Comic Strip Project Empowers Ravens to Tackle Sustainability Goals
- Voices
Honors Spanish II students Kate Krouse ’26 and Will Tinnesz ’26 reflect on creating superheroes who support the U.N.’s goals for sustainable development.
Last fall, students in Maria Doyle’s Honors Spanish II class participated in the World’s Largest Lesson, a program in conjunction with UNICEF and UNESCO that promotes the use of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals in learning so that, as their website says, students “can contribute to a better future for all.”
“The World Language Department believes that teaching students about the global goals shows them that a better world is possible,” Doyle explained. “The students had to create a superhero based on one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in conjunction with a grammar concept, present progressive, acquired in class. The goal of each superhero is to take action that helps and strengthens the goal with which they are associated.”
Here, Kate Krouse ’26 and Will Tinnesz ’26 describe the work they did on their projects — creating a superhero who promotes justice and reduces inequalities, respectively — and what they took away from the experience.
At top, the U.N. Sustainability Goals represented as emoticons in this Spanish-language resource; below, the two pages of Kate Krouse’s superhero story about La Reina Justicia.
Honors Spanish II students took a deep look into the work happening around sustainability at the United Nations, including the 17 specific goals identified by the U.N. to achieve by the year 2030. We read articles in Spanish to expand our knowledge of the U.N.’s sustainability priorities and to practice our reading comprehension of stories covering real-life current events. This project made me realize that, by taking little steps each day, we can each impact the world and, through our collective actions, get closer to achieving the U.N.’s sustainability goals.
Our assignment was to choose one of these 17 sustainability goals and create a comic strip depicting our superhero of choice attaining our desired goal. We received a list of Spanish words to use throughout our comic strip, which expanded our vocabulary. Although the primary objective of this assignment was to improve our Spanish, we also had a fun opportunity to show our creativity — whether we were an artist or not (and I am not!). We did this through our drawings and the captions describing our superhero’s actions in the images we drew.
This project was an enjoyable learning experience because we could be creative while at the same time improving our Spanish writing and comprehension skills. In addition, using superheroes to help us identify practical actions to take opened my eyes to concrete ways I could help improve our world. For example, my superhero, La Reina Justicia (Queen Justice), aimed to promote justice, peace and inclusivity. I included one theme in my comic: when you see an injustice, speak up to help ensure justice prevails. I had to determine an effective way for my superhero to use her voice. A straightforward step she took was to use her social media platforms to bring awareness of various important issues to her followers. We can do the same, whether we have 15 or 1,000 followers!
Going into the new year, it would be wonderful if we each would choose one of the 17 sustainability goals and determine how each of us could take action to make an impact. Although it may not seem like much, posting just one message on social media could help start a dialogue that could change someone’s perspective and bring greater understanding about these critical issues. Hopefully, our comic strips will inspire and educate our audience, whoever that may be, and motivate them to set a goal every day, week, month or year of something around sustainability that they want to accomplish to help themselves, others and the world around them.
I invite you to take action on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals!
— Kate Krouse ’26
Clockwise from top right: Kate Krouse ’26; superhero comics by Coley Riley ’26 and Brinkley Argenta ’26; Kate (third from right) with her Honors Spanish II classmates displaying their selected sustainability goals and their comic strips; Will Tinnesz ’26.
I have been going to school at Ravenscroft for about four months now, and out of all the projects I have done this year, this one was definitely the most interesting. We were required to make a 12-panel comic strip about a superhero who could help with one of the United Nations’ 17 goals. I was assigned the goal to reduce inequalities.
This project was one of the most fun and creative projects I have ever been assigned. I love to write stories and narratives for English and grammar classes at school, and this wasn’t too different, it was just in Spanish. We also had to include 10 illustrations of our superhero helping out around the world, using their powers to help contribute to whichever of the goals we were assigned to do.
This project increased my understanding of Spanish so much more than any project I have done in Spanish class. It was most helpful, because we were learning to use the more complex words that people use in the videos we watch in class, while also learning about real-word issues and possible solutions to make it better.
After all the work of planning it, writing the Spanish sentences, drawing and then coloring it all in, it was very fun and interesting to see what everyone else did for their projects. It was cool to see how different people went for different color schemes and how, although everyone did the same project, we all did it our own way.
All in all, this project was a super fun and super creative project while also being a great way to learn a lot about Spanish and about what is going on in the world now.
— Will Tinnesz ’26