Reality is Broken and the Teachers' Lounge is a Horrible Place to Eat In

I've only ever experienced lunch as a professional educator in one teachers' lounge. But for some reason, I feel safe generalizing a frequent complaint that I've heard from previous colleagues to teachers at other schools too. It's the one about video games and how kids waste so much time by playing them. You can put it into your own words, but the sentiment is always the same.

Now, I'm not a gamer, but I wouldn't mind it if I was one. I believe there is a gamer somewhere inside of me who causes me to cringe whenever I hear remarks about gaming robbing kids of their childhood. It's that same gamer that has led me to read Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal, her book about how gaming principles and good game design can save the world that we currently live in. It's here that she writes,

Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us. (p. 13)

Aside from the eye-opening realization that this excerpt had for me, the irony of teachers wanting to keep their students from adopting the behaviors that schools work so hard to inspire in them through antagonizing video game play made me throw up in my mouth just a little. Those teachers are ones whose class I would not want my child to be in.