MtG: or How I Learned to Learn

When I was a kid, I got heavily into the trading card game Magic: the Gathering (MtG). The fantasy aesthetic, the competition, the collection aspect, the community you built with your friends, all made the game very addictive. But beyond the fun, MtG also helped me develop my language skills and provided critical thinking and problem solving that was difficult to get from my school courses because those were boring and gave little instant gratification. In other words, I was more interested in playing my games than practicing or studying or even engaging in schoolwork.

 Then, in my freshman year of high school, my Language Arts teacher made a deal with the class. Every week, we would have a spelling/vocabulary test. Usually, I did relatively poorly on those because the words were hard and I didn’t study. But, the teacher agreed that if a student brought in an outside source that had a word from the vocab list, she would give us an extra half a point of credit on the next quiz. I soon realized that most of the words on the vocab list were used in MtG in some form or another, either in the card names, or descriptions, or even the flavor text. For the rest of the year, I received an average of 110% on my spelling quizzes, not only because I found the vocab words in my game, but in so doing, it helped commit those words to my long-term memory (I will always remember the word “cache,” from the MtG card Eleven Cache, as the first vocab word I came across in the wild).

 I have a story-telling box full of these anecdotes: how games have helped my or other’s learning in some form or another. I hope to share those stories here in this blog while at the same time producing and publishing my ESL and literacy games. As an ESL teacher for over 15 years, I have made countless games and activities that do not replace other forms and methods of teaching language, but supports learning by strengthening engagement, community, and interest. I want to share these games with the teaching community and support the growth and learning of students in a way that is safe, fun, and, of course, educational.

 Here’s to the start of my new journey. Thank you for reading this far! If you are an educator, what are some memories you have of games teaching you more than just to have fun? Please sign up in our email list so that you can get notifications whenever I post a new blog entry. Happy. Friday!