FAR FROM BORED

Board game marathons excite and educate students at A-Tech

A group of Advanced Technologies Academy students plays the Apples to Apples vocabulary card game during a May 11 school board game club marathon. Six hours of play were filled with classics like Scrabble, Risk and chess and new games like Ubongo, Cluzzle and Quixo. Photo by SHELLY DONAHUE/VIEW Dennis Browning, left, and Henry Zofain try to figure out how to play Railroad Tycoon during a board game marathon at A-Tech High School. Krit Sempolkrung takes a turn at Cranium during an A-Tech High School board game marathon. Advertisement

"When you think about board games, you think about chess and checkers," said Advanced Technologies Academy math teacher Mike Patterson. But, speaking at the gaming marathon organized by the school board game club he sponsors, it was clear that there are staggeringly more options in the pastime than that.

Colorful boards strewn with game markers and cards covered the tables in the high school's noisy, crowded cafeteria. Some of them, such as Risk or Scrabble, would have been recognizable to anyone. Some of them were more mysterious, like the whimsically named Ubongo, Cluzzle and Quixo.

Patterson estimated 106 participants turned out over the course of the evening between 2 and 8 p.m. on May 11. Admission was $5, which included pizza and drinks, both of which ran out early. The head count was up from last time and up again from the first board game marathon.

The first marathon was held because there isn't enough time during the usual hour-long club period for students to play strategy games like Risk or Settlers of Catan, which can take three or four hours.

Patterson thinks the marathons have become as popular as they are partly because Advanced Technologies Academy is a magnet school program. The students are bused in from all over the school district. A social event like the board game marathon is a rare opportunity for them to see their school friends outside of class.

Two years ago, Patterson wrote two grants and received $5,000 from the Junior League and the Clark County Education Foundation to buy board games to teach geometry concepts in the classroom. His students loved the games so much they asked him to start a weekly club.

Now, some of the games in the collection, like Apples to Apples and Catchphrase, are social and interactive. Others demand strong spatial reasoning skills. Blokus is one such game, with pieces similar to the shapes in the video game Tetris. Patterson said it helps students visualize the rotations and reflections of two-dimensional shapes.

Patterson is a big fan of board games himself and said he became a math teacher because board games taught him math and problem-solving strategies.

In one of his statistics classes, he had the students design their own board games. Displayed at the marathon, some of the results were impressive. The pirate-themed strategy game Conquest of the High Seas, created by students Ben Preston, Mark Snyder and Sagar Raich, looked ready for mass production. But Snyder said he and his cohorts don't know if it is ready. There could be "a giant hole deep into the game," he said.

Apart from the problem solving, the kids learn leadership in the club, as well. Veteran club members hang around the board game marathons to help new recruits get started on some of the more complex games.

The club members can attest to the intellectual challenges of the games. Abraham Ivie, 17, joined the club because he found it relaxing after school, but he said some of the games make you work.

"When you play with someone who really knows what they're doing, it can make you think," Ivie said.

The types of games available to play had expanded from the last marathon. For the first time there were computer game systems available for the students to play Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution or sports games.

"We don't want video to overtake this," Patterson said. But, he noted, it allowed players who aren't into board games to participate.

A glance around the room revealed an even mix of age, gender and backgrounds. It's something Patterson feels you wouldn't see at any other school. He was especially pleased to note there were far more girls than last time. There were only three at the start of the board game club.

Melymn Thompson, 15, is in her first year at the school. She enjoys board games and signed up as soon as she heard about the club. This was her second board game marathon.

She likes them because they attract more than just the regular club members. "You get to hang out with people who don't want to join the club because they think it's for geeks," she said, which she added is "kind of true."

But no one in the cafeteria at that point seemed to care.

The next marathon is in October and Patterson is preparing for an even larger turnout.