Over the years I’ve sat in my fair share of fictional classrooms, mainly in Persona 5, where you answer pop-quiz type questions and avoid projectiles between stints moonlighting as a masked vigilante. But have we ever seen life from the other side of the desk? I propose that someone should make a game about the day-to-day school life of a teacher, trying to manage their time and energy to better their students, which would shine a great light into pedagogy (there’s your word of the day).
When it comes to teaching, things like union strikes over pay and lengthy holiday time relative to other jobs may come to mind, but being a school teacher is about so much more than that. As a school teacher you are interacting with so many different people, not just pupils, and it’s crucial that you form strong bonds with these people to thrive in the role.
Imagine the social management aspects of Persona 5 on a colossal scale. There are faculty staff, departmental heads, heads of year groups and overall heads of the school. And that’s just internally. Liaise with someone to deliver a talk to your students, negotiate prices and arrange logistics for a field trip, try to acquire the latest textbooks and teaching materials – it’s a vocation that sees you dealing with so many people every day. Of course there are only a certain number of hours in a school day, and a game could see you choose which bonds you’d best like to focus on, perhaps with a real-time aspect, so you could truly feel each second ticking by.
