Innovation in Education: Brendan Wolff
I recently had coffee with Brendan Wolff, founder of Achievement Unlocked, a new school located in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn. Brendan’s been running a school for about five years. It started with him tutoring people in their homes one-on-one, and bit by bit he expanded by hiring one person at a time.
His population is mostly aimed at children of average to high intelligence, but who may be lacking in social pragmatics, executive functioning, and emotional regulation. His population tends to be boys, and they tend to be very interested in systems and rules. In an effort to develop these kids’ social pragmatics, he began a plan incorporating the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game with the kids.
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game in which players lead lives and go on campaigns or quests. It's heavily rules-based, and the players have to work together and interact with non-player characters that the game master voices — in addition to interacting with a set of rules that govern this fantasy game-playing world.
It proved to be an incredible way of drawing some socially inflexible, self-directed children out of their shells and into a team-building environment. If they didn't work together, their characters could die and they wouldn't achieve their goals.
Over the course of a school year, Mr. Wolff watched kids go from arguing stiltedly on the playground, essentially over what kind of a conversation they were going to have, to planning together and developing a strategy that they could bring to the next role-playing game session.
The success of this model has potentially set the stage for a school-wide education management platform. This year, Mr. Wolff is considering rolling out a system that incorporates character sheets that identify not only the children’s avatars, but also their accommodations, modifications, and academic supports. The children would travel with the sheets from class to class.
The goal would be to create a seamless confluence between the character and the child so that the children can take ownership over their own needs (as they have their avatar). This way they are actively thinking about their modifications, etc. and evaluating the level of support needed at any given time.
More ideas, in the area of social pragmatics, etc. have emerged from the success of this pilot as well. The beauty of this entire concept is that it’s accomplished on a shoestring budget with outside-of-box thinking. Mr. Wolff is meeting kids at their level — and it’s working!
Marc Gottlieb
Partner
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