Wizards of the Coast’s latest D&D project has us feeling envious of today’s schoolchildren.
Feelgood Friday: Classrooms & Dragons? The Latest D&D Project Targets Kids’ Education
Written by Ollie Bradley at 09/23/2022, 07:37 AM
Wizards of the Coast pass a 'Good Vibes' check with their latest D&D project. As a huge but fairly recent D&D fan, I would have loved it if the OG RPG had been incorporated into my lessons at school. Alas, kids these days get all the fun, as Wizards of the Coast are wielding the myriad benefits of D&D to help educate the generation of tomorrow. Good for them.
All bitterness aside, Wizards of the Coast are boasting a pretty high wisdom roll with this particular D&D project. As part of their efforts, the kings of nerdom will be providing educators and schools with D&D-related materials designed to be deployed in classrooms as many kids reenter the wonderful world of learning post-pandemic.
New teaching kits aimed for grades 4-6 and 6-8 work to help teach language arts, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. That's not to mention the game's ability to bring the inner thespian out of the meekest players. A group of peers banding together to problem-solve, cooperate and calculate damage and distances is somewhat of a catch-all when it comes to getting the mental cogs whirring.
The fact that it is unparalleled fun is just the icing on the cake. Hellfire, D&D is even cool now, thanks to Stranger Things. And it's safe to say that the teachers are probably more excited than the pupils.
"D&D saved my life, I've seen it save and change the lives of others, and I watch as it shapes the lives of the children who learn to play in my class," said Kade Wells, Harrisburg North Middle School ELA Instructor in South Dakota and founder of Building Heroez. "Dungeons & Dragons is the best metacognitive tool for education that I've seen. The reading growth observed and measured in my class clearly indicates the great things D&D can do in schools. My students' test score growth doubled each time they tested."
For any non-nerdy teachers who haven't played D&D in their lives, there's ample extra resources online for them to draw from that help explain the ins-and-outs of the game. And we hope they do, because this is one D&D project we can only hope will turn huge swathes of the next generation into super-geeks like ourselves.
If all this chat about D&D has got you itching to play, then give our D&D MMO rundown article a look to find the perfect cure.