Class 'Warcraft': Ramapo Central teacher uses role-playing video game with middle-schoolers

A sign on the door to Peggy Sheehy's classroom warns "DANGER: Ninjas, Pirates, Monsters & Zombies." Her sixth-graders at Suffern Middle School pour in and she calls them to assemble for the day's journeys. "Heroes! Heroes!"

Before long, her heroes are staring down Apple computers, entering the virtual universe known as "World of Warcraft" and controlling avatars — digital alter egos — who walk with big stomps.

Eleven-year-old Nicholas Paz moves forward with his character, Zoggeth, a night elf "mage" with green hair and pointy pink ears.

"I'm trying to get gold dust," Nicholas explains, his eyes glued to the screen. "I'm learning how to trawl places. I'm exploring cities and learning to talk to people to get the information I need. If they have a little gold bag, I can trade with them."

This is Sheehy's language. Her world. She is a national leader in opening classrooms to video gaming and, more specifically, MMORPGS — "massively multiplayer role-playing games" like "World of Warcraft."

"How many of you identity with your characters?" Sheehy asks her humanities class. "How many threw your own personality on your characters?"

With streaks of blue and pink in her hair, Sheehy could be a good sorceress in a PG movie. She pushes her heroes to unlock the mysteries of "Warcraft" and to see connections between their avatars' journeys and those of the characters of history and literature.

She is the co-creator of a curriculum that ties "World of Warcraft" to the Common Core learning standards. Her lessons mesh perfectly with a sixth-grade Common Core unit on myths and heroes.

"We study the hero's journey," Sheehy said. "It's what we do."

Rhiannon Marjano, 11, controls a character named Eponah, a hunter with a green-winged pet. She loves to "talk up a storm" in chats with other players to get the information she needs for her quests.

"In most classes, you don't have fun and learn," she said. "In this class you do both at the same time, which I love."

Sheehy has given hundreds of presentations on how she merges gaming with education, traveling across the country and around the world. She led training at the American School of Bombay in India in February and is heading to Australia in August to work with school media specialists.

It helps that Sheehy's principal, Brian Fox, is a veteran gamer himself who started off with an Atari.

"I wouldn't have done this if it was fluff," he said. "This is a well-thought-out curriculum. Peggy is working so hard to integrate the experience with the Common Core, which is not something a lot of teachers would do. I hope it catches on."

Fox and Sheehy love that gaming gives a stage to students with learning and social challenges who might otherwise not have that place in school.

"It evens the playing field a bit with more traditional students," Fox said.

Sheehy developed her approach as an after-school program in 2008 when she was working as an instructional technology/media specialist at the school. This year, she became a classroom teacher for the first time in a decade and made "World of Warcraft" part of her double-period humanities class. She is used to explaining her methods to people who expect education to be more traditional and less fun. She tells parents that the background story for "World of Warcraft," known as the "lore," is an entire canon, a world onto itself.

"It's rich, comparable to the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey,' " she said.

Theresa O'Leary has two kids in the after-school club and calls herself a convert.

"When my son first told me what he wanted to do after school, I thought, 'Video games? You're killing me. Five days a week?'" she said. "But he started coming home and talking about reading assignments, how he couldn't move to the next level until he could discuss what he had to do. I saw Peggy in action and it was a transformation."

She said her younger son joined the club when he was in third grade and behind in reading.

"He was motivated," she said. "I saw his skills grow in literacy and writing."

Doodling doesn't happen in Sheehy's class. The heroes are locked in, eager to roam. The classroom walls are yellow and purple, with stars dangling from the ceiling. A sign over Sheehy's desk advises: "Never let SCHOOL interfere with your EDUCATION."

Sheehy is always trying to link their virtual journeys to the real world. At one point, she wanted them to envision the Dark Ages.

"We're not talking billions of years ago," he said. "We're talking 476, when it officially started. We're talking about not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. People were hanging out just like us. They were not cave people."

Sheehy noted that video games make more money than any other medium.

"Since they're not going away, let's do something constructive with them," she said. "Let's give students the skills to navigate these worlds with honor, respect and empathy."

Sheehy's after-school club continues, with middle- and high-school students gathering each day as a committed "Warcraft" community.

"It makes kids more motivated," said Austin Akey, a high school junior. You have to have goals and know how to reach them."

Sheehy nurtures her heroes and both their virtual and real-world dreams. She sent out one recent tweet: "Breaking: MMO players aren't anti-social recluses!"

Twitter: garysternNY