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TEACHING WITH REACTING TO THE PAST—BRINGING ROLE-IMMERSION PLAY INTO THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM

Like many, I was vaguely aware of Reacting to the Past (RTTP) long before I tried it for myself, not least because a colleague in my department has taught a version of the French Revolution game. After attending an RTTP Regional Conference at Duke University in January 2013, I taught a first-year seminar using the Reacting pedagogy, something I repeated in Fall 2014 and will repeat for a third time in Fall 2015. In spring 2015, I also taught a Reacting class designed for history majors and minors. I have used “Frederick Douglass, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Constitution: 1845” and “Kentucky, 1861: Loyalty, State & Nation” twice each, and “Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775–1776” and “Red Clay, 1835: Cherokee Removal and the Meaning of Sovereignty” once each. When I teach with Reacting games, I devote the entire class to them, two games per semester, rather than integrate full or partial games into more traditional courses. Reacting is a true community of teacher-scholars, generous with their time and spirit. In addition to conferences, that community manifests through the Facebook “Reacting to the Past—Faculty Lounge.”1 If you have trepidations about entering the Reacting-verse, know that many people will be there alongside you. That generosity is also found in e-mail exchanges with game designers. Only one of the four games mentioned above —“Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City”—is published in book form, a “Level 5” game in RTTP parlance. The others are available for download from the RTTP Game Library.2 “Kentucky, 1861” and “Red Clay, 1835” are “Level 4 Games,” which means they have been peer reviewed by the Reacting Editorial Board. “Frederick Douglass: 1845” is a “Level 3” Game,” which means it has been playtested at conferences and reviewed by members of the Reacting Consortium Board. “Level 1” and “Level 2” games are in beta mode and are not always ready for full classroom play. This is open-source education, in the best sense of that term. Do not think that RTTP classes teach themselves or that they are somehow less work than a traditional class. They are not, at least not in my experience. The work is distributed very differently though, far more just-in-time and by-the-seat-of-your-pants. The games follow a similar pattern, which includes several class days of background and set-up that can involve either lecture or reading and discussion or a combination of both; several weeks of gameplay; and then at least one day of debrief in which the students, now out of character, discuss their experiences. In my most recent course for