In the early 90’s, a fellow teacher became acutely aware of the effect the role-playing games I was playing at home after school had on the cognitive abilities of the fatherless boys I was constantly entertaining. She suggested that maybe, if it was working at home with a few students and former students, it could also work in the classroom with all students.
This, of course, was a daunting classroom activity to carry out, but enough of a creative challenge to my story telling abilities that I simply had to try.
I began with a cheap RPG book about adventuring D&D style with characters from Greek Myth. This was an opportunity not only to play adventure games, but to teach a little bit about history and a lot about mythology.
So I created generic character sheets using my own personal copier, my own copy paper, and my own overhead projector plastic overlays.
I created adventures that could be conducted on the overhead with dice, and each kid had their own set of skills and useful items. We conducted Olympic games and included mythological creatures like Tritons and Centaurs as player characters. We learned about the city of Olympia, the city of Argos, the city of Corinth, Athens, Sparta, and even Atlantis.
I let students draw their character from a hat on strips of paper that contained a boy option and a girl option. I even let students trade for the character they wanted, and we learned negotiating skills along with problem-solving skills.
Most of the stories were driven by a kidnapping where the beautiful daughter of one of the players was kidnapped immediately after the Olympic medals were awarded. The villain would take her to his evil island base, and the players would have to work together to buy or steal a boat. Gods and goddesses could be called on to intervene, and sometimes they actually did. Another storyline began with the sack of Troy, during which the players either murder or witness the death of a young Trojan boy who just happens to be Heracles’ son.
That story took the players on a quest of penance to visit the underworld and retrieve the boy in the same way that Orpheus tried to rescue his lady love, Eurydice. Potentially, Heracles would even join the quest himself if none of the player characters were the actual killer. And, of course, all sorts of encounters with monsters would ensue.
I ended up using about as many of my personal resources as a storyteller and a cartoonist to create those adventures as I had available. But I had students tell me that the week of classroom time spent playing that problem-solving myth game was one of the most memorable learning experiences they ever had. I never tried it with a high school class, only middle school, and then mostly with 7th graders. But I think the experiment was very successful from about 1992 to 2004, and it taught me even more about teaching than it ever taught them about mythology.
Catch a Falling Star 
Messing Up With Mickey
The way I handle the computer tends to be the way I handle life as a whole. Thirteen tabs open at the same time, eleven of them not responding, and me cussing the machine for not working properly.
Spring has come. In fact, Spring Break has come. My daughter the Princess and I were planning to plant flowers in the yard where the pool used to be. We started work yesterday spreading compost on the flower bed and churning the soil. But we should’ve done it sooner. It was too much for tired muscles to finish yesterday. Then the rains came last night. It would’ve been perfect to plant the seeds yesterday, then have God water them naturally at night. But plans don’t go anywhere near perfectly. Thirteen tabs are open and twelve are not responding.
In my novel, The Baby Werewolf, the murderer is now unmasked and he has started on his final killing spree. But as I was supposed to write the next Canto the last two nights, I found myself overwhelmed and overtired. I got no further writing done. I vowed to do it tonight, but the time change has left me no less tired and overwhelmed. Thirteen tabs not responding.
So here I sit, paralyzed by entropy and worriedly contemplating the eventual heat death of the universe. What to do? What to do?
Mickey’s inevitable answer… Mickey opens a new tab and keeps on writing. Did you think he had an actual plan for the rest of his life? Of course not. He planned on retiring from teaching and writing for about three years, and then dropping dead from one of his six incurable diseases. Guess what? This June will be twelve complete years. Who knows how many more?
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