A Quest Is the Answer

A few years ago, I met a soft-spoken, visionary, purposeful man named Kojo Obeng. Actually, I hired him as a teacher at my school. Little did I know then that he was a miracle worker. But I learned in short order. I watched as he introduced our children to a role-playing board game he developed called Mastery Quest. And I watched as even the most recalcitrant and the shyest and the least assertive among them blossomed under his tutelage. So when he posted a detailed description of this wonderful game and its objectives, I knew I had to share it (http://www.mqacademy.org/index.html):

A Quest in a Nutshell
Each child is immediately immersed into a theatrical role-play scenario, something that children do instinctually. The purpose of the role-play scenario is to immediately engage the “Questers'” attention, increasing the likelihood they will put forth maximum effort on all game levels—intellectual, socio-emotional and physical.
The scenario that the Questers role-play in includes an entire galaxy with systems of worlds that can be traveled to through space. The worlds have their own unique environments, people and cultures. In this scenario, each Quester's goal is to attain the highest Level of Power by gaining mental, social and physical points.
During the process of gaining higher Levels of Power, the Questers must decide how they will respond to the various perspectives and actions of peers and “Game Master”-controlled personalities and
interest groups. Each choice a Quester makes can shift their “Alignment” to the Light or the Shadows. Alignment then has an effect on how the game environment and characters respond to individual Questers.
In practice, Mastery Quest is a tool for the development of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1991).
• The physical landscapes provide the Visual-Spatial learner the backgrounds to visualize and plan their actions, and consider possible solutions to challenges.
• The “Abilities” and character movement motivates the development of the Kinesthetic Intelligence, as Questers must learn many exercises to successfully move about the worlds and use special “Abilities.”
• Each epic Quest includes classical and world music to assist in motivation and focus for the musically moved.
• The Interpersonal Intelligence is consistently encouraged as it becomes necessary to learn to understand others' perspectives and successfully interact with the diverse personalities of the galaxy and the “Quester Core.”
• Social-emotional Intelligence and empathy increase, as the game play consistently provides immediate feedback for each choice and action taken.
• The before-mentioned feedback lends much to the development of Intrapersonal Intelligence. Seeing what happens to a character controlled by a Quester’s choices leads to the conscious understanding of one’s own interest and goals. Reflections on the cycles that emerge from repeated actions lead to wisdom, intuition, strong will, confidence and motivation.
• Linguistic intelligence is developed naturally in Mastery Quest, as being able to understand, remember and communicate information is vital to each Quester's success. The reaction of the game world to a Quester’s ability to express this intelligence is motivating and encourages self-initiative.
• The final intelligence that is at the heart of the Quest is the Logical sense. Questers are constantly given specific Missions and open-ended objectives that require real-time reasoning and calculating. Questers' ability to see patterns and relationships increases as they are exposed to more and more challenges.