I’ve been attending university to become a teacher for quite a while now. I remember starting back in 2017 being completely overwhelmed and have been busting my butt since doing an enormous amount of theory. Lots of reports on child development, theorists, higher-level calculus and a never-ending demand for lesson plans. So many lesson plans. But five weeks ago, I got to do my very first practical experience. Twenty-five days of being inside an actual class in an actual school with actual students teaching a real lesson on everything from multiplication to Asian cultures. It was a wonderful experience, and it was the highest of highlights even in a year that wasn’t… you know… now.

I finished these five weeks yesterday, and as a part of my final report, one of the suggestions that were given to me was to reflect on what you did right, what you did wrong and what to change. To write out those feelings and learnings to better understand what you did and how to improve. Now, of course, I was not going to write about everything I did. Still, I am going to write about something that I was actively working to incorporate into my lessons and the way I engaged with students: Popular Culture or more specifically, video games.

During the “pre-placement” theory work I was asked what would be some of my goals that I would aim for in my placement and one of them was to drive engagement with my students by using video games and other popular media. Not only would the student be more engaged with the material, but if done correctly, they wouldn’t even know they were learning. So today I am going to go through the things I did to put video games in the classroom: my successes, my failures and generally let you know what games 11 to 12-year olds are playing in 2020.

In the Classroom:

Literally, my very first lesson in front of 59 students (it was a combined two classes with two teachers) was using the grid system to draw pixel art. Students were given sheets of grids with instructions on it such as “Brown C3” or “Purple G2 – G5” and they would colour in the squares to form pixel art of an object, person or character. My first challenge was finding characters that would be recognisable for everyone. At this point, I was on my third day in, so I did know the students a little bit, but I did not know the overall class and their tastes. So, I picked the most famous and easily recognisable characters I could: Minecraft Steve, Santa, Olaf, Mickey Mouse and some generic imagery like rainbows, jack-o-lanterns and fairies. The kids got it instantly and loved it. To maintain interest in the activity, I hid what the characters were, so they had no idea who or what they were drawing and watching them slowly realise what they had was fantastic. Due to starting in the middle of the term and a pandemic, I had no interactions with parents except those who worked at the school. The one parent interaction I had was the mother of a student gushing about how her daughter had so much fun making those pixel arts. That was a high point early on and made me feel like I might be good at something (for once).

The second “video game themed” lesson was mapping. The students had been working on grids, cartesian planes and maps. The other classes were using maps based on the local area, and it was getting a bit boring, so I decided to do a lesson about reading maps but using fictional maps. The maps I choose were Neverland from Peter Pan, Dreamworld which is an Australian theme park, Skyrim from the Elder Scrolls and the map from the latest season of Fortnite. While a decent amount of them were unfamiliar with some of the maps they still attacked this lesson and shredded through everything I gave them. As soon as I showed the Fortnite map half the classes face lit up like a Christmas tree, they were so excited to do mathematics that they didn’t’ even realise they were doing mathematics.

The rest of my lessons involved video games on the side. When we did a class of ‘outcast’ characters in fiction, I used some video game characters as examples such as Link from The Legend of Zelda. I used Drawful 2 to help students summarise the last few weeks of lessons (until we crashed the school’s internet, oops), walked through Egypt using Assassin’s Creed: Origins, wrote letters using Kind Words as a template and even brought in my Oculus Quest to transport some lucky students to other countries using Wander. Sometimes I just tried to add as many references as I could like when doing percentages figuring out the chances of someone being the traitor in Among Us. I did all of this to increase engagement. I believe it was very successful, and so did my mentor teachers. There are things I need to iron out and change depending on the age group, but in terms of incorporating that stuff into the classroom, I believe it is an excellent way to connect to students.

In the Playground:

I knew I was going to be in trouble when a few days into my placement, one of the students from a younger grade asked me if I was a gamer. Dang, they somehow found out! Well after being outed as a “Gamer” it was hard to talk to students about anything other than games. But an unintended consequence was I now know what games the youth of today are playing (or at least the Australian Catholic youth between 8 to 12).

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the biggest game of elementary school students in October and November of 2020 is Among Us. Everyone in my class was playing it and knew all sorts of stuff about it: Development history, YouTubers who played, technical stuff and beyond. It was so big that I would be asked if I played it CONSTANTLY. This blog title is no joke. Most days I would be asked 2 to 3 times a day if I played and the answer to that, unfortunately, is no. I have never played Among Us even once, and the closest I’ve gotten is playing the hacked together custom game mode version for Overwatch. I used to run a Garry’s Mod server and got plenty of deceptive killing and accusations playing Trouble in Terrorist Town for years, so Among Us was not my cup of tea. Still, nothing even came close to the popularity of it.

One game, however, did surprise me with how popular it was and that’s Rocket League. I don’t know if it was because it went free-to-play recently or what, but tons of kids are still talking and playing it. I played Rocket League when it was first released and super-enjoyed it for what it was but fell out it after a few months and like most of you assumed it just was the hardcore fans remaining. Not the case in my class. Plenty of kids were talking about favourite maps, shots they made and what their car looks like. Honestly, I was shocked they even knew what Rocket League even was, let alone playing it.

Now Fortnite is interesting because while it is still prevalent in the culture of youth today, the game itself was not. Lots and lots of kids were doing Fortnite dances out in the playground and sometimes even in class. They talk about events coming up or Twitch streamers they watched, but no one was talking about playing the game. I honestly thought I would be confiscating phones and computers from kids playing Fortnite in classes, but I did not have to do it once. The culture surrounding Fortnite was more popular than Fortnite itself was which I found fascinating. I don’t know if it’s because Among Us stole its thunder or the Apple/Epic lawsuits or that catholic kids were not given permission to play it, but it was clear as day: Fortnite is starting to slip.

Just a few quick things that don’t need full paragraphs:

• Fall Guys was mentioned a few times but not enough that I was asked if I played it or not. I thought that game was more popular than it is.
• A few kids mentioned they played GTA Online and Rainbow Six Siege. I wanted to tell them that those games were wildly inappropriate for 12-year olds if it weren’t for the fact that when I was 12, I was playing GTA Vice City and Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox… so yeah didn’t do that.
• Elementary school kids do not care about the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 at all. I was teaching a class of 59 students, and not one of them said they are getting or wanted to get either one. Everyone was either Switch or Mobile with a couple of PC gamers here and there. Consoles are dead to these kids.
• In terms of movies and television, it is what you expect: Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Netflix and everything popular. Kids love those superheroes. Although a few of them said they didn’t like Into the Spiderverse, and I just shook my head in disgust.
• Most of the girls LOVE Hamilton. Half of them could sing the whole thing start to finish. When I gave them a task to analyse the lyrics to ‘My Shot’ the screeching I heard could have broken wine glasses.
• Kids still love them some Harry Potter, unfortunately.
• Anime is getting big. My Hero Academia is the biggest one, and while as a teacher I had to confiscate it I was so proud of the student who brought a manga volume of Attack on Titan and Death Note to school.
• Music is all over the place. Some kids love BTS; some kids love Kayne; some kids love YouTube rap parodies. The only thing they all seemed to love universally is Disney songs and Queen.