"Skills and Attributes" or "Level Up!"

It was 1970 or 80 something and like many weekend afternoon's I would be sitting in the family room with my friend's Jim and Dave and we would be playing a version of Dungeons and Dragons. It probably wasn't D & D, more likely Robotech, Living Steel, or Car Wars, but we loved living in the role playing game world. We would create characters, take on different situations, act through challenges, and problem solve our way through the game. It was definitely what young nerds of the 80's did, but we loved it. 

Part of the fun was make characters. You role dice to identify the level of your hero's strength, dexterity, intelligence, and charisma. These were attributes. Things the character was born with. Resources to help guide them through their mythical dungeon wandering lives. Then you selected skills. Things your character could do. Capacities that they could increase their level of proficiency during the game. Skills increased frequently during the game. Attributes adjusted slowly. Simply  attributes where who the character was and skills were what they could do.

As you wandered the mazes and played through situation after situation, you grew in experience. Your earned skill points and occasionally you would get the rewards of "leveling up." Identifying new skills you had learned, new proficiencies achieved, and slow changes to your attributes. 

While I may not have realized while I was rolling dice at Jim's kitchen table, role playing games were more like life than I could ever imagine. In a role playing game, characters develop at different rates. They get skills at different times. Each character has different skills, accomplishes different achievements, and grows in different rates. They leveled up at different times. School and life aren't any different. When we create learning experiences for kids, they don't enter with the same attributes, they aren't ready for the same challenges, and they don't walk away with the same skills at the same proficiency level. Simply bundling students by their date of manufacture and reporting a letter grade on their skills doesn't help us understand their character sheet or program for their next opportunity to level up.

Schools need to become a little more like role playing games. Teachers and administrators more like the dungeon masters. Our records a little more like character sheets. We need to recognize the character profiles of our students and put in front of them the challenges that they can master in order to level up. We can't start our students beating the "big boss" when they are not ready for they would be crushed nor can we start them slashing through fields of gnomes that they are much  more capable then. We need to set appropriate challenges in front of each of them, because we don't simply level up because it's the end of the year, but rather when we have accomplished meaningful challenges before us.

All of those geeks of the 80's sitting in their basements rolling 20-sided-dice are grown up now. Many of them with families and children of their own. It's our turn to help the most important characters in their lives develop their personal skills and attributes and level up!

Darth Vader

Chuck Level's Up