By Shreya Gramolini & Yochana Benchetrit, on behalf of the St. Clement’s School Senior Science Club
Grade 12 students at St. Clements School (SCS) in Toronto have developed a compelling comic storyboard to help educate younger children about what COVID-19 is and how it spreads. The comic depicts a girl asking her mom about COVID-19, and then being taken to a scientist who explains COVID in simple terms. This comic is being shared here as an optional educational resource for OMA members to help you support younger patients’ understanding of the pandemic. The article that follows was written by two of the comic storyboard’s authors, Shreya Gramolini and Yochana Benchetrit.
One of the main goals of our storyboard comic, COVID-19: Prepare to Be Aware and all of our tasks in Science Club—is to apply the knowledge we learn in the classroom to the real world. With the COVID-19 virus being a major current event, it was fitting for us to use our knowledge of biology, specifically that of Grade 12 content in terms of DNA, RNA, protein, antibodies, etc., to create an educational resource about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and vaccines being developed to fight it.
As teenagers familiar with numerous social media platforms, we are also aware that there is a lot of false information about the virus and the vaccines circulating on these platforms. Although our personal knowledge of biology has made us less susceptible to “fake news” pertaining to the virus or the vaccines, we know that younger minds may be more vulnerable to misinformation. As a result, we were inspired to create something that not only allows us to apply our own knowledge and skills to the pandemic but also helps educate younger children about the virus and how vaccines can protect us against it.
Christine Castelli, our Science Club’s advisor and the Science Curriculum and Department Leader at St. Clement’s School, reviewed our research to ensure that we were correctly explaining the biology of the virus, as well as accurately identifying how the different vaccines operate. Ms. Castelli played a vital part in putting this comic together—she introduced us to the storyboard site, helped us share the comic through our school’s online portal, and arranged readings of the comic to students in grades 5 to 9. Our comic also helped to prepare the students for a presentation by Dr. Cynthia Pun, SCS alumni, who we invited to speak about COVID-19 and the vaccine. Dr. Srikala Sridhar and Dr. Anthony Gramolini also reviewed the final storyboard, checked the explanations and vetted our research.
Overall, our primary goal with this initiative was to create a visually appealing and understandable comic that aims to educate people—specifically our younger generation—about the pandemic. As teenagers and student leaders we felt that we had a voice that younger students would listen to, but we also wanted our comic to speak to a broader community.
We hope this article will increase the reach of our comic, through OMR readers and physicians, as an educational resource, so that we can continue to work toward having everyone in our community understand the pandemic. Increased education and awareness will counteract the widespread misinformation surrounding the virus, the disease it causes, and the vaccines that are critically important to prevent the spread of the virus and save lives.
Shreya Gramolini is the daughter of OMA member Dr. Srikala Sridhar.