The Gameful Guru

It’s really hit the fan, hasn’t it?

Novel coronavirus (COVID19) has impacted all of us in a variety of ways, from the advent of “social distancing” to the mass closure of businesses, educational institutions and public amenities the world over. For me, I have had to start reimagining the last quarter of my year through the lens of ‘pandemic pedagogy;’ envisioning what it means for me to be teaching students during an era characterized by frustration, confusion and institutional madness.

I want to continue in the path I’ve been on, but I’ve decided that I (and my students) need to feel license to care about our health a little more than usual. The way I want to do this is by returning to the root of my Year of Teaching Adventurously: the resilience principles of SuperBetter.

On this “Resilience Guide” there are several lines drawn to give students (and teachers) space to plan their ways of engaging in the 5 areas of health that I encourage all of us to engage in: physical, mental, social, emotional and holistic health.

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The vocabulary that is key to understand are Power Ups, Quests, Bad Guys and Allies. I’ve covered each of these terms at length in my previous blog project, The Gameful Guru, but some of them bear clarification.

I want to focus on Power Ups and Quests, because they comprise the greater portion of this document. Power Ups are categories of adaptive and supportive activities, tasks or items of consumption that can help you get stronger, more focused, happier and/or more connected with your social circle. They fall into four main categories, each relating to the four forms of resilience.

I want to provide examples that you can share with your students (or your fellow teachers):

Physical: Drink a Glass of Water (self explanatory) Sit Up, Stand Up (Get out of your seat at least once every hour and do 10 sit ups) Sing At The Top of Your Lungs (improve respiratory control and mood by singing a favorite song at full voice) Mental: Read a Book, Undistracted (Set a timer for X minutes and read a book without stopping; turn off your phone and read until the time is up) Snap to It (Snap your fingers exactly 50 times) Countdown (Count backwards from 100 by a number other than 5) Emotional: Cute Animal Overload (For five minutes, look at pictures of baby animals) Good Vibes Only (Listen to an upbeat song that you like; shoot for a positive mood) Do Something Fun (Set a timer for X minutes and do any leisure activity you enjoy! Give yourself permission to enjoy yourself) Social: Giving Gratitude (Send a text to three different friends thanking them for some aspect of their friendship with you) Future Boost (Make plans to communicate or see two people sometime in the near future; use this to give yourself something to look forward to) Mutual Aid (Make an Ally by sharing your Quest with another person; Offer to be an Ally for them in their goals)

Power Ups are important for all aspects of life, but they’re especially important when you have a specific Quest you are pursuing, or an Epic Win you are working toward. Sometimes Quests are things other people write for you, and other times, they are tasks you take on for yourself. Quests can be just another way of framing your daily to-dos, but if you add a fun factor, an unnecessary obstacle to overcome, or a social element, suddenly Quests become something gameful to behold!

A Physical Quest would be Hydrate or Die-Drate! (Drink 5 glasses of water in 3 hours; maintain healthy habits of hydration and exercise!) A Mental Quest would be Be Your Own Taskmaster! (Choose three items on your To Do List and set 25 minute Pomodoro estimates for how long it would take to complete them in their entirety; test your estimates by taking on one item and racing against the clock to complete them faster than your estimated time!)

An Emotional Quest would be 1:1, One On One (Improve your Positive to Negative emotion ratio by spending one on one time with a trusted friend; choose two emotional power ups each to activate with each other’s help!)

A Social Quest would be Allies, Assemble! (Practice social connectivity by choosing two friends of yours to share in your resilience-based Questing; exchange Power Up ideas and help each other take on at least 1 Bad Guy)

I came up with all of these quests in less than 10 minutes, and you can too!

Here is your first Quest from me: Come up with two ways for you to engage with each of the four forms of resilience (Power Ups) that does not require you to endanger yourself medically. Message me with what you come up with! Until next time, Life Will Pass Through, Keep Being You!

TEDxDenisonU Audition l Sam Heyman

So far this week, I’ve made good on my commitments; I’ve meditated, read my book and implemented writing intensive lessons into my students’ class periods. It feels good to be reaching my goals, and I’m hoping it has a positive impact on my students.

Today, each of my students received the same basic Training Grounds lesson, putting a name to something that, for most of them, had gone unnoticed. With the exception of my Swordplay-based grammar exercises with the Relentless Wordsmith, my Training Grounds focus has been less explicit and more covertly deployed. I started by creating Lore Keeping organizers for The Advisor and The Studious Scholar, and frankly, I didn’t get enough momentum with Readstyreo to really implement Training Grounds lessons. Some weeks have gone by, with last week being abbreviated and thus lacking in the usual structure in some places, but I’ve returned to the full four-day structure of before. 

The Training Grounds lesson of the day came courtesy of The Art of Styling Sentences, a textbook used, once upon a time, by my 7th/8th grade English, Ethics II and Senior Comp teacher, Mr. Bart Allen. I used this book myself last year with my English I student, who was very interested in advanced uses of punctuation, such as the semicolon. I found it a really great way of getting at novel uses of sentence structure in an approachable, digestible way, and so I decided to bring it back to Gateway this year. Judging from how today went, I think it will be a good tool for improving my students’ writing bit by bit throughout the year.

The sentence pattern we went over connected two independent clauses with a semicolon and no conjunction. If that sounds like a lot of grammatical gobbledy-gook, fear not! It looks a lot simpler than it sounds.

My students are all writing essays this week; I anxiously await their ideas coming to fruition.

To write an outline is one thing; to write an essay is another thing entirely.

Setting sub-deadlines is a good idea; making sure students know about these deadlines is a better idea.

See? We use this kind of sentence all the time when we speak. Knowing how to properly punctuate them in our writing makes for more impactful, connected sentences. 

Anyway, I just wanted to flex my writing muscles for y’all. Tomorrow two of my students should be more than halfway done with their rough drafts, while the third has an outline and a thesis statement due.

Until then, life will pass through. Keep being you.