two sides of the same coin
Content Warning: The following post will refer to suicide and PTSD. It will also refer to recovery and support. I have talked briefly about the trauma that I experienced before, but I have never talked about the extent of its impact on me while I continued to lecture. I’m bringing that side of the story out now, because I believe that it also illustrates something that human beings need: support.
When I was a lecturer, I knew all of my students’ names. After just one class I could rattle off everyone’s name correctly. The students, often having thus far remained anonymous in the eyes of most lecturers, usually applauded. And it wasn’t a one-off. I continued to remember their names.
Remembering names is something I worked at. It began with icebreakers to learn something about everyone. I’d make a seating map with little notes and observations by each student’s place. Then — as I set students to tasks — I’d take 5-minutes here and there going over and over my map and glancing up at the people in the room. I’d walk from student to student and make sure they were all ok, all the while reciting their names in my mind. By the end of every first class, they weren’t anonymous anymore.
The students seemed to appreciate it and I took a lot of joy in knowing them that little bit more. I believe it made me a more effective teacher.
Then something happened that changed my brain.
This is the content-warning bit.
I was walking my dog one morning, when I came across a man hanging from a tree. I called 999 but I was in the middle of a park and it would take the ambulance some time to find me. The person on the other end of the phone told me what to do, and I eventually realised that they were giving me instructions to save his life. Unfortunately, there was no chance of that. This poor man had gone long before I’d arrived. But I was in shock and simply did what the person on the end of the phone told me to do. This led to a deeply involved experience, and I carried that experience with me for a long time.
I was diagnosed with PTSD.
People are different. Someone else may not have been affected in the same way. Sometime later, when I still wasn’t ok, I was diagnosed with PTSD.
The brain is a strange thing. Not being in control of how it reacted was one of the most difficult experienced I’ve ever gone through.
I was fortunate. I had a great support network around me, and work had an in-house counselling service which I was able to use. The person I saw helped me process and move past the whole thing. I can return to where it happened and instead of this terrible nausea and panic, I simply feel sad for that poor man. Often, now, I don’t think of him at all. I think it’s fair to say that I am completely recovered. And have been for some time.
Except I can’t memorise names anymore, at least not like I used to. It’s as if my brain just won’t let me. I have to meet someone at least three times before I remember their name now. I hate it. It makes me feel inadequate. Like I have to explain myself, but the explanation is a conversation stopper so… maybe not.
I just wanted to be ok
It’s also interesting the way the brain protects itself. Interesting and terrible. When I was going through it, I just wanted to be ok right then and there. But I had to go through this whole process of uncoiling my mind. Of slowly teaching my body — oh so slowly — to react differently.
Teaching during this time was a trial.
When you teach — or when I taught — there’s a bit of an adrenaline rush. It’s akin to going on stage. Now, because my body had flooded with adrenaline when I’d found the man, any adrenaline surge afterwards just sent my body and mind into that place again. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t logical. I couldn’t think it away. It was beyond my control. So, teaching became torment.
I could swallow it down and act my way through the class, but afterwards I’d find a quiet, utterly secluded place and cry for an hour. Then I’d stand up and go teach another class. It was exhausting. I also couldn’t bare noise. I think my brain was just under assault, and any additional stimulus was too much. At the time my daughter was toddler, and noise goes hand-in-hand with being so young. Thankfully, and again with support, this is something we got through without any upsetting incidences. I wasn’t the mom I wanted to be during that time though. I frequently needed to hide in the quiet and leave my husband to it. But because of the support that I was receiving, I was still able to be a kind mom.
Not being in control of the reactions in your mind and body is a horrible experience. It made me feel like a lost child. So desperate so much of the time. But in time I did heal. I am ok.
the right support had been essential
And I learnt that the right support had been essential in enabling my recovery to be relatively swift.
Why am I sharing all of this? What does it have to do with ARGs and playful learning?
It’s that support thing, and I don’t mean to trivialise my experience into a trite lesson. I don’t think that it is trite. It’s important. The right level of support is important.
It’s important in the worst times and in the everyday, average times. It’s something to do with how we work. Support is one side of challenge. Being challenged is fine, as long as we are able to meet it. And if we can’t, then we need a support mechanism in place to help us meet the challenge.
Think about it for a moment. What would happen if you started to learn chess and played a grand master straight away? You’d be annihilated, that much is clear. But you’d also feel utterly dispirited and you might not bother to play again.
Digital games have complex A.I. that constantly gauges a player’s ability and matches that with an appropriate level of challenge. In a good game, everything is always challenging but not impossible. The game automatically supports your success. Or, at least, it enables the opportunity for your success.
In the first article of this series, I spoke a little about how games enable failure. That’s still true, but the other side of that is that they also enable players to learn from the failure in order to succeed.
Human beings thrive on being challenged. As long as we’re able to rise to the challenge, or we’re supported to do so. How does this help teachers or anyone designing a game/playful experience?
In a classroom, teachers need to be free to teach the content and enable each student to meet the requirements of that content. They do this by understanding the student’s knowledge and abilities in relation to the content that is being taught. They can then adjust the difficulty level accordingly. This is called differentiation. And it’s something that all good teachers do almost automatically. It’s a great shame that they’re required to constantly evidence this, and many more things, even while teaching. Doing so often gets in the way.
Let me be clear. Teachers are at their best and most effective when they are free to simply teach and support learning: challenge and support. Anything that takes them away from this role, gets in the way of effective teaching and subsequent engagement in class. Ofsted has a lot to answer for here.
I worked with a High School to help them create a playful learning scheme of work to teach Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation. When I observed classes, the best thing I did was to chat with teachers about what they’re usually really good at: teaching and supporting learning. They were desperate to just do those things, so we’d find a way to tick the Ofsted boxes so that they could get on with the real work.
Many teachers have learnt to deal with the inconvenience of the paperwork around it all, but just because they’ve learnt to deal with it doesn’t make it ok. I don’t have an answer for this issue, but I do have a lot of sympathy. If you’re a teacher struggling under the weight of it all, a playful learning scheme properly understood and implemented might help.
If you’re designing a playful experience, you need to take time to really consider the goals so that you can ensure that players have multiple modes to achieve these. I’ll go into this more in the next post, where I’ll be exploring how I developed the playful learning scheme mentioned above. For any game designers interested in applying their skills in education — note that I didn’t design the scheme alone. I worked hand-in-hand with a lead teacher.
For now, the key takeaway is that challenge is something that we thrive upon but sometimes it is too much for us. When that happens it is essential that we have the support that enables us meet the challenge.
If any of the issues raised in this article have affected you, please seek help and support. You are not alone, and help is available.
