Facial Literacy Or...Securing Social Skills - Part 1

Facial Literacy - n. The ability to read faces.  

In my training as a school psychologist and lead facilitator for Mel Levine's Schools Attuned program one issue that kept coming up was the difficulty we professionals have with teaching or providing remedial intervention for kids with weak social skills.  In my opinion, there are many reasons for this difficulty, but one of them is that kids with weak social skills are befuddled with, and have a lot of trouble interpreting facial and non-verbal cues.

This is a vital skill when interacting with others because the face provides information that words often do not, or that may for various reasons conflict with verbal information.  Reading these emotions are so important for social (and sometimes for physical) survival.

Reading faces: When reading faces there are a number of factors that need to be integrated:

• Eye Contact:  When speaking with people it is important to look at them in the face (but not to stare).  We equate having eye contact with a sense of interest and honesty, and when people cannot look us in the eye, we are more wary and apprehensive. 
• Eyes also express emotion, excitement, exhaustion.  
• Eye brows communicate emotion and excitement as well.  A raised brow appears questioning or possible excitement.  A furrowed brow expresses anger; a relaxed brow contentment.
• Our mouths, even when not talking are expressive as well.  We frown,  smile, smirk, pout, grimace, gag, and gasp. Each nuanced move expresses an emotion or reaction.

Other non-verbal cues essential for reading others: Listening (not just hearing, but listening) and processing what is being said, reading faces, reading posture, understanding and being able to adhere to a 'social distance' when interacting, and acknowledging (if not agreeing) with others' responses, feelings and perceptions are all integral to social success. In time, I hope to cover all these factors, but let's start with Facial Literacy now, and build from there.

So what can you do to help your kids' "Facial Literacy"?

• Make faces.  Play games.  Have one person/team make a face and have the others guess the emotion they are trying to relay.  IF you don't guess correctly talk (and listen) about what was 'misread'. 
• Talk about what the consequences are in social interactions when you make different faces.
• Picture books and graphic novels are great books to read faces with - together.  Look at the facial cues the artist is giving.  One of my favorite examples is in Laika by Nick Abadzis (First Second Books).  As this story takes place in Soviet Russia in the 1950's and is about the space race, the main characters cannot frequently say what they are actually feeling and it is through the facial expressions and body language found in the illustrations that the reader "reads" their true intent.
• When out at restaurants, on walks, waiting on lines in the supermarket, look at faces and make up stories about what these people may be thinking or feeling.  It helps boost creativity as well as verbal and non verbal expression and social cognition.  Just do it tactfully and politely so as not to offend someone you do not want to offend.
• Draw faces with different expressions on cards.  Make a separate card with the name of the corresponding emotion.  Play memory or matching games with the cards.

My Jaunt at C2E2 2011...Departing the Text: Teaching Inference with Graphic Novels

I just got back from  C2E2 2011.  Not only did the panel go well,  I love conventions...walking around...getting free books...and pitching mine. It's all about books (at least for me).  I own a kindle and read it (and love it when traveling), but there is something about the touch, feel and smell of books and paper in your hand...

At the request of some of my readers, let me tell you about the presentation Talia Hurwich and I made, "Departing the Text:  Teaching Inference With Graphic Novels." (Katie Monnin who also contributed could not make it).  The turnout was good and the audience was as passionate about teaching kids,  reaching kids, reaching teachers and introducing the right graphic novels into classrooms as we were. 

Presentation highlights:
Getting to know the page: While I'm not sure there is a 'typical' graphic novel page since page design is actually part of the art, each page contains the following elements:

• Panels - boxes of various shape, size and borders that contain varying amounts of text and art.
• Text varies in size, shape and in presentations. Typically, the text is presented in narrative or dialogue form (and dialogue is often in a 'text bubble').
• When there is more than one panel to a page (which is usually the case), the panels are separated by lines or space called "gutters." Gutters are actually important.

Gutters are where a lot of critical thinking takes place.  For one, they provide opportunities to pause,  reflect and digest the previous panel and "fill in" the gaps of time, action and emotion.  Gutters also allow readers to pause and fill chunks of 'data' that the author/illustrator did not provide which are also necessary for comprehension.

In order to read and comprehend graphic novels, readers must:

• Attend to the text's content;
• Attend to details in art - the foreground and the background, facial expressions, spacing and placing of objects;
• Attend to the shape, size and presentation of  text (in and out of) the panels; and
• Attend to the panel borders and the choice of color in the backgrounds.

Learning is most effective when it is personal, meaningful and interactive. Here's how graphic novels can play a huge role:

• Graphic novels are particularly suited for learning because they involve the reader as s/he constantly engages with the medium - switching from verbal to visual stimuli and constructing his/her level of understanding.
• Aside from the art often being literally stunning, it pops out at you and invites the reader to participate in the action.  TRIBES:  The Dog Years (by Michael Geszel, Peter Spinetta; art by Inaki Miranda - IDW Publishers) is one example. 
• Readers are constantly making inferences when they read graphic novels.  
•  Critical to reading and learning from graphic novels is that information is given everywhere, and "art" can include the use of illustrations, the design of the page, the font, size, shape, and presentation of the text.

Readers Must make INFERENCES in order to comprehend:

• We make them when we leap - figuring out what happened within and between panels.
• We must infer character emotions from faces,  from the color of the panel background, from body stances, from text (content, shape, size), and from panel borders and shapes.
• We must infer motives from faces, body posture, text (content, shape, size) and from panel borders and shapes.
• We make inferences in the use of figure/ground and foreground/background.
• We make inferences about author/illustrator 'choices'.
• Time is often 'weird' in graphic novels.  The art and design allows the author/illustrator to jump from one period of time to another, often with no formal 'direction'.  As a result, readers must infer 'where' they are 'when' integrating the art, the shading, the panel borders, the color and the text provided.

A special note about teaching social cognition - how to read faces, understand boundaries and personal space, validate emotions... graphic novels are a power house:  In social interactions, reading verbal and nonverbal cues is essential.  Graphic novels clearly can help. The facial expressions, how people are standing or interacting together, the color of the background, the tension in the bodies, smooth or jagged panel borders, text size-shape-and font, ALL show and teach us how one expression, word, stance can lead to a particular emotion or reaction in others.  SEEING is often so much more power than just reading or being told, and graphic novels do both.


Talia outlined a sample lesson plan for introducing Greek mythology using Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess by George O'Connor, published by First Second. For anyone interested, please let me know, we can email a copy to you.

Questions/concerns from the audience [Note each bullet is a topic for an upcoming post so stay tuned]:

• How do parents, teachers, librarians know what to buy?  As with prose novels, there are junk and gems all around.  How do we know what to buy/read/recommend?
• How can parent/teachers learn more about using and reading graphic novels to build inference skills?
• Can I provide further examples of how to read graphic novel panels, pointing out opportunities for inference?
• Do you have questions?  Please let me know in the comments.

Conclusion: 
Graphic novels are rife with teaching opportunities for kids with all kinds of strengths and weaknesses and they should be integrated in classrooms and read at home.  The key is finding the right ones to use.  I have made some recommendations in previous posts, and will continue to do so.

What do you think?  Any questions?  Do you want any particular information?  Please let me know.