I’ve done many things as a teacher. From my beginnings in primary grade multiage studying Reggio Inspired Practice, to my current job supporting adults in achieving their Mature Diplomas, there has been a lot of growth and change. I have had many passions in my career, and continue to be inspired in many ways. In the end, I am driven by a desire to keep my students engaged and learning, while also feeding my own passions and drive. Over the past few years, I have become interested in two areas in particular: Equity Work and Gamification.
I believe that it takes a lot of effort to understand and work towards equity, particularly along intersections of identity where a person holds privilege. The work isn’t easy and it takes a lot of sustained labour to make this happen. I work in my classroom to directly discuss and centre equity learning along with academic learning.
I ask students to consider their own intersections of identity and how they interact with the systems of power and privilege around us.
I am inspired by the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Pamela Hayes, and Leticia Nieto in developing my own and my students’ understanding of how our identities are both over- and under-valued by the systems around us.
I also believe that all people are impacted by these systems, and that it is going to take sustained and active decolonial work to create real safety for all and move towards equity. It is education (and its stakeholders) that will need to lead this charge.
As a lover of games, I have known for many years that they could be powerful tools in education. I tried for years to figure out what systems would work for me. Recently, I began to develop gamified systems that support increased engagement. This is an area that I am still exploring, but I believe has a lot of potential for powerful engagement.
I had spent years thinking and planning but without any real movement towards implementing a gamified systeminto my classes. I attended a PD session with the Gaming Associate of Manitoba Educators (GAME) that had a keynote speaker named Scott Hebert who had fully gamified his classroom and it renewed my spark. He included all of his material, including two books he had written on the topic. I tore through the books, and began my own planning.
I created a system that I could lay over any course I taught, focused on creating a story and content that would engage my students and provide the deep engagement of games.
If you join one of my classes, you enter the world of Ao, a place where magic is returning and things are going wrong. You get to create a character, gather resources, go on quests, hunt for side quests, and fight boss battles. You can level up, earn achievement badges, and also get great grades.
It is by no means a perfect system, and I’ll be making changes as I learn by trying things out, and adjusting. Still, I have had students find success and engagement that didn’t think they ever would. That makes it all worth it.
This is a sample game card from my course game world. It’s one of hundreds that I made this year that live physically inside my players’ (students) Journey Logs (reflection journal).
Onboarding video for my gamified classroom.
