As we get closer to exams, I had a Game Day event in the library during both the middle school and upper school lunches to help the students blow off some steam. I made sure we had a large and diverse selection of games such as Connect 4, Mancala, Scrabble, Sorry, Clue, Trouble, Battleship, Apples to Apples, Dominoes, Twister, Blokus, and Operation. I would classify these as “retro” since most of the students had not played these games “in years,” and a few were not familiar with them at all. Perhaps the most important component of this experiment was prohibiting the use of cell phones and computers during lunch. As you can imagine, this provided the most angst with the students.
The reasoning behind providing an “unplugged” opportunity for students began with observation. Anyone who spends any time with kids cannot deny the almost umbilical connection most kids have with their smartphones, laptops, social media, etc. In many cases, this leads to a desocialization of kids from each other as they communicate via games, apps, and/or social media like Snapchat and Instagram. The irony is that many of these kids feel they are being social with their peers by using these apps. Our goal was to promote face-to-face interaction between the students and get them to think and strategize in different ways.
The atmosphere in the library during Game Day was lively and, as more than one student told me, fun. The students appreciated having another way to interact with their friends and fellow classmates, as well as playing games that they had not played since early childhood. Some faculty and staff from all departments turned up to help, and in many cases, play games with the students as well. There were many instances that led to Throwback Tuesday being deemed a success, but I wanted to share my top three:
- A student looked up at me from an intense game of Sorry! and said, “I didn’t realize there were games I could play that weren’t on my phone!”
- Days later students asked me if they could play specific games again.
- I had a student thank me for making the library such a fun place!
Getting kids who don’t normally come to the library to try it out was phenomenal. That, in my book, is a success, and one we hope to replicate at least once a semester.
If you would like to follow our fun in the library on Twitter, check out the hashtags #TPSlibrary and #TPSreads.