How a Harrisburg middle school teacher is using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom

HARRISBURG − Each Friday in Kade Wells’ advanced English-Language Arts classroom at East Middle School, students turn into wizards, elves, warlocks, barbarians, bards and so much more, then travel to different worlds.

They do that through the magic of Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop fantasy role-playing and storytelling game that sees players create characters who go on adventures, escaping dungeons and battling dragons along the way.

While this may be an unconventional curriculum, it’s one Wells said has benefited his students in more ways than creativity or test scores, and one that students say excites them to participate in and learn from.

How does D&D work in the classroom?

At the start of each course, Wells has his students create and write a head-to-toe description of the character they will play as throughout the year. They also use a program called Hero Forge to make an image and miniature figure of the character.

He chooses students who exhibit all the signs of a dungeon master (DM), or someone who leads the storytelling aspect of the game, and trains them how to run the game and tell the story in a group lesson after school for the first four weeks of the semester. He said many of the DMs start off “mousy,” but “become bosses.”

Each student has a player’s handbook that teaches them all about how to play. At the start of each class, the DMs set up their tabletops with miniature figures, dice, storytelling aspects and more.

“(When) their game starts, they do it all, they communicate, they roll dice, they kill monsters, and then, when it’s time to go, they pick it all up, they put it all away,” Wells explained. “They are literally succeeding in English just by playing (D&D).”

Jack Bergan, a seventh grader and DM, said he likes making adventures and learning research skills with the game. He said he’s found D&D is good for his creativity, which he might not express in other ways.

Stratten Roush, a seventh grader in Bergen’s group, plays as a druid half-orc. He said he’s liked getting more into his character and seeing how others act.

Emily Wells (no relation to Mr. Wells), an eighth grader and DM, said she likes that she gets to see her peers become friends with people she wouldn’t have otherwise expected to become friends. Her game, “Keys of the Golden Vault,” is set in villages and small towns and sees players get items and return them to their rightful owner.

Asher Paulson, a seventh grader and DM, said he likes having the chance to control the game as a DM and found it exciting and new, and it gave him a break from school. He said it covers everything he does in English class. Wells noted being a DM and playing D&D has helped Paulson open up and talk more in class and with his peers.

‘This is my life’s work’

Wells, 44, started off playing D&D with friends when he was 10 years old.

“It gave me the ability to put my imagination on a frame and actually make it do something,” Wells said. “Instead of just concocting random, odd stories, I was able to use the system to frame my fantasies. That became a really big deal in my life. D&D became synonymous with friendship.”

He’s implemented D&D as a teacher for 10 years, first at a club level after school in his former school district in Texas. He took the data from that first year of leading the D&D club and measured those students’ test scores against their peers, and saw that “their reading growth was really exceptional.”

After that, he started to bring D&D into the classroom in Texas with a group of students with dyslexia, autism, trauma or more, and found that it helped the group of students feel included, learn to open up and work together as a team.

“What happened in that cohort was absolutely incredible,” he said. “That’s when I decided this is my life’s work.”

Now in Harrisburg, Wells uses D&D one day a week in his advanced English language arts classes. He collected data that shows students in his class scored higher on Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments than their peers in the rest of the district.

Harrisburg East Middle School Principal Micah Fesler said Wells’ passion for D&D came up in his job interview and just clicked.

“It blew my mind that no one had done it before,” Fesler said. “The level of engagement, the classroom culture, the increasing scores… it’s working.”

Fesler said he also grew up gaming and wanted his son, Lucas, who was heading into sixth grade at the time, to get into D&D in Wells’ classroom, too. Fesler said Lucas’ reading scores “grew tremendously,” and that Wells’ work is helping increase “one of the most difficult scores” in schools.

‘The best cross-curricular education tool that I’ve ever seen’

To get buy-in from uninitiated parents, administrators or students who might be a little hesitant about the game and what it is, he shows them the data he’s taken over the years that displays how students benefit from D&D and see improved test scores when it’s incorporated into their education.

He also shows them a player’s handbook and character sheet, which all use high-level words and statistics like “strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, constitution and charisma,” for example, and the math that goes into each roll of the dice.

He’s seen D&D benefit students in reading comprehension when they read their handbooks, writing skills when they write their character descriptions and storytell in-game, mathematics with puzzles in dungeons, and even social-emotional learning to bring them together and get along with each other.

He said it can be used for any school subject, as long as there’s a modality to teach it.

D&D is “the best cross-curricular education tool that I’ve ever seen,” he said.

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His work with D&D in the classroom helped inspire the curriculum made by Young Minds Inspired, a free teaching kit for teachers who want to incorporate aspects of D&D into what they teach.

He also trains teachers in a graduate-credit course every spring at the University of Sioux Falls on how to play D&D and implement it into their classrooms.

Wells has spoken about the impact of D&D in the classroom at the 2023 Games for Change conference, on Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast, and at the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival earlier this month.

Middle school, especially seventh grade, is really awkward, Wells told the audience at SXSW.

“The culture in my classroom is so incredible because of this game, and the students don’t really realize that,” he said. “They don’t realize why they’ve all of a sudden crossed the aisle to these friendships.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: How Harrisburg teacher Kade Wells uses Dungeons & Dragons in his class