Group Spotlight: After School D&D

Yesterday I received a tweet from someone about the article I did on the Dynamite! Magazine image of three teens playing Dungeons & Dragons. It turns out that he runs a D&D group at school and that his students adopted that image as part of the official flyer for the group. I asked him to tell me his story via email. It's really awesome and I'm glad he agreed to let me share it with all of you.

I teach middle school science at a small private school in Seminole, Florida. I started a board games club after school and a few people came for a couple of weeks and it was fun. Then two of the girls started asking me about D&D because they knew I played with some teachers and they knew it from the Big Bang Theory. Many kids their age seem to only know the game from that show. So I said we could try it in the next session to see if they liked it. So I made some characters for them and we played the next week. At first three girls showed up. Three of the quieter girls. We had a really good time. And that was the end of board games club. The next week two more showed up and the week after that two more. So now we've leveled off at seven and it's officially Dungeons and Dragons Club. I bought each of them a set of dice to use in whatever color they wanted. They love them. It's all about the color.

One of the really quiet girls really got into the game. She told me specifically what she wanted her character to be and wrote a whole back story for her and her character's family. It was great. A few weeks in she told me her dad used to play and they started having these huge conversations about his experiences when he was her age. He dug into his old keepsakes boxes and found his old set of dice. He passed them on to her so she could use them, and now she plays with them in our games.

There are some boys that I can tell who want to get into D&D too but they can't get past the stigma of being a "geek." I work at a very sports-centric school. The girls all get along and support each other so there wasn't an issue with them. In class the other day, a "cool" boy started giving the group a hard time, saying "that game is for people with no friends." To which one of them replied in front of everyone, "No friends? There were 8 of us playing yesterday. Who did you hang out with after school that wasn't your mom." I have to admit I laughed out loud. And that was the end of that attempt at bullying.

Like I said, I started with the Dungeon Delve and moved on to my own stuff. I used to teach English, so I've been loving the writing. Two of the girls already want to learn how to DM and are developing some side quests for us.

It's been by far the most rewarding after school thing I've done. The social interaction and imagination and cooperation and confidence I've seen in the girls is really fantastic.

Anyway. Thanks for listening to my completely random story. I like what you do and will be an avid reader starting today!

Steven

This is awesome, Steven, and thanks so much for sharing!

How about the rest of you? Do you have a story like this you'd love to share? If so, send an email to mygroup at sarahdarkmagic dot com.