Indiana teacher's solution to math problem? Comic books

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) - Superman may be able to fly, and Spider-Man may have Spidey Sense, but Jim McClain has an even more unlikely superpower.

He gets kids to enjoy math.

On a Thursday afternoon in late May, McClain stood in front of a group of sixth- to eighth-graders from South Bend.

Taking a rare personal day from his regular classroom at North Side Middle School in Elkhart, the longtime math teacher had a captivated audience of students from South Bend's intermediate schools as they competed in the annual Battle of the Books at Indiana University South Bend.

In fact, he was kind of a rock star as he signed T-shirts, bookmarks, certificates, a gold medal freshly presented to a member of the Battle of the Books' winning team - something he told the student was an "honor" - and, of course, his own book, "Solution Squad."

"I've never signed that many autographs before," he says.

At first glance, "Solution Squad" looks like any other comic. There are heroes, villains and vivid colors that bounce off the page as the good guys battle the not-so-good guys. But take a closer look, and an underlying theme emerges.

"The characters are made in such a way that their powers are math concepts," McClain says.

The characters have names such as Absolutia, who can raise or lower temperature; La Caculadora, who can do mental calculations at lightning speed; and Radical, who can see and manipulate patterns of electromagnetic energy. There are also the twins Abscissa and Ordinate.

"You have Abscissa down here with the X," McClain says, pointing to the X exhibited on the front of her Solution Squad uniform. "She runs along the horizontal access. Her twin brother, Ordinate - with a Y - is strong, and he can fly along the Y axis. Together they are called The Ordered Pair. They're twins, but she was born first, so the X goes first, then the Y."

In addition to introducing characters who represent math concepts, the comic's heroes sometimes communicate using a prime number code.

"The heroes developed it to get out of the trap that they are put in, but then they use it to communicate with each other so the bad guys can't understand what they are saying," McClain says. "Once the student has done the lesson in the back (of the book) to develop the code . they have the code key and can decode their messages. I will use it forever."

The comic also makes use of math terms throughout its installments. The heroes' air transport is called the "Coordinate Plane." One adventure begins with the plane en route to a rendezvous with team's seagoing headquarters, the SOH-CAH-TOA (Sine, Cosine, Tangent).

"Even though kids aren't ready for SOH-CAH-TOA yet," McClain says, "I've planted the seed."

At the end of this school year, McClain retired after spending 32 years as a math teacher, but the "Solution Squad" creator admits that the subject was his least favorite in school - he chose to teach it because he knew there would be plenty of jobs available.

Comics and superheroes, however, were always a part of his life. In fact, he swears one of his first words was Batman.

At Battle of the Books, the roomful of students sat captivated as McClain told his story. He spoke about comics being considered for nerds when he was in high school and how he planned to become a comic artist in college. Instead, he chose teaching with the hope that it would be easier to get a job and because he remembers how much his teachers helped him during the hard times in his life.

Unfortunately, he needed that help: Like many of the characters in the comics he loves, McClain's own origin story isn't idyllic.

After his parents divorced, McClain's mother moved in with - and later married - a man who was physically and emotionally abusive.

During that time, in addition to the physical abuse he inflicted, McClain's stepfather wouldn't allow him to read or watch comics, nor play with action figures. His only remaining link to the stories he loved were the comics and toys given to him by his father and grandparents.

McClain left those gifts at their houses out of fear that taking them home would mean his stepfather would incinerate them. Just as he had done with his other comics.

The abuse ended after McClain turned 12 and was given the opportunity to move in with his father.

"I was finally able to get as many comics as I wanted," he told the students at Battle of the Books. "I absorbed and endured that abuse for five years, and guess what? He burned my comic books, now I make comic books. Who won?"

At one point, a student asked McClain if he ever wanted to retaliate against his stepfather.

"I have to do nothing," he said. "I won the battle. I won. I walked away the winner, and he knows he mistreated me. He knows he mistreated my brother and me, and he has to live with that all of his life."

McClain harnesses his math powers

Early in his teaching career, McClain realized that his students had the same feelings about math that he had at their age. So to make his worksheets a little more entertaining, he began to insert his favorite superheroes in word problems.

"All of a sudden, my worksheets were fun. I was like, 'This is awesome,'" he says. "Eventually, I had a couple hundred of them. I was like, 'OK, I can make a book out of this.' Just one problem with that: copyright. So I couldn't use those because somebody already owned them."

Instead of approaching DC and Marvel for rights, the math teacher decided it was time to finally make a comic of his own. Thus the "Solution Squad" was born.

"So kids who learn from my stories don't forget (the math concepts) as so many kids do," he says. ". The whole point of it is to make math fun for kids. Boring worksheets? Who cares, but if you jazz it up just a little bit, show some effort, they'll appreciate that and respond accordingly."

It took McClain seven years to create his first "Solution Squad" comic.

"The very first time I had the comic book, I did a presentation at C2E2 - which is the big convention in Chicago - it was 2013 and, literally, the week my comics were in my hand," he says, ". the first time I introduced it, to teachers, there was wild applause. People swarmed around me after, saying, 'This is the most creative thing I've ever seen a teacher do.'"

He sold 83 comics that first day. One teacher even bought a set for her classroom.

Four years later, McClain self-published his hardcover book, which went on to become an Excellence in Graphic Literature nominee.

"There are not a lot of books that have math as a focus, so it's a big plus," Dee Simpson from Clay Intermediate Academy says about why she asked McClain to speak with her students during Battle of the Books. "It's something that we don't always get."

Unlike many past popular super squads, McClain's heroes are diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity and even body type. He did that on purpose, because he wanted the characters to reflect his own students.

"To get girls to learn math was a challenge for me from decades ago, because they don't think they are any good at it," he says. "Fortunately, we've advanced, but back in the day, that was a challenge to get girls to think they were good at math. . Girls can do math just fine, thank you very much. So I balanced the group that way just for that purpose, the racial and cultural blending came from my students."

In addition to introducing math concepts to help students academically, the comic creator wants to make sure that "Solution Squad" can be an escape for any young readers in need of one. Just as his heroes were for him as a child.

"When I was a kid, Batman and Superman smiled," McClain says. "Batman did not go around with bloody fists and beating the heck out of everybody. . Those were the characters that I loved. Superman and Batman were my adult male role models. . In recent years, Superman and Batman have been somewhat dark, especially in the movies. . So the first thing I make sure my characters do, they smile. All of them smile."

Over the years, McClain has introduced the "Solution Squad" to audiences at comic conventions across the United States.

"I have literally talked about comics in the classroom, specifically 'Solution Squad,' from New York to San Diego and points in between," he says. ". If there is an expert on using comics to teach math in the classroom, I'm probably it."

The blog Pop Culture Classroom has noticed: It named him its 2018 Pop Culture Educator of the Year.

In his retirement, McClain plans to travel even more. Last weekend, for example, he participated on a panel titled "Heroes of S.T.E.A.M.: Kids Doing Research Through Gaming" at Comic Con International in San Diego.

Math, however, is commonly viewed with disdain or as a necessary evil by students and even adults. McClain recalls reading an article written in recent years that stated, "Virtually every subject can be turned into a graphic novel, except perhaps math."

"I was like, 'Oh yeah! Challenge accepted,'" he says.

At the Battle of the Books - as students waited in line for an autograph and to engage with McClain - it was clear that the comic creator has not only accepted the challenge, but his results add up.

"I didn't think of it as learning. I thought of it as reading," a student said while waiting in line to have McClain sign her T-shirt, certificate and a bookmark.

"That," McClain said, "is exactly what I like to hear."

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Source: South Bend Tribune

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Information from: South Bend Tribune, http://www.southbendtribune.com