Sticky Fingers

It's nearly the summer holidays. All over the land Teachers are using the last remnants of their patience and strength to get themselves through the last two weeks. Fighting off the desire to just let the kids watch Frozen or, more likely, bully each other on their mobile phones (which are inevitably newer and more expensive than the teachers own, but also usually smashed on at least one surface) and instead try and ram one last piece of information into their young charges heads or plead with the year 10's to get that piece of work finished before the holidays.

But there is one more heinous hurdle to leap before we are free to bathe in alcohol for the summer. In my school at least, the last day is a purgatory where form tutors are imprisoned in their rooms with 25 bored and unruly teens (at least 5 are either truanting or will have been taken on some lovely sounding exotic holiday) for 3 and a half hours. A length of time only broken by a brief 20 minute break and an interminably dull end of term house assembly.

What do you do? The usual ploy is sweets and movies but as you can imagine the chance of 25, 12 year old's agreeing on a film to watch on an aging white board that you can barely see on a computer that is likely to reject any DVD you have chosen is fairly remote. Add sugar to the mix and you are in a world of hurt. To make life more of a misery, my form has a collection of boys (the girls are lovely) who appear to have just stepped out of an episode of the Bash Street Kids.




Or more accurately, Viz.


At the end of the Spring term I risked my sanity and my newly painted toys and introduced my lovely little terrors to the wonderful world of dungeon crawling as evidenced by this very post .

As can be seen, apart from the sheer terror of allowing the little numpties to touch stuff it was actually pretty successful in keeping them entertained and they have been asking to play it ever since.

So I need to up my game. or rather, their game.










And despite packing the wrong mini's and having to use my Elizabethan/Dutch Revolt figs, a great time was had by all. I felt able to introduce traps, secret doors, revolving rooms, teleporting pools, stone golems and all sorts of other silliness I to a game that lasted all the way till 12 o'clock! 

The kids were appreciative and stupidly excitable which is the perfect mix. After break when they had ran around for a bit they turned on each other and starred to throw dice/ kill colleagues but that was all part of the fun. They loved it and I loved running it for them. I wonder if they'll feel the same at Christmas? 

Comments

  1. I wish this had been an option when I was at school! Good job :)

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  2. Brave man, sir. Brave man. Glad to see it went over well. (Actually, they look more careful of your miniatures than some of the adults I've known at conventions.)

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  3. Excellent work, mister. I've just about allowed some 6th formers to use my dice for our weekly RPG session, but miniatures... nope, I'm not ready for that step yet!

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  4. That is a very brave thing to do on so many levels, but it seems to have gone really well. I'm almost tempted to try next year, but for now will stick with my model making club as the introductory gaming gateway for my school kids.

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  5. you're the coolest teacher ever....

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  6. I bottled taking my mi iatures in so we played Condotteiri in teams instead. A great day was had by all and they leaned something about Renaissance Italy.

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  7. thoroughly enjoyed reading through some of your blog. especially great to see AHQ still gets a run out and that new faces can still enjoy it. good stuff :)

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    Replies
    1. I'mm just glad your enjoying my random blethering! Cheers!

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