Page 12 - Issue 29

or what it actually entailed to play Dungeons &
Dragons. But I was in.

The next day Shaked showed up, we opened a
room for him and he started setting up a table
with some chairs and putting out dice and soon
we had a cadre of seven would-be players sitting
around the table playing with dice. Shaked needed
quiet so that he could explain the rules. The
children, dice already in hand, would not comply. I
improvised quickly and broke out a package of
molding clay and handed out a piece to each kid.

By the time the adventure started we were down
to two students, each with their own character
and ready to play. I was nervous that we might be
about to fail even before we had started. But what
happened next was actually quite remarkable.
Tomer, a fourth grader with severe ADHD, whose
ability to read and do math is well below grade
level and whose teachers don't know what to do
with her, spent the next hour and a half reading
the character sheet in front of her, trying to move
the story ahead faster than our dungeon master
could keep up. She quickly attempted math
problems and when she couldn't do them she
asked for help. "How do you write 150?". Shaked
was surprised but quickly answered "one, five,
zero". The environment we had created was safe
enough and compelling enough to generate a
question she would probably never ask in school,
either because she wouldn't be paying attention or