Let’s Get This Party Started

How, exactly, do you start a D&D game in a 4th grade classroom...

…with 19 9-10 year old students and a teacher that barely knows what D&D is?

1. Ask your administrator! I’m lucky enough to work in a school where my principal told me, “Sure, try it out but explain it to me in case I get phone calls from angry parents.”

2. Teach the teacher (at least) the basics. It’d be great to run a game in a class where the teacher knows how to play. Mine didn’t. I reviewed the materials with her and ran a simple encounter so she knows the basics.

3. Get parent permission. I like to use passive permission forms for activities like this. Basically, we sent a note home to parents that said what we were doing, why we were doing it, and any safety mechanisms we had already developed (more on that later). Parent sign and return the form if they DON’T want their student to participate.

(Side note: I fully expected at least a few parents to say no. Our Plan B for those students was to have them participate in Friday Fun in another 4th grade class so they didn’t miss their free time. However, parents were 100% behind us and no one said no.)

4. Get help!! There is no way you can run a game with 19 kids and a teacher who doesn’t know how to play on your own. We are lucky enough to have a parent volunteer. When he can’t come, I bribe my speech therapist and social worker to help.

5. Make sure you have materials, or a way to get them. You’ll need modules and dice to play. I’ll cover what I provided for the group in another post.

6. Get the kids on board. None of this was going to work if I didn’t have students that didn’t want to play. That is our next quest…