Chad Collins has been with Spencer County Public Schools (KY) since 2013, first as a middle school social studies and ELA teacher, and currently as the campus Gifted and Talented Teacher for Spencer County Middle School (SCMS) as well as Spencer County Elementary School. He is also one of the SCMS Academic Team Coaches, which led to the start of the journey that is the basis for today's blog entry.
Not long after Chad began at SCMS, principal Matt Mercer wanted to try something different during fifth period schoolwide: Mercer envisioned all students receiving extra time for reading and writing enrichment. Chad and the other Academic Team coach and SCMS science teacher Sarah Parnell pitched the idea of having an Academic Team elective class for its team members during the same period. Mercer agreed, and the course was born. This elective would eventually not only grow to include students who are not Academic Team members, but also in sheer numbers; in 2023-2024, the roster is over eighty students, split by grade level into three classes, and SCMS math teacher Michelle Gross joined Chad and Sarah to become the third teacher to lead a section.
As the years went on, Collins, Parnell and Gross all felt the Academy Team class needed to be a deeper learning experience, but how? In the summer of 2023, Collins had an epiphany. He had learned about the work of KyEdRPG educators, particularly John Brewer of Jefferson County Public Schools. (Here's a fortuitous X exchange between the two!) While not a tabletop roleplay gamer himself, Chad has played video games since he was a child, and recognized the DNA of the latter was built on the former: “While I don’t have much experience with these types of tabletop games, and definitely not running that type of thing in my classroom before, I’ve been playing video games that use many of the same systems that are in these games since I was the age of my students or before." With that in mind, Chad was the architect behind the new structure of the elective course: The Academy. In the following YouTube video (where the previous quote came from!), Chad explains in more detail why and how The Academy was created (19:17):
We should also give credit that Sarah and Michelle didn't hesitate to embrace the course design for their own grade level sections, and since the launch of The Academy, have added their own content materials and revisions.
But...what is The Academy, and how is it different? Storywise, the premise is that students have been transported into another world where they are enrolled in "The Academy," a place similar yet different from their own. Each quarter, students choose one of several "classes" (in the TTRPG parlance of the term) in order to pursue their studies: The Bard (arts & humanities), The Beastmaster (language arts), The Magician (math), The Ranger (science), or The Knight (social studies). Each of these classes has a corresponding Google Site as first designed by Chad, which consists of unique, personalized paths of learning. These pathways have a series of Main Quests (must do’s), Side Quests (should do’s), and Feats of Strength (aspire to do’s). In actuality, these Quests and Feats form various Mastery Checks of learning that are assessed by the teacher, and if the student does not meet the requirements, are asked to revise and resubmit. Successful completion of the Main Quests earn Experience Points (XP) and this total amount earned is what eventually determines the student's grade for each quarter. This progression of XP can be monitored by students and parents alike in real time on, fittingly titled, Progress Trackers (Google Sheets) embedded in the Google Sites. Successful completion of Side Quests can earn "coins" that can be used to purchase items from an in-class "market." Lastly, completion of most Feats of Strength are for learning enrichment and the "honor and glory" of helping the whole Team, as opposed to coins or XP.
Chad was kind enough to let me copy and create sample snapshot versions of each of The Academy's class Google Sites midway through the school year, which you can preview below:
Chad would be the first to acknowledge the pedagogical structures that undergird and inspired The Academy. For one, it's a brilliant example of competency-based education, with tenets such "meaningful, positive, and empowering" types of assessments; students having different learning pathways; and mastery of learning, not seat time, is the metric of progression allowing students to "move when ready" to new content or higher levels of complexity. Secondly, the language of structures like must do's/should do's/aspire to do's, Mastery Checks, and Progress Trackers come from the Modern Classroom Project.
Many digital tools are employed in The Academy, both in the design of the course as well as students' day-to-day instructional interaction. Chad used several artificial intelligence tools, such as Eleven Labs (to create a narrator voiceover for a video introducing students to The Academy), Midjourney for images, and ChatGPT for monster and scenario descriptions. For content delivery and note-taking work, he uses Edpuzzle; for Main Quest Monster Hunts, there is Quizziz. For "sparring sessions" (where students review content via some friendly competition), Chad rotates through several tools, such as Gimkit, Blooket, and Quizalize.
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| The display case outside of Chad's classroom. Note the d20 dice, the examples of "Treasure Cards," and the "Roll for Prizes" chart. |
In my in-person visit to Chad and Michelle's classrooms back in November 2023, I was a delighted witness to some of these sparring sessions. Since most of these head-to-head digital tools embed a leaderboard indicating ranking of winners, this allows an incentivization protocol where the top three student finishers use a d20 die to roll for prizes and therefore draw from an indicated jar. Some of these tokens include stickers and candy, but a premium item is a "treasure card" worth an "upgrade" in class. Here are some examples:
In Michelle's class, I recorded a video of students happily rolling for their goodies:
The student agency was palpable in these classes, as was the joy of learning. From the perspective of TTRPGs, there were so many wonderful elements present, yet the only thing really "missing" was the actual playing of a role-playing game! Chad shared that he was looking to have more cross-content, collaborative opportunities for his students, so creating some group mini-RPGs modules may be in the future. I'm excited to see how The Academy will "level up" in the years to come!
Speaking of the future, Chad may now be a Gifted and Talented Teacher with new responsibilities, but part of the agreement for taking his new position is his ability to still teach his section of the SCMS fifth period Academic Team elective. With that in mind, Chad shared that he would appreciate any feedback on his structures and ideas, especially as other teachers attempt to incorporate them into their own courses. Or share them in the Comments below!
Be sure to check out Chad's guest turn on a recent Modern Classroom Project podcast episode (Episode 177, "Gamification," 2/18/24, 61 min long). Also, for those who will be attending KySTE 2024 in March, Michelle and Chad will be presenting a session about The Academy ("Play to Learn: Building a Class with Game-Based Design") on Wednesday, March 13, at 11:30 am.
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