How Video Games Changed Everything!!!

Is Super Mario a better teacher than me?

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It was my 5th year teaching. I was still a young teacher and I thought i had things figured out and that I was doing a great job. I had a good relationship with my students, the kids were actively engaged in activities and enjoyed coming to school and I had the support of parents. Make learning fun was my moto ad it was working. At least that's what I thought. I was teaching a grade ⅘ combined class that year. It was my first time teaching a combined grade and to top it off there were 27 kids in the class which is a large number for primary grade. It was a buy class but it didn’t seem like it was more than I could handle. The year started off well and the learning was in full force. Full force that is except for everyone except one student. One of my grade 5 students was consistently scoring lower than average on his math and language assignments and tests. I tried a variety of different strategies to help him but the scores weren’t improving. I could sense is frustration as he was a fairly hard worker but wasn’t getting the results.

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I decided it was time to have a meeting with his parents and see what we could do to help his progress. The conversation was one that they had been part of before. It wasn’t the first time they were hearing that he was struggling in school. The conversation went on for about 30 minutes and we discussed various things that we could do both at school and home. Towards the end of the conversation the father said something out of frustration that stuck with me and to be 100% honest changed my teaching forever. Changed my teaching for the better.

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“Those god damn video games!” he said. “The kid can beat any damn video game but can’t understand what he’s doing at school? I don’t get it!” Now the father was laying blame at the time and looking at video games as the root of why this young man was struggling at school. It is a common belief and something I had heard many people say while out and about. This was the first time I was hearing this in the context of one of my students. I walked away from that meeting with this question in the back of my mind that wouldn’t go away. Why? Why is it that he is so quick to learn and makes sense of video games and he can't learn anything effectively from me. Was I doing something wrong?

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I spent the weekend pondering my question and thinking that somehow I was losing this student. I decided I needed to figure out why it was that kids had such an easy time picking up concepts in video games and being successful at them. I decided that to get to the bottom of this I needed to play some video games for the first time since college. I quickly realized that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was at Super Mario World but after a little while I was cruising along. When I got to the boss levels it took me a significant number of tries to beat him. First I tried to attack him with one move and died, then i tried a different move and died. I did this over and over for about 15 minutes trying different combinations of moves and attacks until I won. Level 1 that is.

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It was that boss battle that opened my eyes to something I hadn’t thought of before. Each time I attempted to beat the boss and died I was quickly able to assess what I did wrong and try again. The feedback was INSTANT!! I immediately knew what I did wrong and what I did right and was able to translate tat into a new strategy. I was learning as I was laying and at an exponential rate. The faster the game and the action, the faster I was learning to make adjustments. My brain was taking in all this information and processing it very quickly and with the immediate feedback my brain was able to adjust and compensate. I thought back to the school setting and typical lessons and how teachers provide feedback for students. What stood out to me was how much of a gap there can be at times between the action or activity that a student does and the feedback that they get. So often our students sit and do seatwork and once the work is handed in they wait for feedback or a grade. This stood out to me as ineffective compared to the ability to learn through the immediate and relevant feedback in video games. Now I realize that I can’t give that pace of feedback but I was determined to adjust my teaching style to have the ability to give more instant feedback for students. I started doing more teacher conferences with students and I was doing them daily. Quick check in assessment to gauge understanding and quickly provide feedback and help as needed. One of my favourites was the exit tickets where students had to share their learning and take feedback before leaving at the end of the class. There are lots of things that can be done to get that information from students and give them immediate feedback. I didn’t just notice a change in my one student who was struggling but also in a significant number of students in the class. I often share this story with fellow staff members and even at staff meeting and workshops. I think it's something that we should all try to be cognizant of and wth a little effort we can make a difference.

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