Spider-Man Spider-Verse Short Film: How Kevin Love's Program Helps Students

The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story is free to stream right now on YouTube and the Kevin Love Fund has laid out how the special Spider-Man lesson plan works with the film. The Spider Within tackles subjects surrounding mental health with Miles Morales. ComicBook.com managed to interview the Kevin Love Fund's co-Director of Education, Dr. Ellie Foster. During our discussion, we covered the storyboard-based lesson plans that allow students to share stories of a challenging experience. Both this lesson and the film are both free, the movie is accessible on YouTube and you can see the lesson for yourself on KevinLoveFund.org.

Dr. Foster shared how The Spider Within director Jarelle Dampier and Kevin Love initiated a conversation about mental health. By making a storyboard about a difficult experience students feel more comfortable sharing stories from their lives. In The Hero Within lesson, students then draw storyboards based on those stories and share their work with peers and facilitators. Adults provide a helpful model and then the students both have an active guide and feel empowered to open up. The Kevin Love Fund makes these lesson plans free for people around the world so that the conversation can keep moving.

 "Students have the opportunity to watch the short film, The Spider Within, and see Miles Morales model vulnerability and openness for them," Foster said of the lesson plan. "Then, they have the opportunity to also see a short interview between Kevin Love and Jarelle Dampier talking about their own experiences with anxiety. Specifically, how both of them have experienced panic attacks."

"Watching this short interview where Jarelle and Kevin both talk really openly, really vulnerably about their own experiences with mental health and panic attacks is really inspiring. They speak directly to students in the interview. They're saying, 'Don't wait until you're our age to share your story. Don't wait.' Don't feel like you have to hide from the feeling. Actually, you can start today." 

Crafting The Spider-Verse Storyboards

"After they watch the interview, the teacher will model a creative activity for them, making a storyboard. They get to see a professional storyboard that was used to create the film: The Spider Within," she continued. "After looking at these examples, the teacher shares their story through a storyboard. Then, the students get to make their own storyboard where they tell the story of a challenging experience that they either lived through. Or, maybe, that they're even still going through in their life." 

"So, it's this multimodal, creative form of talking about how you're feeling. Getting that story onto the page, so that you don't have to be alone with it," Foster clarifies. "That's really the message that the lesson is sharing with them. There are a lot of example projects that real high school students have made in the lesson plan. The lesson involves a lot of modeling for students, 'Hey, that thing that you feel like you're just kind of carrying around by yourself, you can actually talk about it.'" 

There are all these people like Kevin, Jarelle and Miles showing a student that they can be open about how you're really feeling," the educator continued. "Students get a chance to share what they've created. It really builds community and connection. We know this is a life-saving kind of approach. When students start to share their stories with each other, it can make a really big difference."

All the lesson plan materials are available to access for free at KevinLoveFund.org.