Short version: used OW as a lesson plan, boss didn’t like it. Almost got fired. Boss acted like he had no prior knowledge but I proved him wrong with screen shots from whatsapp. He didn’t like that.
Long version as follows:
Hello world, My name is Aaron, an ESL teacher and I almost lost my job because I used Overwatch as my material source.
The title may seem simple but the story is not. Let me explain
I am an ESL teacher here in Spain, I have been here for almost 12 years and I love teaching. There is nothing better than seeing a student’s face when something clicks into place.
I’m a big advocate of finding different ways to educate my students. Sometimes as a teacher you need to think outside of the box. The box is often rote and students get bored of the same old lesson plans “open book to page 25 and read the exercise and then answer the questions” is a common example of this. I’m sure we all remember those days yeah?
I have been using games as a way to keep my ESL kids interested in learning more English for at least 5 years. Keep in mind the events discussed here pertain to kids between the age of 11 and 16 on average. And in this specific situation, it was with 5th and 6th graders.
At my current academy of employment, I have used games for the past 3 years. I’ve used simple flash games to video games such as WOW, Fortnite, Overwatch and others. I use them mostly to teach vocabulary, verbs and adjectives. It is always done in a simple way. For example with wow I just go outside the gates of Org or SW and go over simple verbs such as CLICK, JUMP, USE, MOUNT/RIDE on a character that I let the class pick. It could be one of my own or one that they design from the character creation screen. The creation option of WOW is great because you can select different options that help build vocabulary. This is a fantastic way to help them learn and put into practice the adjectives they are learning.
And now the problem of the story.
I prepared a lesson using Overwatch as the content, the same as I did with Fortnite for another group. The lesson plan was accompanied by some papers that I handed out which you can find in the links below. It was to simply go over adjectives explaining the characters of the game. A VERY SIMPLIFIED exercise. We would go to the hero gallery, have them vote on which hero they wanted to learn about and they would describe what they would see. They voted for 3 heroes more than any others. The tree were Hammond, Mercy, and Sombra. They loved how there was a hamster hero. They liked Mercy because she looks like an Angel and of course Sombra because she speaks Spanish just like them.
The first was held on Tuesday, December the 4th. It was only in the last 15 minutes or so of the session when the actual game was actually “played” for lack of a better word. It was set up for something they would deserve if they were good for that day and I knew they would because this is normally a good bunch. Sure, there are a few riff-raffs in it but still good.
I had some handouts with some heroes (in the links below) to talk about their roles in the game. We have these fantastic interactive whiteboards so the game was being shown on it. Once again we went to the hero gallery to look at the 3 characters and the students would describe what they see. After talking about them by expressing their knowledge of adjectives I went to the training ground using Hammond. For those of you who don’t know, Hammond in a Hamster who rolls around in a big metal ball. During the training ground, we were going over verbs. Run, Jump, Roll, Swing, hook and some others. Once again everything is very simplified for them.
The class ended and they liked it a lot.
FAST FORWARD 2 MONTHS LATER, YES…2 MONTHS LATER.
Well, two months and 2 days later to be exact.
There were about 6-8 minutes left and they finished all their work and were behaving well. One of the girls asked “can we please look at Overwatch again?” so I said why not and loaded it up. Asked who they wanted to see and they all said Hammond again. So I once again entered the training stage. Quickly went over the verbs again to see what they remember and they did ok. Once again it was 2 months later.
Later that night when I finished shortly after 9:30 pm my boss asked me to come to his office. He is the kind of boss that you never really see or hear from unless something has gone wrong. (some of us know how that is yeah?) I knew whatever he needed to talk about was negative.
He showed me an email he received from a father of one of the children in the class. He seemed to be totally outraged that a video game was used. I got a brief look at the email. The father pretty much said “WHY WOULD THE TEACHER PLAY A GAME IN CLASS?” or something of that sort.
My boss was under the impression that I just played a game for the sake of playing a game. I told him that is absolutely not the case. I then explained about the use from today and the from 2 months before. He told me that he wanted a copy of anything that I had on paper on his desk right away. We finished talking around 10:15 pm or so.
The next day was Wednesday, my biggest and busiest day of the week. I always stay up to prepare material for it. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and prepare my sessions for the next day as well as printing the documents he wanted.
I printed all the material I had. It consisted of 2 documents about verb tenses and vocabulary using Fortnite. I also printed out 2 pages with Overwatch material that I had saved. Now with Overwatch, the teaching based material is not as rampant as Fortnite. I had to go back and find the web page with Clipart that I used to simply show them something. That’s material that I simply used on the interactive whiteboard but never printed out. That is why we have the thing to begin with yeah? To save paper and time and other things.
So I went ahead and printed all the aforementioned documents out, stapled them and put him on his desk. Also as I said before I went ahead and planned my stuff for the following day and printed that material out.
So the next day I get a message from the boss asking me to email him the document I printed out last night. The document I printed was a collection of all my documents thrown into a document. I did this because it is easier for him to read. He sent me a message later saying that the document I sent was not created back in December. Of course not, I didn’t want to send him my raw documents full of clip art and photos that took up a whole page. I simply made them smaller/crop/cut/paste into a new one. THAT WAS MY MISTAKE.
He blew up! Saying that it was all fake and lies simply because the date was not from December. I sent him the original files from December but that was not enough for him. Despite the time stamps on the creation date, all he could say was “it doesn’t matter anymore” and told me that he was going to investigate and talk to me later”
Now what he meant by “investigate” was to talk to my class and ask them about the papers from 2 months ago. I told him that if you find a 5th or 6th grader that still has a piece of academy work in their folder after 2 months I will find him the fountain of youth. He didn’t like that very much.
One would think that he wanted the printed documents to present to the angered father yes? To justify and represent the lesson plan, to show that it was not a case of just playing a game on a whim. Well, that wasn’t enough for the boss. He wanted to dig even deeper for what I would assume would be his own personal interest. The case with the angry father should stop at the documents delivered to his hand yeah? Look, I get it that he is trying to protect his business and reputation. I really do, but he was taking this a little too far. He already has the documents to justify the situation to begin with.
So he talked to my students, without me there of course. He calls me to his office that night and tells me that they don’t have any of the documents. He then proceeds to say that I was lying about them and that I made them up. I of course took offense and told him “that the lack of evidence is not proof” and just because they don’t have it doesn’t mean I didn’t give it to him. He didn’t like that very much.
We talked for about ½ an hour. I guess you can say it was more of a debate than an argument. In the end, he made me sign a document saying that I was to never use a video game again as subject matter.
I wrote a 3-page document and gave it to him. It explained everything, my lesson plan, his prior knowledge of using games in the class (via screen shots from whatsapp), and of course my defense. I don’t like being called a liar. All of these things I have proof of and showed him in a document. He looked at it, didn’t say a damn thing and made me sign that paper about not doing it again.
Sigh, sorry for the long read. It is my nature as it is part of my job to do such.
I think Blizzard makes fantastic products and I have used them to teach ESL students for years. They are constructed in such a way that they captivate people and make them eager to learn English. It saddens me that people don’t want to open their eyes and minds to acknowledge this.
I have all the documentation but blizz will not allow me to post the link. So if you want the google documents link just ask me in a pm if you with to know more.
Thank you so very much for reading.
-Aaron