About Me
Welcome & About Me
Hello! And welcome to my page.
My name is Sam and I've been a teacher for about 22 years and I love what I do. Most of my life was spent in the UK, I'm a Londoner at heart, but I'm currently working for a British boarding school in Malaysia.
My love of D&D far predates my love of teaching however. I started DMing in the mid-80s at the age of about 10.
I already had a love of fantasy. I remember devouring the Lord of the Rings trilogy one holiday, reading it non-stop for about 48 hours straight. I first saw my brother playing D&D and I was fascinated. I saw the saving throws, didn't know what they were and imagined myself having some ability to breathe fire or poison my enemies with my touch. My Dad bought a D&D box set from a local car boot sale, and I started DMing for a group of friends from church on Sunday. I then went on to DM for a group of friends at school, and when I moved to senior school, I played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
I currently run games for both students at my school, and in the shop I now own in Johor, Malaysia.
In recent years, after a few gaps, I started to DM for my students. With my educator's hat on, I started noticing the amazing way that students were engaging with the game and eagerly learning key skills that are important both inside and outside the classroom.
As a Maths teacher, I know that I am working with such a small samples size that drawing conclusions and making general sweeping statements would be highly unfounded, but they are being confirmed by trends I am seeing and hearing about elsewhere.
What I would love is for you, my readers, to give me feedback about your experiences. I am very open to constructive criticism and discussions and people disagreeing with me with evidence or experience to back up their claims (please don't just disagree and not give a reason why, that irritates the hell out me, I love a lively debate).
It would also be foolish of me to claim to be any kind of expert on D&D and DMing. What I do know about is teenagers and education. I'm not into "buzz words" or the latest educational fad, but I do try and keep up to date with what's happening. I have become also an evangelist for the educational aspect of D&D and other roleplaying games (and as a devout Christian, that concerns me a little).
