Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching

What happens when a teacher turns storytelling into a live, collaborative classroom experience?

In this episode of Imagine This, Dylan sits down with Grade 7 teacher Patricia Berlanga to talk about a creative project that brought the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons into her classroom. What started as an idea inspired by tabletop role-playing became a full-day, Scooby-Doo-themed storytelling experience where students built characters, rolled dice, solved a mystery, and discovered that every decision has consequences.

Patricia shares how she adapted the mechanics of D&D into something manageable for a classroom setting, why she chose to focus on character creation and choice rather than full game rules, and what surprised her most as students began thinking more deeply about collaboration, perspective, and story structure.

This conversation is full of practical ideas for teachers who want to make learning more immersive, playful, and memorable (without needing to be a hardcore D&D expert!)

About Patricia Berlanga

Patricia Berlanga is a dedicated educator with experience teaching Gr.6-8 and a passion for helping students grow both academically and personally. She has been teaching for 6 years and has taught in Prince Rupert and New West. She is focusing on building strong foundational skills while encouraging curiosity, creativity, and confidence in learners.


In this episode, you’ll hear:
  • [00:00:37] Dylan and Jen introduce the episode and Patricia’s classroom project
  • [00:03:10] Patricia shares her teaching background and relationship-first teaching style
  • [00:05:22] How a Dungeons & Dragons session inspired a classroom storytelling project
  • [00:10:16] Why Patricia decided to adapt D&D for a short story unit
  • [00:12:36] Simplifying the game: focusing on character creation and choice instead of full D&D rules
  • [00:16:12] Why Scooby-Doo became the perfect framework for the project
  • [00:18:03] How students created character archetypes, strengths, and weaknesses
  • [00:23:29] Building the mystery story and planning for student decision-making
  • [00:27:32] Using props, sound effects, and role-play to immerse students in the experience
  • [00:30:22] How students tracked clues, motives, and suspects like real investigators
  • [00:31:28] The moment students began using their character sheets to guide decisions
  • [00:35:04] The unforgettable “punch them in the face” moment and what it taught about consequences
  • [00:41:19] Student reflections on collaboration, group decision-making, and missed opportunities
  • [00:45:04] How the project led into students writing their own short stories with branching endings
  • [00:47:47] What Patricia would change next time and how she wants to expand this idea into other subjects
  • [00:50:29] Patricia’s advice for teachers who want to try something similar in their own classrooms
  • [00:55:28] Invitation to Dylan’s Deeper Learning Canada Conference deep dive on role-playing games as storytelling

Get Your Tickets to the 2026 Deeper Learning Canada Conference: July 2–4 in Chilliwack, BC

Resources from Patricia’s Class:

Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Classmate:

Contact Patricia Berlanga: 

Creators and Guests

Host
Dylan Ismail
Dylan Ismail is the host of Imagine This and an Educational Technology Coach with Classmate, a Vancouver based team that helps people in schools succeed with technology through fun, collaborative learning experiences.
Guest
Patricia Berlanga
Patricia Berlanga is a dedicated educator with experience teaching Gr.6-8 and a passion for helping students grow both academically and personally. She has been teaching for 6 years and has taught in Prince Rupert and New West. She is focusing on building strong foundational skills while encouraging curiosity, creativity, and confidence in learners.

What is Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching?

Imagine This is a podcast about what’s possible in classrooms.

Each episode features conversations with teachers who are building meaningful, creative (and sometimes boldly real-world) projects — the kind that help students create work that matters beyond school. From documentary field trips and immersive role-playing games to student-made podcasts and more, we explore ideas that make learning feel alive.

Hosted by Dylan from Classmate — a team that partners with educators to co-create fun, collaborative learning experiences — the show blends reflection and storytelling. Some stories come from classrooms we collaborate in; others come from schools and educators we meet along the way. Each episode includes a teacher interview alongside reflection from the Classmate team on what worked, what surprised us, and what we’re still learning.

This show is for K–12 educators (and really anyone who cares about learning) who want school to feel more meaningful, more imaginative, and more real.

Patricia Berlanga: [00:00:02] We have to fight them, so we're gonna punch them in the face. It's like, "Okay, are you sure you want to do this?" "Yeah, we want to punch them in the face". And I was like, "Okay, they're thundering towards you. And you turn and you punch them square across the face". And they were like, "Well, we learned as much as we could have". And I was like, "Oh no, there was so much more that you could have found out". You get the chance to because you punched someone. The real world consequence of that is you get kicked out like they're not gonna be like, "Yeah, stay for dinner, punch some more people". They're going to kick you out of this location.

Dylan: [00:00:37] Hey, welcome to Imagine This. This is a podcast about what's possible in classrooms. I'm Dylan and I work with a team called Classmate. We're from Vancouver, BC, and we help schools succeed with technology. I'm here with my colleague Jen.

Jen: [00:00:50] Hello.

Dylan: [00:00:51] Hi, Jen. Jen and I are both instructional technology coaches, and we work alongside educators to reimagine what's possible in their classroom, and help design creative and engaging lessons. One of the amazing things about integrating tech into teaching is that when it's done in the right way, it kind of just disappears. In our time in schools, we've helped hundreds of educators bring their dreams to reality, and this podcast is a place where we're going to share some of our stories.

Jen: [00:01:17] And so this week we are speaking with Patricia Berlanga, who works at one of the schools that we support. And like many of the schools that we work with, I am there at her school once every couple of weeks. And so whenever I'm there, we get to sit down and really just ideate and plan out some of the lesson ideas that she has, and then actually execute them together. This particular project we've been talking about for a while since last school year, this is one of the first projects and ideas that she came to me with, because she really wanted to try integrating D&D into her classroom somehow.

Dylan: [00:01:54] Dungeons and Dragons, yes.

Jen: [00:01:55] Sorry, Dungeons and Dragons. And it was the perfect time timing wise, because this was just after you and I had come off of a year long campaign where you were showing myself, Carlo on our team, and Nick on our team, just a bunch of people how to play D&D, and it was a great time. And so I had a good time talking to her and figuring out the logistics of whether or not this would work.

Dylan: [00:02:15] Shout out to the Broccoli Gnome that you played, named Brock.

Jen: [00:02:18] Brock.

Dylan: [00:02:20] Yeah. And that led into a D&D game that we played with a bunch of teachers that led into organizing this project. So I'm really excited to hear what she has to say about this project. Why don't we talk to Patricia?

Jen: [00:02:33] Let's do it.

Dylan: [02:40] Hello everybody. Welcome to the Imagine This podcast. My name is Dylan. I am from the Classmate team. This is a podcast about what's possible in classrooms. And I am sitting here on a lovely Tuesday morning with the wonderful Patricia Berlanga, who is a grade seven teacher based in the Burnaby area. One of the teachers I've been most looking forward to talking to about a project that you ran in your classroom based on Dungeons and Dragons. Welcome to our podcast.

Patricia Berlanga: [03:11] Oh, thank you so much. So happy to be here. I'm very excited.

Dylan: [03:14] Thank you for being here. I wanted to start by talking a little bit about your experience as a teacher. Could you just tell us how long you've been teaching a little bit about your teaching style, and how you bring your interests into the classroom, one of them being obviously D&D or role playing games.

Patricia Berlanga: [03:31] I've been teaching for six years now. I taught for four years in Prince Rupert and this is my second year teaching here. I am very much a teacher who focuses on relationships and building that with the students, and so a way that I find to do that is to bring my own interests into the classrooms. Like you said, I've brought D&D in. I also really love art history, and I think it's a lot of fun to talk about the different compositions. Often when we'll look at different artists, I'll talk about the Statue of David, it is one of my favorite ones to talk about because it's not proportional. His hands are longer because that was David's thing, right? He used the slingshot to slay Goliath. So it's bigger and it draws emphasis. And we'll talk a little about how different artists got those things. And just like different interesting facts, I'll bring into different lessons that I find interesting and try and do fun things for the kids, like in a science PowerPoint recently, I had a spider just crawl through the screen because I was bored of notes and I thought it would be interesting.

Dylan: [04:30] Fantastic.

Patricia Berlanga: [04:31] It scared some of them, but definitely made them pay attention. And like, I've hidden an owl in a PowerPoint and it's like when you see the owl raise your hand and different things like that to just to try and get them more engaged in things. I love to do projects as well. I think it's more authentic learning because it's not just rote memorization, it's a lot more fun and drawing their own personalities and creativity into it.

Dylan: [04:54] Incredible. So a lot of the way that you relate with your students is through experiences, creating these like moments that might link to something that they are learning, and hopefully that experience and that moment blends with the thing that they're learning. Boom.

Patricia Berlanga: [05:09] Exactly.

Dylan: [05:10] You've got a new thing that you know.

Patricia Berlanga: [05:12] Exactly. And they get excited about it too, and they want to tell you about it. It's that excited energy. And when parents come to student-led conferences and things like that, they're more excited to show them their work and they can actually explain what's going on. And parents can see and play the different things that they're doing.

Dylan: [05:26] Yeah. That's incredible. Okay, so one of these amazing experiences is bringing in something that I haven't heard a lot of teachers actually do, which is an entire role playing game and experience into the classroom. I will start us off because last summer you visited our office and we actually played Dungeons and Dragons with a few other teachers. And correct me if I'm wrong, but this was the first time that you had played at a table.

Patricia Berlanga: [05:55] Yeah, as a character for sure. I had DMed once for my younger brother who wanted to do it for his birthday, but this was the first time I was playing as a character and like involving myself in the story.

Dylan: [06:07] Yeah. So just as a primer for our listeners, if you don't know what Dungeons and Dragons is or you don't know what a DM is, let's just do a quick explanation. So the DM is the Dungeon Master. I took the role of the Dungeon Master when we played with four other teachers around the table. You took the position of a player. Can you remind me what your player's name was?

Patricia Berlanga: [06:30] I was a Paladin Dragonborn whose name was Sochakiri de la Rosa.

Dylan: [06:36] Oh yeah. Incredible. And so for those of you who don't know, a Dragonborn is like a dragon looking humanoid and a paladin is like a, that's what you were? A paladin?

Patricia Berlanga: [06:47] Yeah, I was a paladin.

Dylan: [06:48] Is like a holy warrior. They go on crusades and go into battle for their religion. Okay. And so the way that D&D works at the table is the DM, in this case, it was me, presenting a story. And then as a player, you are given decisions. And can you tell us how we actually determine how those decisions work?

Patricia Berlanga: [07:12] Well, the decision is based on your character and as well as your like score for different things. So depending on what you want to do, they'll be like a role associated with that and like something that you add to it. So for example, for a paladin, I think it's wisdom.

Dylan: [07:30] Yeah. They're into wisdom. Traditional knowledge.

Patricia Berlanga: [07:34] Yeah. You would look at your score and be like, "Okay, so I'm a paladin and I want to find out this thing about my religion". And you would roll a dice and add your wisdom score. And then because that's higher, you would want to do that as opposed to trying to smash it or like figuring it out in a different way, because that's something that your character is good at.

Dylan: [07:56] Your character has strengths. We roll what's called a d20. It's a 20 sided dice and we add our strengths or our weaknesses to that roll to modify how it works. And then me as the DM would tell you if it succeeds or not. So the story is pushed along through players making decisions that either succeed or fail. It's pretty binary and it's succession or succeeding or failing, but the story can be quite intricate and woven because you have a bunch of players sitting at a table and everyone is trying to achieve either a common or an individual goal.

Patricia Berlanga: [08:33] Yeah. For sure.

Dylan: [08:34] Yeah. So lots of opportunities for storytelling, lots of opportunities for taking the perspective of someone else, or taking the perspective of your character. Right. And so this happened at our office. We played for like 3 or 4 hours.

Patricia Berlanga: [08:50] I think it was more like five hours. We stopped for lunch because we had a late lunch.

Dylan: [08:54] We did. Yes, it was fantastic. It was such a fun time. And I'm not sure if you've stayed in contact with the other teachers that were there, but you took this into your classroom and some of those other teachers are now starting projects in their classrooms, which is fantastic.

Patricia Berlanga: [09:09] For sure. One of the teachers we played with actually came to my school to teach. So we've kept in contact and I've talked to him because he's played more D&D than I have. So when I was developing this project, I would pop into his classroom and be like, "What is a good difficulty class? Or how hard should I make a roll?"

Dylan: [09:25] Got it.

Patricia Berlanga: [09:26] And he was like, "easy is like ten. Medium is like 15, really hard is like 20". And I was like, "okay", so taking that into account or I'll pop in and be like, "what do you think of this?" And he will give me his 2 cents. I'll be like, "thank you". And then I'll leave.

Dylan: [09:41] So you have a DM that moved into your school.

Patricia Berlanga: [09:44] Yeah, basically.

Dylan: [09:45] Like it was that you can just bounce ideas off of.

Patricia Berlanga: [09:47] Yeah, it's very helpful and I'll bring different things to him. So I went to the Fan Expo recently, and I was looking at the different D&D games that they have. And there's one that I have that's coming of age one. And so I bought that to play with one of my students just for fun. And so I ran it by him and I was like, "is this okay to do with the kids?" And he was like, "yeah, it seems good". So it was great.

Dylan: [10:08] That's awesome. So your school is becoming a small little role playing game experiment.

Patricia Berlanga: [10:14] Yeah. For sure.

Dylan: [10:15] Fantastic. This might not be the only chat we have about this then.

Patricia Berlanga: [10:18] Yeah.

Dylan: [10:20] Okay. So we played D&D together. We came up with these loose ideas of how we could bring this into the classroom. And later that year, I think it was like, when did this project happen?

Patricia Berlanga: [10:34] This project happened in October for Halloween. I think I actually did it on Halloween or the week of Halloween.

Dylan: [10:41] Yeah. So the beginning of the school year was basically like, "we're starting this now", and you started developing it as school started. Take me through what happened when you left and you started thinking about how this might work in a classroom with almost 30 kids in it.

Patricia Berlanga: [10:58] I had been thinking about this project for a while. And like you said, we played D&D, and after talking with everybody and seeing how they played D&D, I think some of them had D&D games in their schools.

Dylan: [11:10] Yeah, we had a couple of clubs.

Patricia Berlanga: [11:11] Yeah. I really wanted to do it in the classroom because I thought it was such a fun way to teach character as well as a different way of looking at things and doing things with the class. So when we got into school in September, right away, I was like, okay, I know I want to do this. Where can I fit this? And I figured that the simplest way for me to incorporate it was in short stories and storytelling, because a lot of D&D is this collaborative storytelling, and especially for grade sevens, where they're going to move on somewhere else understanding that decisions have consequences also really comes into play, right? And then based on what your character decides is their strengths and weakness will have a result that's either good or bad, right? And so it went through so many iterations. At first I was like, okay, we'll do the D&D and it'll just be each kid on their own. But I have 33 students. I cannot have 33 characters and incorporate them all in a D&D story where each of them has their moment to shine. That was way too big. There was no way to do that. So then I decided, okay, we're going to do them in groups. How do we make those characters work in those groups? How do I do the groups? Am I going to have an interactive D&D story where like, they're all building puzzles? And if you're playing a character who has low intelligence, you won't get a picture, or if you're playing someone who's high intelligence, you'll get like the picture and like maybe a first corner piece or something like that.

Patricia Berlanga: [12:40] And so we looked at different practical elements that got so big and it was way too complicated to do. And so we're like, okay, that doesn't work. So let's go back and look through the resources that I already had for short stories, and I saw this character page that I had bought from TPT. That's like a big character poster that talks about the wants, vices, strengths and all of that for each character in a novel. So I looked at that and I was like, okay, I can modify this to make it for specific characters. And so that was what I chose to do with the characters. And then along with that, we talked about, okay, so do we give them the choice of class? Do we give them the choice of race? Because all of those are decisions that you get to make in D&D. It's like, okay, yeah, if we do that, then it's going to get too wide. So okay, let's not do that. Let's stick with archetypes, okay? How can we do this with archetypes? And because we were thinking October, okay, Halloween, what's a good Halloween theme for seventh graders? And then we thought Scooby Doo was great. So then I watched a lot of Scooby Doo.

Dylan: [13:49] Before we get into Scooby Doo, can I stop you there? Okay, so I just want to make sure I'm following you. So just so everyone knows, the rulebook for D&D is like 350 pages. There are a lot of rules. And then there's a separate book for players, which is another like 300 pages. So the attempt of bringing in true Dungeons and Dragons was maybe not the right direction to go.

Patricia Berlanga: [14:17] Yeah, it was too big. And there are resources out there online. I think Wizards of the Coast has some school resources that I took a look at and I thought about doing. But with the short amount of time that I think we had to get it done because in the midst of this, we were also doing FSAs. So that kind of gets in the way of everything. And I did want to do it first term because it's a good way to get them excited about characters and understanding those. And then I would go into my novel, in which we talked a lot about characters and the decisions that they made and how they relate to each other. So I really did want to do it in the beginning half of the year and taking all that into account, and also, kids aren't going to read 300 pages of a manual and try to make it.

Dylan: [15:02] We need rules that are quick and easy to understand and impactful.

Patricia Berlanga: [15:08] Yes, exactly. And I think focusing on just like the one aspect of D&D of character creation and then from there, just character choice, I think were the two big ones because there's so much more that you could do with them creating a world, setting, them running their own games as Dungeon Masters and all of that. I think that that resource really went through for Wizards of the coast, which is really great. But again, it's not exactly.

Dylan: [15:34] What you were targeting, which is that storytelling element.

Patricia Berlanga: [15:36] Yeah, exactly. It was broader. And I think in the long run, maybe I'll do it later on, but not at the moment where I'm still learning it and trying it out.

Dylan: [15:47] For sure. I think the part that is focused most of the time in D&D is this idea of world building or telling a story that exists in a world that already exists. The world of Faerun, the world of the Sword Coast, right? These are things that exist that you can tell a story inside of the way that you took it as we're going to focus on characters and the character choices. Yeah. And we're going to use dice to help us understand those choices.

Patricia Berlanga: [16:15] Yeah, exactly.

Dylan: [16:16] Okay. So we decided we're focusing on character. We're focusing on choice. We've said no to the world building of D&D. So we're not doing wizards and barbarians, Dragonborns, which is what you played, but we're instead going to focus on characters that are within a story. And you chose Scooby Doo.

Patricia Berlanga: [16:39] Yeah.

Dylan: [16:39] So tell me about Scooby Doo.

Patricia Berlanga: [16:41] Like I said, I watched a lot of Scooby Doo and really thought about the breakdown of the characters as archetypes. So looking at, okay, well, what are these characters and what do they embody? So like Fred is the leader. So what does it mean to be a leader? So with my students, I really looked at, okay, what are the qualities of a leader? Give me two qualities, right? And they were courageous and confident. Great. Those are the two main things that we're going to focus on if we create a Fred character. Daphne's character was more like a martial arts fashionista.

Dylan: [17:24] I love that.

Patricia Berlanga: [17:25] Yeah. And Velma was the nerd, for lack of a better term, like the intelligent. High intelligence. Right?

Dylan: [17:34] Smart.

Patricia Berlanga: [17:34] Yeah. And then for Scooby and Shaggy, it was really interesting because both of them are kind of the same. They're both kind of scaredy cats. But we determined, I think it was Scooby Doo that we said was the really loyal one to a fault. And then Shaggy is more of the comic relief of like, he's there, he does things, but he's good with luck. I think we said luck. And then Scooby was the one where people just felt comfortable around.

Dylan: [18:03] Scooby was like the glue.

Patricia Berlanga: [18:04] Yeah, the loyal,

Dylan: [18:06] Social.

Patricia Berlanga: [18:07] Yeah, the charismatic one, I would say. Okay, so we had those five archetypes laid out. And so I had the kids come up with the archetype, tell me two things that each of them embodied their characters. And then I think we had four kids per character, and I think I ended up with eight characters. Okay. And so what I did is I had them write the type of character with those two things, and then we put them all in a hat. And then as a group, they drew one. And then that's the character they had to create. So together they created a character and they told me, based on those characteristics of that archetype, what was one strength and what was a weakness that they had? So what would they be good at and what wouldn't they be good?

Dylan: [18:52] So this was the way that they were creating the stats of their character.

Patricia Berlanga: [18:57] Yes. Basically. I didn't call it stats and we only really had what you're good at and what you're bad at. And when you were good at something, you had an advantage. So you rolled two d20s, right? And when you were bad at it, you rolled two, but took the one that was lower, right?

Dylan: [19:14] Yeah. So advantages take the higher role of two, disadvantages take the lower of two rolls.

Patricia Berlanga: [19:20] Yeah, exactly.

Dylan: [19:21] Okay, cool.

Patricia Berlanga: [19:22] And so had them really think about that. And they had fun in creating their characters because it was also like a big poster board that was taped together. So they could each take a section and really draw it out and decide like there were some groups. I tried to keep them all girls and all boys in groups, but some of them, just the way the classes worked out, were both boys and girls in a group. And so then there were some arguments like, I want us to play a boy character. I want us to play a girl character. So I had them roll dice and I was like, who wants even who wants odd. And I think the boys ended up winning. And then they created a male character and so forth. But it was really fun to see them come up. Some of them took it so seriously and had a very thought out character that made sense. Some of them were like a tutu and rainbows and were wearing flip flops and had like a 67 shirt or whatever, just like silly things.

Dylan: [20:24] So this was them. This was them attempting to collaborate on this.

Patricia Berlanga: [20:28] Yeah.

Dylan: [20:29] Which the character creation is part of this. Like, let's take the perspective of the character and figure out who this person is. So the decisions, even if they make something that's kooky and weird, they're now going to inform the later decisions based on this character that they've created.

Patricia Berlanga: [20:46] Yeah, exactly. And like those archetypes, right? The kookier ones I believe were the Scooby and Shaggy characters.

Dylan: [20:52] Okay. So they leaned into it.

Patricia Berlanga: [20:53] Yeah. Which made sense. And the ones that were more put together were the Fred and the Daphne character. So it was really interesting to see them collaborate and think about the different things of the strengths, weaknesses and so forth and just do a little bit, not a whole lot, but some fleshed out characteristics of them.

Dylan: [21:14] This is really cool. Okay, so I just wanted to call out the Scooby Doo choice too, because within the goal that you had set out, which was to like to do some sort of role playing activity with the entire class, the Scooby Doo sort of story archetype kind of lends itself really nicely to this because the arc is always like, there's a mystery that we need to solve. Here's the bad guy. Here's maybe the good people. We don't know who's who. Let's try and figure this out. And then the big reveal.

Patricia Berlanga: [21:44] At the end.

Dylan: [21:45] The climax at the end. So it fits nicely into what you were trying to do.

Patricia Berlanga: [21:49] Yes. And I liked the idea of the mystery. They always have a red herring in the story, right? Where it's like someone you think it is, but it's not actually them. And then it always turns out to be just like some person who has some plight against somebody else. It's not like a real monster. It's just like someone in a costume, which I felt was very appropriate for the age group that I have where it's like there's still choices in like some funny, weird things that you can get up to, but at the end of the day, it's still someone who has a legitimate reason or to be upset. The actions that they took are an interesting choice, but they still have a reason for why they're doing these things.

Dylan: [22:28] Right. And it's always someone, it's never actually a ghost. It's never actually a zombie or something like that. It's always just the mask reveal, right?

Patricia Berlanga: [22:38] Yeah, exactly.

Dylan: [22:39] My brother!

Patricia Berlanga: [22:40] It's a fun trope that there is. And I felt like Scooby Doo, because they had a new series coming out. I felt very much like it could connect with them as well as me. I loved growing up in the 90s. Scooby Doo, that song. I think it was Simple Plan who did the theme song. It was so great. And I just remember it so vividly from being a kid. And because of the new series, I'm like, oh, there's that connection, right? Mind you, a lot of them were like, okay.

Dylan: [23:08] Well, at least you've presented with something that's not from 50 years ago.

Patricia Berlanga: [23:14] And we ended up after we played our D&D game watching an episode of Scooby Doo, not the one that I wanted to do, but the new series. And then some of them actually went home and binge watched the whole series and then came back and were like, I'm into Scooby Doo now. And I was like, great, I love that.

Dylan: [23:29] That's awesome.

Patricia Berlanga: [23:30] Glad I can bring some joy back into the Scooby Doo fandom.

Dylan: [23:33] We've got the characters. They are dressed in ways that are maybe appropriate to the archetypes that they've created. And now we're talking about creating the story for them to play in. And I think you had a bit of an experience, how detailed do you want to be? How much choice are they going to have?

Patricia Berlanga: [23:52] At first I was like, okay, just like a loose Scooby Doo story that I'm just going to make up and go from there. And I very quickly got overwhelmed with the amount of choices that I had because I felt like I needed to plan for everything. So when they arrive, do they wait outside? Do they go in? Okay, if they go in, what do they hear? Versus what happens if they stay outside. And then if they stay outside, is it the choice to go around the building and look in, or is it to listen in at the door? And then what were the results of that? And then making the difficulties for each dice roll, and then remembering that there are eight characters included in it. So I very quickly got overwhelmed. I think I tried so many different versions of it, about like, okay, where could my story go? And I ended up adapting an actual episode of Scooby Doo and just looking it through and being like, okay, what were the main points of this story? So they get there. There's a fight that happens that they overhear either the whole conversation or just that tidbit. They meet another family member, they find out the lore of the place, and they meet a bus driver. I think we're like the five major beats. The big beats of the story. And so I took that and then started looking at what were the decisions that the characters actually made in this series and what they led to it. And it's like, okay. And then I would add one more decision to that so that there could be a possibility of a different route. The day of as we were playing very quickly realized that just a lot of it was like, okay, this is actually a new decision, a new route we're going on. And from there, just deciding on that.

Dylan: [25:36] What I'm hearing you say is that trying to guess the decisions is difficult.

Patricia Berlanga: [25:42] Yes.

Dylan: [25:43] Because you don't know what they're going to do. Yeah. You can't really prepare for every branch of the story.

Patricia Berlanga: [25:49] Yeah. But I also think it was really important to have choices at the beginning instead of just letting them go wild, because I find, and I'm sure a lot of teachers find sometimes when you're like, you can do whatever you want, they're like, I don't know, like, what do you want to do? I don't know, sleep. And you're like, that's not an option. So really being like, okay, so it's the first thing, do you go in or do you wait inside?

Dylan: [26:15] Right? I'm being descriptive. Like you have a couple of choices. Here's two to get them going.

Patricia Berlanga: [26:21] At the beginning of telling them, okay, if you decide to stay outside, you may be able to overhear this conversation. If you decide to go in, you won't hear all of the conversation, but maybe people will be more willing to tell you things because they will see you and be like, okay, this person has introduced themselves and then you start off on a good foot. And then again, the roles associated with that, like if you pass or fail. I think I had them, are you going to listen in, you hear voices? Do you wait outside and listen to this conversation? Or do you walk in? And the failure of listening outside is that you stumble in and you burst through. And like the failure of walking in, I think I had the same failure for both, like messing up on listening to the conversation and bursting in. It's like you tumble in awkwardly for both of them.

Dylan: [27:10] Very Scooby Doo-esque. Yeah, exactly. Like we're pushing against the door and the door collapses.

Patricia Berlanga: [27:14] Yeah. And I think even before that though, I think to just introduce them to the idea of dice rolling, I was like, you're driving in a car, you hear thunder. You roll an athletics check. And then, you hit a sign or you keep going was the kind of thing.

Dylan: [27:29] So you were teaching them what's going to happen later through the first scene of the story?

Patricia Berlanga: [27:35] Yeah, exactly.

Dylan: [27:36] Okay. Really cool.

Patricia Berlanga: [27:36] And I felt it important to, to really have it set up at the beginning of, you're already a group of investigators all together. You've already decided that you're going to do this together and then I think I started them off with a letter and I had a physical letter for them to read, and I gave it to a student and she opened it and read it out loud. And it's like, you've decided to do this. Like you've still got the letter, but you've already decided to do this.

Dylan: [27:59] This is like you've learned this DM trick in front of a class of like 30 people. But the trick is you make the first couple of decisions for the group so that they're already bought in.

Patricia Berlanga: [28:12] Yeah, exactly. And they had already known I had prepped them in the sense that you are Scooby Doo.

Dylan: [28:17] Exactly.

Patricia Berlanga: [28:18] Like they knew that this was based off of Scooby Doo and like myself and Jen, who was helping me dress up as Shaggy and Scooby the day of just to really add to the overall effect.

Dylan: [28:30] That's fantastic. Okay, so we're in the world, we're making decisions. They're rolling and they're deciding what's happening. I'm assuming the class got wild during this time. How did you manage the story keeping everyone moving forward?

Patricia Berlanga: [28:48] Well, I had them at the beginning. It was a little wild, especially with decisions. What I had them do is they had to listen to what I was saying of the choices. And at first when I started, it was more wild because I had them rolling two dice, like two different students were rolling dice. And because it was just the beginning, nobody was really good or bad at driving. So I had them just take the higher of the two roles because they were both rolling and very quickly realized that was not a good idea. And I had to set the difficulty a little higher than I initially anticipated. But they very quickly caught on that if they didn't listen, they missed important information because I think early on in the story, I had them get picked up by a tour guide, and one of the decisions they had to make was like, are you going to let this man talk or are you going to ask questions? Very simple, very basic. And they were all chatting and I had them vote like each group had one vote for their character. Right. And I think at that point, some of them were really good at letting people talk. So they decided to let people talk. And some got, I think it was like a 19 or 18 rolled on the d20 and they got more information than the other groups, but other groups didn't realize that they got more of this information because they were chatting. And then later on, as the story progressed, these other two groups who had gotten more information were like, oh, yeah, because of this. And the rest of them were like, what do you mean? When did we get that information? They were like, when we were in the tour van.

Dylan: [30:26] Got it. And so those two like I guess characters at those tables, you had them like writing down stuff too. They were taking notes and listening and writing down what they were hearing.

Patricia Berlanga: [30:39] Yeah. I made them a little worksheet that said investigators at the top. So it said character names that you meet, their role, and possible motive. And I think I had enough for every character and maybe like a little extra space in case I made up one on the fly. And so I was having them write things down. And again, at the beginning, some of them weren't writing anything down because they're like, who cares? Like we'll just figure it out. And then as it progressed.

Dylan: [31:06] More info comes.

Patricia Berlanga: [31:07] Yeah. And they started to put together, oh, this is an actual mystery we need to solve. So I need to start making connections between people and going through it. So then they started using them more frequently. Some of them relied on just one note taker in the group, which is fine. And I think moving forward, I might have that be a designated role for them. It was just fun to see them starting to put pieces together.

Dylan: [31:32] Yeah. Okay. So in each one of these groups, the cool thing is that there's like two levels to this happening. There's the character interaction between the groups of students in each group. You have this conversation where they're trying to make decisions that match what their character's motives are or archetype is. So what did you hear from them in those small groups that related to this like decision making that they were doing?

Patricia Berlanga: [31:59] So a lot of them at the beginning were just making whatever choices they wanted, and they were arguing a little bit. And then towards the end, I actually saw them referring a lot more to their character sheet and being like, "No, hey guys, like we said, we're good at this. Like looking at our sheet. This is what we're good at. So we should do this because then we'll get this". And so there was a lot more thoughtful reflection, especially to some of my students who aren't normally very invested in my class. The ones that are more like to pace around my classroom were a lot more focused, and they were the ones who were like that motion of going back and forth and like reading the things on their character sheets was really important to them. They were like, no, guys, we can't do this because of this, this and this reason. So I saw them reasoning a lot more and trying to think of creative ways to do things. So I had them set a trap at the end and asked them, I think this was the most freedom I gave them, like, what do you contribute to this trap?

[00:32:51] And so like some of them really consulted their sheet and being like, okay, so we're the Velma character. We're very smart. We're going to figure out the plans for this place and draw out a layout for it. And that makes sense with your character. And they reference their sheet. Great, you're going to roll for this and you have advantage. So two of you roll and you're going to take the higher one. And then there were some groups that were like, okay, this would be good for the trap, but didn't take their character into effect. I think one of them wanted to get like a ghost device or something. Like I don't remember exactly what it was. It was like a device. And they were like, I want to say the Shaggy character. And I was like, okay, you're not good at that, but are you sure that's what you want to do? Yes. And they rolled and took the lower and it was like, it may work, you don't know.

Dylan: [33:42] But the beauty of that is like you've leaned in. Shaggy made a bad decision. Shaggy tried to discover something that he's not good at discovering. And what's the comic relief that comes out of it?

Patricia Berlanga: [33:53] Exactly. And I think another group that was a Scooby Doo group wanted to do a fun dance to distract the ghost. And they failed miserably. I think they rolled one and I was like, I don't know what you're doing. Everybody else is setting up a trap and you're dancing in a corner. And like, it was those funny moments that they had that really.

Dylan: [34:12] That's like the beauty of the role, right, is that you get an outcome that's not what you want, but it doesn't mean that it's a bad outcome. You just have to sort of play into the outcome. Dancing in the corner. That's awesome.

Patricia Berlanga: [34:25] Yeah, exactly. And I think it ended up being that for this particular one, there were two bad guys, right. And so one got away and they caught another one. And so that dancing was like you alerted the other person that you were there and they ran off because you were dancing in a corner and they were like, there's people here, right?

Dylan: [34:46] Well, let's talk about the climax at the end. So they've gone through the story, they've made some decisions. You've sort of been there to play the bumper to get them back onto the story with all of their decisions. I remember hearing a story about one of the characters wanting to punch someone, and there was a bit of controversy or they decided it was a bad idea. What happened there?

Patricia Berlanga: [35:08] So I think it was too before they set the trap, they were still learning the lore of the right area. And fully I had set it up as like, this was the red herring of like the person who was going to be the one that they didn't know if they were good or bad. And they were in this Airbnb or this B&B. I don't remember exactly what it was. And there was like a thundering noise that came afterwards. And so this was, okay, what do you do? What does your character do? There's someone walking towards you. You're hearing a thundering noise. What do you do? And a lot of them were like, run and hide, right as the Shaggy and Scooby characters. And I think that one was I think it was the Daphne character that was like, no, I want to fight this person. And because this was an individual choice, this wasn't a group effort. Everybody rolled their own things. It's like, hey, you've successfully hidden, you've taken a step back. And then this group rolled and they rolled a natural 20.

Dylan: [36:03] A critical success.

Patricia Berlanga: [36:03] Yeah.

Dylan: [36:04] Do what you want to do exactly the way you wanted to do.

Patricia Berlanga: [36:07] And so at that moment, I explained to them, okay, we haven't encountered this before. It's a natural 20. It means it's a critical success. So in this moment, just this moment, I'm going to let you pick what you do to this person that is coming towards you.

Dylan: [36:20] You're inviting chaos now.

Patricia Berlanga: [36:21] Yeah. And so they had a short discussion in their group of like, okay, well, this person's scary. Like we have to fight them, so we're gonna punch them in the face. It's like, okay, are you sure you want to do this? Yeah, we want to punch them in the face. And I was like, okay, they're thundering towards you. And you turn and you punch them square across the face. And then the non-player character. The NPC started yelling back at them, and then they got into this little altercation and found out that this person was actually the brother of the owner of this location. And the owner came in and calmed it down, but then kicked them out. So they lost a lot of other information that they could have gotten from there.

Dylan: [37:04] Right. So it's a critical success in what you wanted to do, but your actions still had consequences.

Patricia Berlanga: [37:10] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they were talking about it afterwards and they were like, well, we learned as much as we could have. And I was like, oh no, there was so much more that you could have found out. Like, that character was a red herring and you would have found out that they're selling their family's things to get more money for this location. And you could have followed them out into the graveyard and seen all these other things, and they're like, "oh, I didn't know that was going to happen". I was like, "you didn't get the chance to because you punched someone in the face". And a real world consequence of that is you get kicked out. Like they're not going to be like, "yeah, stay for dinner, punch some more people". Like they're going to kick you out of this location. And so really having that application of like, yeah, sure, you did what you wanted to, but the bigger consequence was that you didn't learn as much information as you could have from this location and had to go somewhere else. It's like an option you hadn't explored before was now your only option because that's what happens.

Dylan: [38:05] Mhm. Yeah. It's such a perfect encapsulation of what happens in D&D too. You can sometimes make a decision that you succeed on, but it's not great for the rest of the party or the rest of the story or you lose access to a part of the world that you're trying to learn about. So yeah, I think that's a fantastic, like little example of how this way of storytelling has... Can you tell what I am trying to say here? It can react to the students' choices. Like you had stuff written, but you didn't give it to them because they made a choice as to not not go that way.

Patricia Berlanga: [38:48] Yeah. And I think that was the big point where I was like, oh, a lot of the information that I wrote down to make it doesn't apply now because I have to have a consequence for them punching someone in the face.

Dylan: [38:57] Of course.

Patricia Berlanga: [38:58] Like I can't just let them keep going.

Dylan: [38:59] Yeah. So then I guess] the skill of the DM on your side is like, I still need to give them this information, but maybe I need to give it to them through a different character.

Patricia Berlanga: [39:08] Yeah. And instead of them learning that stuff about the brother, then they went to another character who was also under suspicion because he wanted to buy, I think. He had a nearby theme park and wanted to expand and go in and talk to him and realize, oh, hey, people aren't actually staying here. And he's also in financial trouble. So instead of learning that bit about the brother, then they learned that about the amusement park person and like figured out, okay, so they're also not benefiting from the situation either. So different information was relayed and it was again.

Dylan: [39:39] Like from your perspective, you need to give them parts of the story to move it forward, but from their perspective, they feel the consequence of the action. They feel the mystery needs to go in a different direction. They feel the need to explore somewhere else. So the reaction on their side, you've created this emotion in them, which is fantastic. Like, I know stories can do that with just reading a book. But for them to impact the story and make changes like that and then have to face the consequences is such a cool experience. Did you hear anything from your students about that feeling or having to react in a way that maybe wasn't what they expected?

Patricia Berlanga: [40:34] I think they really liked the opportunity to be able to punch someone hypothetically. And they were very excited again about that. And again, like I said when we were talking about it later and telling them that there were other options, being surprised that they had missed out on something and not really realizing there was actually more we could have done in this location. And they were like, well, it kind of sucked to all of a sudden be forced on this other route because they had exhausted all the things in the place because they had done this action. So it was interesting to see them processing not in the moment, but afterwards, like, oh.

Dylan: [41:13] Reflecting on it. What was that reflection process like? So you've gone through this whole story with them. Yeah. How long did that take? Like how long was telling the actual story?

Patricia Berlanga: [41:23] We did it all in a day.

Dylan: [41:25] Okay, so maybe a couple of hours to get through the whole thing?

Patricia Berlanga: [41:29] Yeah. I want to say we started at like 9:00, of the setup and everything. I had the classroom already set up prior to them coming in. So on my board, I had a picture of the manor or B&B or whatever I had called it, of just a Google Images picture with a little graveyard in the front. I had rain playing in the background to really just get them set up. And I had a bunch of sound effects queued up on my computer like a door opening or thunder or whatever it was. So really having that ready for them first thing in the morning and then still coming in and doing our morning routine. Good morning, sit down, praying and all of that stuff. But yeah, I think it took all day. I had, I think in my mind, I was like, we're only going to go till lunch and then they're going to have religion and another class I think they had. And I was like, and we're going to be done. It'll be great. And then we'll review it in the afternoon. No, we had to pause during religion and they were bummed about pausing, which I was like, great. I love that.

Dylan: [42:34] From your perspective, you're like, okay, we've got more to do after this. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So it took like a whole day.

Patricia Berlanga: [42:41] Yeah, an entire day.

Dylan: [42:42] And then you did like a reflection class after where you had them think about things like the decisions they made, the character, how they worked in groups. What were some of the things that surprised you, from your students? What were some of the things that your students surprised you with?

Patricia Berlanga: [42:57] One of them really wanted to do another game, which I was very excited about and I think they had good reflections on their group work talking about like, "oh, at the beginning, we didn't really work as a team or really reference our character. We just kind of all did whatever we wanted. And then afterwards, we started looking more at what our character would do and talking more about it and having those more thoughtful discussions", almost like they wanted to give reasons as to why they were doing things and like reflecting on decisions that they made. So some of them were like, I thought it was really cool that we punched this person. I would have maybe not built a ghostbusting device and tried something different. I thought it was really funny that we danced and scared this person away. So there was a reflection on the actions. I think that was really good and meaningful.

Dylan: [43:50] Within the groups, I remember reading some of the reflections and some of the students had said things like, "I thought we should have done this, but my group said we should have done that. And we had to come to some sort of consensus" Was that surprising? Did you expect to hear that kind of thing?

Patricia Berlanga: [44:04] Yeah, I did expect to hear that kind of thing because I knew that they're not all the same. They don't all have the same thinking. So I knew some of the groups. I was like, there's one person in this group who has a stronger opinion or stronger voice than some of the other ones, and I was interested to see how that would play out. And I knew that there would be some discussion or arguments within them, but it seemed like they solved them on their own. I think I really only had to step in once and talk to them, but I also encouraged them to like, if you have a disagreement, vote on it in your group.

Dylan: [44:40] It's part of.

Patricia Berlanga: [44:40] Yeah. And if it's an even vote, then like leave it up to chance.

Dylan: [44:44] Like you've got dice.

Patricia Berlanga: [44:45] Roll a dice.

Dylan: [44:45] That's really cool. I think at some point we had talked about them creating their own games after this or doing something where they step into the DM role and create a branching story. After this class ended, what were your takeaways to bring this into the next project? Maybe even with this class this year?

Patricia Berlanga: [45:08] Yeah. So right after we finished this, because it was part of our short stories unit, I had them create their own characters, and then they wrote a short story with two different endings based on a major character choice.

Dylan: [45:21] Very cool.

Patricia Berlanga: [45:22] And so that was really interesting to see because they really did it all in parts, right? So they built their character first, then they decided on a setting and a conflict. Then we talked about mood and so forth with all of that. So that was really fun to see. I think moving forward from this, I would love to play more of these games throughout the year, incorporating them into different things that we're doing. So like we've just finished doing a novel. So not this year, but it would be fun to do another game based on the novel that we just read, and maybe not that exact plot, but it's those characters in like a day of the novel or things like that. I also really love the idea of using it for social studies, which I've tried to do, but I can't exactly figure out the kinks to that one. And I think my goal would be to do some type of D&D game based on early civilizations. And you're like picking a particular civilization and running a game based on it. But again, I haven't figured out the logistics of that just yet.

Dylan: [46:26] Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, the way that you can build stories in D&D does feel limitless, so you can kind of bring in content from any sort of world. The ancient civilization one is interesting because it's a great way to just put somebody in a world and get them to make decisions based on the things that are happening around them. And those ancient civilization worlds are quite different from today. There's different decisions that need to be made, but the characters that you play are all still human and they all still have basic needs and desires to do things. It's an interesting angle. I know one of my coworkers, Carlo, is working with another teacher on doing something like this within the fur trade. I think this is grade five. Grade four. So they're doing some of that decision making specifically around like, what would you pack if you're going to go trek across Canada. What can you put in your backpack? And you have a limit. And so you're gamifying or making decisions based on these decisions that need to be made in this world that you're unfamiliar with that you're learning about. Awesome takeaways. You had mentioned that you wanted to run this in your storytelling curriculum at the beginning of the school year. How would you do this again next year? What would you change? This specific project?

Patricia Berlanga: [47:51] I think for this specific project, I think the character creation and the way that I run the game would change. I liked it as being part of a short story unit, because you can really talk about setting and all of those things within the storytelling, and it might be a little bit more of a collaborative process of like, okay, this is setting, this is how we create setting and look at it in a short story. Okay, we're going to create a setting as a class. What will that look like? And doing a little bit more collaboratively. And I think also having them have their characters on their desks, because this year I had them up on the wall, which had them running back and forth quite a bit. And I think being more clear on strengths and weaknesses, I think that would be a big thing to do. And just having them reference that a lot more and how that looks like. I also wouldn't give them as many dice as I did.

Dylan: [48:45] Right.

Patricia Berlanga: [48:46] I think they only needed a d20 and I gave them a d20, a d10, a d12 a d- I gave them all the dice. And so it was just like a lot of little noises on the table that at one point I was like, it's driving me crazy.

Dylan: [49:01] Oh, it's definitely a thing. I know at one of the schools that I support during their D&D club, they do it in the library, and we've gotten to the point where we're just putting felt on the table, making it a soft surface because the dice noises won't stop. They're always going to be there, but at least we can muffle them on a soft surface.

Patricia Berlanga: [49:22] Yeah. And I might even do an art project of creating a like dice tray all together as like something else that incorporates it because I love the idea of cross-curricular things and doing things that go to multiple different subjects, right? And like my dream would be to theme my different things around one thing. So like building is like my term one, it's building storytellers, building short stories, the beginnings of civilizations, of building your ideas and your careers for career education and so forth. So I like the idea of having themes for units. I haven't been able to accomplish it yet. I have little bits and pieces, but that idea of building is like the first thing. And then you do all these things that fall under that. And then the next one is, I don't know.

Dylan: [50:11] We'll get there. Sounds like a work in progress.

Patricia Berlanga: [50:13] Yeah, yeah.

Dylan: [50:14] That's really cool. Okay, so this project seems to be something that I would say was a success.

Patricia Berlanga: [50:20] I think so.

Dylan: [50:20] Yeah. What advice do you have for other teachers that might want to try something like this? Like if you were going to another grade seven teacher who was like, I want to run this exactly the way that you did, what are some things that you would tell them?

Patricia Berlanga: [50:33] Oh, that's a great question. I would probably say you don't have to start from scratch. Find something that you enjoy. Like any story that you like that you could-

Dylan: [50:46] Find your Scooby doo.

Patricia Berlanga: [50:47] Yeah. Find your Scooby doo. Exactly. And just something that you enjoy first, and then bring that into the classroom. I would talk about it with the students. Let them know the ideas behind it, because a lot of them will be new to the idea of D&D and just be very open about what it is, why you're doing it, and give them examples of things that you've done or that you've seen other people do. Yeah. And just have fun, I think the thing I say is the big thing.

Dylan: [51:18] Yeah, yeah. And I would say play D&D at least once.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:22] Yeah. Or watch something that has D&D.

Dylan: [51:25] Do you have any recommendations for games that you watch? I know you said you watched or listened to D&D before you played it.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:31] Yes.

Dylan: [51:31] What did you listen to first?

Patricia Berlanga: [51:33] I listened to a lot of Critical Role.

Dylan: [51:35] Classic.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:36] Yeah. The campaign two specifically, I think I listened to. I watched some dropout ones.

Dylan: [51:43] Dimension 20.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:44] Yeah. The dimension 20 ones. I think the one where they were all like little ferrets. I don't remember what it was called, honestly.

Dylan: [51:51] There's so many of those.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:52] There's so many. But I think the DM was a breeze. So it wasn't even like their main.

Dylan: [51:58] Dungeon Masters.

Patricia Berlanga: [51:59] Great. Yeah.

Dylan: [51:59] She's really fun.

Patricia Berlanga: [52:00] Yeah. And just see a lot of the different styles there are. I think I watched a lot of one shots of just random ones on YouTube because I love storytelling. And I find the idea of moving and being in your body a lot more interesting.

Dylan: [52:20] I think, before we started recording, you had mentioned that coming in confident and just like being in front of the class and just embracing the character really helps get some buy-in.

Patricia Berlanga: [52:31] Oh yeah.

Dylan: [52:31] For sure. So there is an element of like performance.

Patricia Berlanga: [52:33] Oh yeah, 100%.

Dylan: [52:35] Teaching has that element in it. This is just like a very distilled sort of directed performance.

Patricia Berlanga: [52:40] Yeah. And like really playing up those like non-player characters is like something different. And even just like the embodiment of them. I did an accent for one of them. No other character had that accent, not even her brother, but she had an accent. And I thought that was fun. And even your own physicality, right? Like getting into the mindset of those characters. Like the owner was very flouncy and very like, maybe more like performative. Whereas someone like the owner of the arcade was more like the southern gentleman that was very like, I hate people, but I need to make money kind of situation. So having like 1 or 2 quirks in mind for those characters, I think is a lot of fun and just like dressing up as the character, not Scooby Doo was the story, but there was no, we didn't play Scooby Doo, I wasn't Scooby Doo. I was.

Dylan: [53:36] Inspired.

Patricia Berlanga: [53:36] I was inspired by.

Dylan: [53:38] It was an homage.

Patricia Berlanga: [53:39] And it was also really funny because it took them a second to realize that I was dressed as Scooby Doo, and Jen was Shaggy. I was fully in like an all brown outfit. And I had two little Scooby ears. And then I had the collar that had the SD in the center. And like, I could understand if I was like Shaggy or something else, but I wore ears and it took them like maybe till lunch to be like, oh my gosh, you're Scooby Doo. And I was like, yup. I am interested to know what my teacher persona is like, if I wore ears, they'd be like, yeah, that's fine. Miss Berlanga does that all the time.

Dylan: [54:15] Well, this is fantastic. I mean, it feels like the way that you bring up your interests into the classroom, like obviously your students are not surprised by it because you show up dressed as a dog and they're like, yep, that's not unnatural for this classroom. It's fantastic.

Patricia Berlanga: [54:32] I've often said that really, aside from the theming in my classroom, it's to just really make my whole curriculum a game and have different ways that I can incorporate fun things into the projects in my classroom. So I'm really looking for that vibe, I think of my class as being like, you can be yourself and be silly, but still be here to learn.

Dylan: [54:52] That's incredible. Well, I think this has been an amazing conversation about this project, and I'm really excited to hear what you do with it next year. I'm sure we're going to get all the versions of this going forward.

Patricia Berlanga: [55:05] Oh, yes.

Dylan: [55:06] Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing this project with us. Would you be open to sharing some of your resources with people who listen to this podcast?

Patricia Berlanga: [55:17] Oh of course.

Dylan: [55:17] Fantastic. Okay. Well, we'll make sure that some of those things are available to our listeners. Patricia, this has been great. Thank you for joining us and I hope you all the critical successes moving forward.

Patricia Berlanga: [55:30] Thank you so much.

Dylan: [55:32] Are you interested in running a class like Patricia? Then you should join me this summer at the Deeper Learning Canada Conference on July 2nd, third and fourth in Chilliwack, B.C., where I'll be hosting a deep dive on role playing games as storytelling. In my deep dive, I invite you to experience what happens when stories are co-created with learners rather than delivered to them. You'll engage in hands-on tabletop role playing games as a form of collaborative storytelling. Through playful, low barrier role playing experiences, you'll step into the role of the learner making decisions, negotiating meaning, inhabiting perspectives, and collectively shaping a narrative in real time. Check out the show notes to get your tickets. You can also find links to the articles we wrote about Patricia's project in our newsletter, The Classroom Chronicles, where you'll also find over 100 stories about the creative projects we've helped make a reality in classrooms just like yours. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite Podcatcher. See you next time.