitada’s first exposure to bringing his passion for comics to the workplace. His “claim-to-fame,” as he refers to it, originates from his summer internship in the Marvel Sales and Marketing Department. However, as much as Kitada loved comics, he initially found it difficult to witness his hobby becoming his job. 

Looking back, Kitada realized there existed a pattern in that many of his experiences, whether in literature or his other hobby, music, were teaching-related. After putting the pieces together, Kitada decided to pursue a career in teaching. But, that’s not to say that his time at Marvel had no effect on his career. In fact, his Marvel experience guided him to formulate one of his main objectives for the class. Even as an avid comic book reader for almost forty years, Kitada found that he knew much less than his colleagues at Marvel and struggled to keep up in their conversations, which led him to aspire to increase accessibility for readers. 

“I’m a huge comic book nerd, [but] at Marvel, everybody else in the industry is also a comic book nerd, … and I didn’t know what they would be talking about,” Kitada said.

In 2013, Kitada first started his career at Gunn High by teaching freshman and sophomore English courses. As many other teachers directed their English elective courses towards their literary passions, such as offerings in the fields of philosophy and film literature, Kitada decided to revisit his past experience by creating a curriculum for a brand-new comic book-focused course. 

During his first five years at Gunn High, he spent his summers formulating the curriculum for his up-and-coming comic book class. The course was directly inspired by an assignment Kitada completed in graduate school, which focused on developing curriculum for an English unit. While most of Kitada’s classmates outlined a traditional English unit on novels such as “Lord of the Flies” and “Romeo and Juliet,” Kitada decided to take a different approach. Rekindling his childhood joy for comic books, he decided to focus on visual storytelling through the comic “American Born Chinese.” 

However, For new English electives to be offered to students, the courses must be approved by the English department, the school district and the University of California. The toughest part of the approval process was at the UC level, where Kitada was forced to reapply after facing rejection the first time around. 

“In part of my write-up, I was talking about [how] a lot of people judge comic books and feel like it’s not serious literature,” Kitada said. “[They think] that’s just stuff for kids, and it doesn’t have any deep meaning. One of the things I wanted to provide in the class is that comic books do have value, [but] the UC system … wrote back and said [they rejected] because it wasn’t a serious enough reading list.” 

Because of the popular belief that comic books are merely superhero-related, Kitada designed the curriculum with two goals in mind: focusing on the distinctiveness of comic books and exploring this medium beyond superheroes. 

“With a novel, you’re just seeing words on the page, so it’s a one-dimensional kind of understanding,” Kitada said. “But comic books are special because they are a marriage of words and pictures. There are two dimensions, [so I wanted to] show kids that there’s this whole other realm to think about when you’re adding words and pictures.” 

For Kitada’s students, learning these differences in storytelling comes as a pleasant surprise to the class. 

“What makes the class [The Art of Visual Storytelling] unique is being able to learn more about a medium that isn’t usually taught in schools,” Gunn High junior Serena Dai said. “I like how comics combine visual aspects with words, and it surprised me how much you can analyze from images, just like you do with words in your usual English classes.” 

That being said, novels and visual storytelling have many overlaps despite their inherent differences. 

“What makes a good comic is the same thing that makes a good book,” Kitada said. “Do the readers care about the person you’re writing about? Are there thematic elements that the audience can relate to?”

Kitada’s goal to acknowledge the diverse content in comic books is apparent in the five units of study included in the course. While one encompasses the superheroes in comics, the other four units focus on other aspects of this literature: understanding the technical elements of comic books, personal stories, historical comics and manga. Some graphic novels Kitada selected for his students to read are “American Born Chinese,” “Ultimate Spiderman,” “Mouse” and “Dragon Ball.” 

In these units, Kitada weaves in various questions that he said are intended to spur thinking in his students. For instance, in the historical unit, both graphic novels focus on the Holocaust but through different perspectives. Through these thought-provoking discussions in class, Kitada has found that there is a generational disparity in the public perception of comic book literature. 

“I find that with younger kids, … many come in having read ‘Calvin and Hobbes,’ ‘Smile’ or something like that in middle school,” Kitada said. “But if you talk to people of a certain age, … they think that [comic books] aren’t objects for education.” 

Kitada said this discrepancy likely stems from the evolution of comic books as a medium. In the past, comic books were disposed of quickly like magazines, but today, they’re often collected and have become more experimental. 

After teaching the The Art of Visual Storytelling course for around eight years, Kitada finds that his favorite part about the course is its ability to refresh. Near the end of the semester, particularly, Kitada understands that students are overwhelmed with Advanced Placement tests and final exams. Concurrently, the popular superhero and manga units creates a “burst of life” in his students, he said 

In comparison to his traditional English classes, he finds that his students often gain interest in comics throughout the semester, regardless of whether or not they initially held a fascination towards the genre. 

Every class period, Kitada makes sure to bring his enthusiasm and passion, which are especially personal in this course. Whether it be wacky stories or nerding out with students at a designated round table in his classroom, comic books bring out a different side of him, according to Kitada. That’s part of what makes them so special: as Kitada, who is usually introverted, becomes nerdy and excited when it comes to comic books. Because of this, Kitada realizes that comic books can be for everyone, and his course is a way to discover that interest. 

“For every single book, I always find that there’ll be kids who think ‘Oh, that was the best one,’” Kitada said. “Some people like the historical stories, and some like the more personal ones. [With comic books], there are a lot of different avenues for students to get into the content in the class.”