Teachers

World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements (2010)

Happy New Year Friends of Spielbound!

I'm excited for what 2015 holds for Spielbound and I hope that you've been enjoying the engagement that our game library provides.  I've been personally enjoying the relaxed environment at the cafe and library.

One of the central goals of Spielbound is to help teachers find ways to enhance student learning and engagement with board games.  In order to do that we want to find ways to help teachers see pathways for using games in schools.  So how can we help with the professional development of teachers whose schedules are already packed?  Go to the movies, of course!

On March 9th at 7 PM Spielbound and Filmstreams invite you to a special, one-time screening of the documentary World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements.  The event is open to all, but area educators and their families are especially encouraged to attend.  The film highlights the efforts of rural Virginia teacher John Hunter to use the non-violence principles of Mahatma Ghandi to help his students understand peaceful discourse.  His World Peace Game helps students to see the value of collaboration and communication in resolving conflicts.  This inspiring story will be followed by a Question and Answer session with a special panel.

My name is Michael Fryda and I am the Teacher Outreach Coordinator for the organization. I'll be maintaining this blog to help you, the reader, understand what Spielbound has to offer you. I am also the contact for teachers in the Metro area who are interested in finding ways to bring board games into their curricula and after school clubs.

Why me? I'm a twelve-year veteran high school teacher and an adjunct professor of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. I teach science at Westside High School in Omaha and I've been involved in creating staff development programs and mentoring first year teachers my entire career.

I've also been sponsoring an after school game club at Westside High School since 2003. A colleague splits the duties with me. Between the two us, we reach over 100 students every Tuesday. When I started the club, I set a series of educative goals for our students. We knew a decade ago, just as we do now that games have strong capacity for teaching critical thinking, strategic thinking, and cost-benefit analysis. All of these thinking modalities are taught in school curricula. We also wanted to be sure that students had a safe, inclusive environment to be at after school. Finally, we wanted to model a positive sporting spirit with our students.