[OC] Dungeons & Dragons in the Classroom!

What are your thoughts on using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom? Has anyone had any experience with this?

I am a high school English (and World History) teacher in Orange County, CA with a mostly low-income, English learner student population. My sophomores have mostly barely heard or have never heard of D&D, but when I showed them a clip of it from Stranger Things and explained it a bit more, a majority were at least curious to see it in action, if not participate.

Mr. Derp on a field trip to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. June, 2018.

I decided to teach D&D to my students because it's FUN, but it also heavily exhibits the 5 C's of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning Skills (Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Character/Compassion). I believe that shifting our educational focus to the 5 C's is more effective for students and makes learning more fun, project-based, and memorable for students instead of traditional tests and essay-writing assignments (not to say that either of those will be tossed out entirely).

I'm aware of the typo in this photo. I fixed it on the board the day after I took this.

But, I digress. My goal is to have 5 independently-run games in each of my three English classes by the end of the school year (May). I will be assigning Fantasy-based fiction, teaching skills on reading informational texts (those manuals, tho), examining primary sources from the Medieval era, improving 5 C's skills through improv exercises, and other supplemental activities and skill-building to prep them for their D&D gaming.

As soon as my History students found out about it, some grew jealous. A small group approached me this week to ask if I would be an advisor for a D&D Club on campus and train them, and I said sure! (fingers crossed I can get those supplies) I really want to support their curiosity and P21 5 C's.

If you're interested in supporting this brave/foolish endeavor, I am crowdsourcing funding through DonorsChoose for essential supplies to make this run as smoothly as possible. If successful with funding, I am also going to document my progress, successes, and failures throughout the school year.

Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks for your support of interactive tabletop gaming, D&D, our youth, and our glorious public education system!

Submitted January 19, 2019 at 09:01PM by vaquero84 http://bit.ly/2FMhFI2