Some Rambling About D&D and the Classroom

I came across this article the other day, and it reminded me of my goal to introduce gaming to the classroom.

Now, granted, I've always presumed that there will be gaming in the home (maybe my kids won't care for gaming, though?), but in that circumstance, I'd run whatever I want.  At home, I can ignore rules, teach rules, or gloss over rules with abandon.

The classroom, however, has many more students with many more personality types, and tends to be simultaneously more and less regimented.  The block schedule breaks everything into forty-five minute increments, but those forty-five minutes tend to be somewhat hectic.

However, should I ever insert gaming into the classroom, I've been preparing for this eventuality for some time.  Many moons ago, I found Meddling Kids at a used bookstore.  Since then, I have come across Witch Girls Adventures (about which I have heard much praise regarding the magic system) and Broomstix (a free and unofficial Harry Potter RPG).  The classroom tends to be structured such that I have yet to use any of these, but I am should like to try; the article at the top describes altering Monster Slayers: Heroes of Hesiod for large group play, and that modification might be the most effective way to do it.

With that in mind, here are some more resources.

This link leads to the "D&D in the Library" program: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/library

Uri Kurlianchik also goes into schools and uses D&D as a teaching tool.  He wrote a series of articles on the subject, though I can no longer find them on Wizards of the Coast's site.  As such, I will host them here:

D&D Kids: Character Creation
D&D Kids: Combat Encounters
D&D Kids: Rewards
D&D Kids: Punishment
D&D Kids: Campaign Setting (this last one didn't transfer correctly, so the top is marred by an advert)

(If you happen to be from Wizards and feels that this infringes on anybody's copyright, let me know and I'll take them down.)

And apparently he also wrote some choose-your-own-adventure where you play a leopard cub.