The Advance Team's Courtney Handte

“Sometimes, after they play the game, I tell them ‘you just did fractions and you didn’t think you could do fractions.’ My students are doing math without even realizing it.”

So says special-education teacher and Advance Team member, Courtney Handte. Courtney and her co-teacher have begun to use Lure of the Labyrinth in their 8th grade inclusion math class at the Colonel Richardson Middle School in Federalsburg, MD. And so far, according to Courtney, the results have been excellent. “Some of the special-ed kids learn differently,” she says, “but the game makes the math concepts accessible for all of the students.”

Courtney was not a gamer prior to starting her work with the Advance Team, but she was “interested in the idea of using games to engage kids in the classroom.” As she learned more about Lure of the Labyrinth, though, she did have a concern about using it with her students: the game doesn’t provide instructions and instead asks players to figure out its game play - the rules and goals - and its math on their own. (And that process of discovery is, in fact, part of the learning the game’s designers hope students will experience while playing Lure of the Labyrinth.) “My first thought,” says Courtney, “was that my students would be frustrated with the ‘discovery’ part of the game.” Happily, though, she explains now that “they’ve actually been great with it.” And while they don’t generally tell her that they like playing Lure of the Labyrinth (“that wouldn’t be cool,” Courtney says), she has heard her students having more and more conversations in which they actually use math vocabulary. And Courtney attributes that to their game play – “when they use the math vocabulary, that lets me know that they’re really into it.”

Up until now, Courtney has only used Lure of the Labyrinth’s first three puzzles, but it’s anticipated that more puzzles will be available in the fall when her students start the new school year. And Courtney believes that will make the game an even more powerful teaching tool. “I think it will be ideal when the game covers more of our curriculum,” she says. “The kids will be able to have the whole experience of the game, and we can really make the game a part of our classroom. I’m looking forward to having our kids involved with the game from the very beginning of the year.”

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