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Episode 26: The Laughing Academy with Mike Lawton
102 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our twenty-sixth episode, Milwaukee Public Schools teacher Mike Lawton joins Hobbes, Alex, and Joe to discuss the education systems that exist in the Magic: the Gathering Multiverse and explain how he brings Magic to his students in the form of a high school gaming club. The guys discuss social-emotional development, how to get someone interested in playing the game, and what it means for young people to have representation in the media they consume.
This episode touches on the lore topics of the Tolarian Academies, Urza Planeswalker and Barrin, as well as a bit of minor speculation on other systems of education in the Multiverse.
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We have launched our new Patreon! You can join currently at the $1 tier, which gets you access to our private Discord server where you can talk all things lore, life, and love with other gob-heads like yourself.
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Remember: we've reached 300 followers on Twitter! Keep the word of mouth going; with every 100 new followers, we will do a random prize draw for one lucky follower!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Goblin Lore is proud to be a member of the Geek Therapy Network (on Twitter at @GeekTherapy).
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by Joe Redemann.
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Transcript
Interview with Mike Lawton
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode we talked to Mike Lawton, a high school teacher in my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and somebody that I was really excited to talk to for quite a while because of his role in starting a magic club at his high school. It's an incredible program and one that's been long running now for three or four years.
Using Magic to Educate
00:00:36
Speaker
mike has done great work with his students and we get into not only how education plays into the lore of magic the gathering but also what mike does and why it's so important that kids are taught magic and taught through magic and so this is
00:00:54
Speaker
gets to, I'm gonna use my whole intro time here, to implore you to get in contact with Mike at Mike Wildspeaker on Twitter. And if you have any extra magic cards, magic supplies, any sort of things that you can help donate to his high school's club,
00:01:14
Speaker
it would be so greatly appreciated is that he can help continue to fuel this program. You know, teachers are not the wealthiest people in the world. And a lot of the startup for Mike's Club came out of his own pockets and his own collections. So please help him out any way that you can. If there's a way that we can help get supplies to Milwaukee, we will absolutely do that. So get in contact with us if that's a concern as well.
00:01:44
Speaker
But I think it's a great cause and teachers and the cause of education are very near and dear to the hearts of all the goblins on this cast. So without any further ado, let's get to the show.
00:02:04
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode is, gosh, we are into the mid-20s, and that is a scary thought. We're getting to our reckless phase of our podcast's age. Even the podcast can now drink legally. As goblins, isn't our reckless phase the moment of birth? I like that. That is a good thought.
00:02:34
Speaker
I mean, I guess it is kind of fitting then, if we're talking about recklessness, that I am just cracking this entire box while we're recording today.
00:02:47
Speaker
and uh with that in mind with with all the fun and joy around here with uh you know we're cutting up but that's because we've got somebody else you know to to keep us on the straight and narrow and help guide our our gentle developing minds and that is a special guest mike lawton
00:03:07
Speaker
Mike Lawton is a high school science teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools. Mike is coming on to talk to us, especially though, because he's been running an extracurricular Magic the Gathering and Games Club for six years now. So Mike has been involved in Magic for more than 20 years. And Mike is here to talk to us about how he runs the Magic Club. He's here to talk to us about schools in Magic Lore. And really, I mean,
00:03:37
Speaker
Let's be honest, we're here to learn and that's not a pun. So Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here. Um, so you, before we get into our, um, our typical intro question section, Mike, you did specifically bring up to us, uh, that you wanted to share your favorite piece of magic flavor text.
Magic's Influence on Science and Teaching
00:03:59
Speaker
Did you want to share that with us now? Yeah, for sure. So, uh,
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you that and then it'll kind of let you know a little bit about who I am and my favorite flavor text is the creature a horseshoe crab Common originally printed in yours a saga and it's a 1-3 crab with the active ability of paying a blue mana to untap it and the flavor text reads in the final days before the disaster all the crabs on Talaria migrated from the inlets streams and ponds back to the sea No one took note
00:04:35
Speaker
Oh, poor little crabs. No, no one paid any attention. The crabs made it. Well, yeah, but no one cared. There is no cheering squad for the crabs. Are you kidding? It also gets at what I love about science. You know, it's it marvels at things that people overlook. There's so much going on. We haven't observed yet that we can't explain and we haven't studied. There's always more. And there's a quote I love to tell at the start of my classes I teach every year. I'm a science teacher.
00:05:06
Speaker
And I asked the class, hey, do we know what aspirin does? And some students will answer with what they think it does. And the answer is generally, yeah, of course we know what aspirin does. And I laid this quote on them. That's, the National Library of Medicine has more than 23,000 scientific papers on aspirin with 880 published this year alone on the various aspects of its potential use. So in science, there's always things to learn, always things to study.
00:05:32
Speaker
And people don't necessarily realize that. They think, yeah, we know everything there is to know about aspirin. It's just a matter of learning these facts, and it's super boring. But according to science, there's infinite things to learn. We never totally know what everything does.
00:05:47
Speaker
And I would say that dovetails really well with the purpose of our show, honestly. I mean, that's kind of what we always hope to do is dig into bits of magic lore and dig into parts of our society and magic community in general and see what we can learn from each other and how
00:06:06
Speaker
we can gain more experience and more knowledge about the world. So I think this is a good fit already. I think I might switch from auditing the class to full enrollment at this point. Nice, nice. Thanks for supporting the institution. I do have to ask, Mike, do you teach general science? Are you biology? Do you have any specific focus of what you specifically teach or even are just interested in for science?
00:06:36
Speaker
Uh, I teach biology and chemistry. I'm licensed in those. Um, I haven't taught chemistry in a while. I kind of miss parts of it because it was kind of fun and explodey. And you know, that's, that's always like good stuff. You are a friend of the cast. Yeah. Experimental frenzy. That's what we're about. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, but I teach, uh, I teach a biology in, uh, as a freshman class and then at a college level.
00:07:04
Speaker
class that they can take an exam and get college credit for potentially. Well so why don't we
Fantasy Lore and Education
00:07:09
Speaker
leap right in and on brand on theme for this week's podcast. I need everyone to get out their number two pencils and you are going to be filling out this short survey. The question of the week is if you could pick one Magic the Gathering character to take a class from.
00:07:26
Speaker
Who would you choose and what would they teach? You're looking at that college registration course guide and this is the class that leaps out to you. Who's teaching it and what are they teaching? Let's start with you. I'm jumping in right away because of my eagerness and the fact that I already accidentally ate my number two pencil. I am HobbsQ and I can be found on Twitter at HobbsQ. And that's mainly because I'm starving today and I'm hungry.
00:07:54
Speaker
And you all know, I mean, we've seen my culinary exploits and enjoyment that I get from Twitter. I love to post my photos. So I'm actually taking a class by. We'll just say Asemore, which is what it's been shortened to, but this is referenced on three cards, the best of which is obviously Satay. But Asemore is the writer of the underworld cookbook.
00:08:19
Speaker
You teach us how to prepare beebles and gargoyles. And I just think that that would be the class that I would most take in magic, the world. Yeah. And magic multiverse. I always liked that flavor text on granite gargoyle.
00:08:36
Speaker
talking about, you know, you need the right tools to carve up a gargoyle. But if you do, it's a it's a delicacy, you know, there's something so decadent and indulgent about a work of art that you're going to eat. I am Alex Newman found at Twitter on Twitter at Alexander Newem. And I think the person I would teach I would pick as a teacher would be with Tamio.
00:09:04
Speaker
I've talked a little bit in the past about how her magic casting with stories was the coolest part of Return to Innistrad to me. And I love storytelling and things. And I think Tamiya would make probably the best history teacher. That would just be incredible experience. So that's my answer. Good choice. Love it. You could actually live the history, too, with her magic.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah. Like that's, that's the coolest part. Yeah. Our cherished guests. Why would you like to take it on? So I would want to train in hero Nancy with Gideon. And the reason is because I coach wrestling at the school as well. I'm a, an assistant wrestling coach there. And, uh, sometimes I honestly visualize in my mind hero Nancy, when I get thrown really hard and I'm just totally exhausted and you know, like,
00:10:02
Speaker
Like, okay, there's flashes of golden magic helping me endure a really rough match or practice. And it's really what you have to do to be a successful wrestler is ignore fatigue, ignore fear, exert yourself, even when you're at your just utter complete exhaustion. And oftentimes, a wrestling match comes down to which wrestler could do that for longer.
00:10:27
Speaker
I'm Joe Redemann, your host. You can find me on Twitter at Finhorn, that's F-Y-N-D Horn. The class that I know that I would be taking is The Ethics of Humanity, and I'm pretty sure that that class would be taught by Urza Planeswalker.
00:10:52
Speaker
Well, I think he's got a lot of really interesting points to consider and research that he's done on genetic engineering, on population control. On renewable energy sources. That happened to be people. That happened to be places where people used to live.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, so he's got a lot of interesting points that I think can be brought up. I don't think I would ever agree with him. He would be a very frustrating class to take. But education, I think, is sometimes about pushing your boundaries. Let's also be honest right here. Erza would lose his teaching license immediately.
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, because he'd start doing genetic experiments. But I think this is the problem here. He didn't lose his teaching license. I mean, as far as we can tell. I mean, in fairness, I don't think Dominaria has a teacher. Yeah, there was no board of education on Tulareo, which I think is a huge, like a huge oversight. They missed there.
00:12:10
Speaker
so like we're talking like ursa versus the board of education was not a legal case the supreme court on dominaria saw it should have been it should have been and that was the problem well with with our discussions of uh really interesting teaching philosophies and teaching histories and i i chose ursa for a reason not just because i think that would be hilarious class but because a lot of the school that we see happening
00:12:38
Speaker
in Magic Storyline is you know the Talarian Academy which is on the island of Talaria in or on Dominaria and that's kind of where most of the formal schooling takes place in Magic Storyline you know just to give a general overview of
00:12:58
Speaker
School systems and magic there really aren't a ton. I mean that's just not a part of the world building that we've really seen You know over the course of the 25 plus years now of magic story You know it's a lot more of a medieval sort of like apprentice journeyman master sort of teaching model
00:13:20
Speaker
Which you know fits that the typical sort of fantasy narrative, but there are a few of these sort of conclave Academy type things and that's kind of what we're gonna talk about for our lore part of
Tolarian Academy's Role in Magic
00:13:34
Speaker
today. And so Let's just start with the OG Tolarian Academy the original, you know down home You know, I guess Harvard of of Dominaria basically
00:13:47
Speaker
Looking back on it, the artistic direction of the Talaria Academy is really interesting to me. I was in high school when that set came out and the Academy had this very sort of, you know, looking at it now, Harry Potter and steampunk kind of aesthetic to it before those things were really popularized. You know, there's like the omnipresent goggles on all these characters at the Academy. There's armor that's more like this
00:14:16
Speaker
retro, futuro, techno, gadget overlay on traditional wizard fantasy stuff. I think it's a comparatively high watermark for embracing whimsical things in mainstream magic sets, the main block sets. It's oftentimes, especially recently, kept at arm's length
00:14:38
Speaker
you know yours is block was blue was full of hijinks and disruptive students battling stern proctors and big books and people's yeah no and that's i think that's a great segue into this so it's a larian academy is a is a academy for wizards specifically wizards you know the blue classic blue magic casters uh... that was founded by ursa and baron uh... who was a
00:15:04
Speaker
blue wizard on the island of Talaria and so this I think there have been three no there have been two iterations of the original Talarian Academy the
00:15:20
Speaker
first one uh sort of trained some of our most notable legends throughout magic's history so to fairy who became a planeswalker and has been featured most recently in the dominaria set and storyline he's going to keep being a recurring character it seems as the
00:15:37
Speaker
Gatewatch continues on with their quest to save the multiverse. Joyra, who was the original captain of the Weatherlight and then became the most recent captain of the new Weatherlight. Erty is another important one. He was the wizard on the crew of the original Weatherlight and then got left in Wrath and I'm sure we'll talk more about Erty some other time. He did not have a good time.
00:16:06
Speaker
In that whole plot and then Hannah who is the daughter of Baron and was more of a an artificer and she was the Engine I guess the engineer one of the engineers of the original weather light she was working the engine and a member of the crew and
00:16:27
Speaker
and so the academy was not only like a training ground for young wizards it was also you know like a research facility it was you know it was kind of our classic sort of collegiate model where you know
00:16:43
Speaker
Yes, they're teaching kids. Yes, they're helping, you know, students gain knowledge, but there are also people there doing big, crazy projects and just seeing what they can make happen. And so, like you were talking about, Mike, you know, they were messing around with time manipulation.
00:17:02
Speaker
You know Ursa actually created a time-traveling device. They discovered slow time water that could let mortals live vastly Extended lifespans which Baron used his wife rain who is the Chancellor of the Academy used it Joy where I think accidentally got dunked into it and so that's why she's been able to live like thousands of years now into the current day of Of Magic the Gathering and the new Dominaria set
00:17:32
Speaker
Eugenics was a part of that. They, you know, Urza created the Metathran, these blue soldier people. The Bloodline Project, where he essentially engineered the birth of his legacy weapon, Central Peace Jaradkopation. He built Titan Engines, which were the weapons that he used to invade Phyrexia. Soul Bombs, which is another part of that, and then, of course, building the Weatherlight. And so, that's kind of the broad overview. It's very much like a classic
00:18:02
Speaker
If you're in the U.S., it's a Big Ten university research facility model.
00:18:16
Speaker
But a lot of those things that Erza was doing were secret projects that only some people were aware of what was going on. And the time travel thing was one of the big disasters. Though, I don't think the only disaster. Because Erza, which is a thing we will definitely talk about. Yeah, the Manhattan Project with the nuclear pile underneath the University of Chicago. Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good analogy.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah. Well, do you want to go a bit into that? The time rift disaster there, Alex? I think that's that's a great talk about that just just a little bit. So like corn that we know of as a planeswalker in the current day, you know, he's tied to Mirrodin and new Phyrexia.
00:19:04
Speaker
He was actually created by Urza as part of this time travel project where Urza was using the Academy to attract the brightest minds and the best mages so that he could try to fight Phyrexia. And one of these things was this time travel project where he was going to send Karn back in time because for some reason silver could go back in time. That's just kind of part of the hand wavy
00:19:32
Speaker
how the story works, how the world works in this place. But so he was going to make Karn, he made this golem who was going to go back in time and stop Phyrexia. I can't remember the exact details of what event he thought he was going to just tinker with to stop, but that was his plan. And of course something exploded which caused all these time rifts to
00:19:55
Speaker
created a rift and also created all these little time pockets. So there was fast time and there was slow time and there was things were all moving in a really bad way. At some point, like some phyrexians who were going to attack the facility got caught in a period of fast time, which created a whole nother disaster because now there's these phyrexians that are literally created to adapt.
00:20:23
Speaker
that are given the ability to see everything that's coming to attack them in slow motion so they can adapt to any threat that is approaching. And so just compounding disasters because Ursa was involved. And that had to finally get dealt with. Ultimately, the facility still lasted until the actual phyrexine invasion. Then at that time, well, how much?
00:20:54
Speaker
Did you have anything else you wanted to add about that, Joe? Well, yeah. So it was the Phyrexians in that time bubble did escape it and attacked the facility, attacked Talaria. And in that battle, Joyaru was killed, and then the Academy was destroyed. And then 10 years later,
00:21:21
Speaker
uh carne and ursa and baron come back to rebuild tilaria so this is tilaria 2 basically electric boogaloo um and it carne had used ursa's time machine to go back and save joyra um
00:21:37
Speaker
So they found Joyra still alive because wibbly wobbly timey wimey things. He prevented the event of her death in the past and then it, you know, resonated and rippled forward and that created the rift, the actual time rift that they had to seal later on in Time Spiral.
00:21:59
Speaker
But Joyra was still alive. Teferi, who they hadn't seen, was trapped in a slow-time bubble. And so he hadn't aged at all, basically. And then eventually they got him out, they rebuilt the Academy, and then the Frexian invasion happens not long after. And uh...
00:22:19
Speaker
You know, exciting things happen and the Academy is leveled again, but this time it's by Baron, the headmaster of the Academy, because the Phyrexians used Talaria as another flashpoint to attack during this invasion. And when Baron had found out that his daughter, Hannah, had died, you know, he essentially evacuated
00:22:45
Speaker
He evacuated some of the students, I think. I don't remember actually if there was like a full evacuation of the facility, which is kind of messed up. But he was livid with Erza for getting his daughter killed and putting her into the middle of his, you know, crazy plan.
00:23:01
Speaker
and he was livid with his life's work being squandered as just another chess piece in Ursa's game and so he leveled the entire academy and killed himself in this explosion and destroyed all of the research they had in this explosion that destroyed all the research that they had built over you know
00:23:23
Speaker
Thousands of years basically and I guess maybe not thousands but like at least probably a hundred years And so yeah, that was the end of Talaria too Yeah, which was one thing that I love is the Kev Walker art for that followed by that flavor text just for his family Baron made a funeral pyre of Talaria like he did he burned to the ground but that art is incredible art and
00:23:53
Speaker
And that's the card obliterate. The card is obliterate, yeah. You have to look at the invasion to get that flavor text. They sort of genericized. Well, I guess it's just the eighth edition when they put different flavor text on, but kept the art, oddly enough. Yeah, which makes no sense. But yeah. But no, the art is just beautiful art and has got that great flavor text on both the ball version and original. Before he did that, he
00:24:21
Speaker
buried both his wife and his daughter and then that's when he decided to just take the whole thing out and all the phyrexians and everything that was there and just now it's gone yep
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, the grand experiment of Talaria ended in not great fashion, but nowadays in the present, Dominaria, sort of the philosophies of the founders of that school have been carried forward.
00:24:53
Speaker
Um, so we do now see that there are five splinter Tolarian academies on Dominaria. Um, we, we saw this in the present day Dominaria storyline. Um, when we met Joda, who has also been around for forever.
00:25:09
Speaker
and is one of the very few characters in Magic the Gathering, not a planeswalker to be basically immortal. Joda is the headmaster of the Talaria West facility in the Spice Isles, which is an island chain not far from the original Talaria.
00:25:27
Speaker
There is a Talarian Academy at Latinam, which is formerly where the School of the Unseen and the College of Latinam were, back in the Ice Age, which is where Jota originated as well. Orvada, near the Burning Isles, is another one. There is Talaria of the Depths, underwater at the Arunes, where the original Talaria stood. I'm assuming that's mostly like a merfolk?
00:25:53
Speaker
type of facility, like I'm not sure who goes to school there. Maybe the homorids, maybe they're getting into magic these days. But then there's a shadow academy that apparently doesn't have a particular location and some have theorized that it might be some sort of pocket dimension. I like to imagine it's like, you know, wherever three are assembled, there we shall be sort of thing.
00:26:21
Speaker
But yeah, so those are the five facilities and there actually have been five philosophies carried on down That you know people it's it's kind of the five majors. I guess at the to learn academies These days ersens who are who focus on artifice temporal mechanics time manipulation and genetics baronites
00:26:46
Speaker
who are much more humane and ethical, focus on, you know, classic sorcery, administration, Iranians, who focus on the improvement of artifacts and recruitment to the facilities. Then there, this is less of an official major, I guess, and more of like a, you can minor in it on your own time. It's like a self-designed. It's the Society of Mishra, who are a secret cult of phyrexian sympathizers, not great people.
00:27:13
Speaker
And a strain of scientists who perform illegal genetic experiments called the gathans the gathans Who originated from gatha which was and who is another? person at the original Talaria, so Yeah, that's kind of where Talaria has evolved to these days. I
00:27:33
Speaker
We were joking before but really I think they would benefit greatly from having like a board of directors or like you know board of education or like being funded by taxpayers of Dominaria because there is no accountability for what happens at these schools Yeah
00:27:58
Speaker
like where who's the superintendent of this they need to be fired immediately i mean i think for me i i actually just want to go to the sporting events between these teams just start funneling all the educational funds into athletics yeah i mean who are the boosters on this planet too
00:28:21
Speaker
Just trying to picture how anyone would compete with the Gathans. Yeah, well, you can't even do drug testing on them because they found a way around it. Well, yeah, of course. But see, I suppose the Ranians and the Ursans probably have some artifice, too. So maybe that's just a... It's just an arms race at that point. With the Gathans, it might be a literal arms race.
00:28:45
Speaker
how many arms can they stick on? You said it, there is no board, there's no taxpayers, so they may not care what substances people are using. And just like the current world, it seems like there's almost no support for the actual arts. No, that's a good point. Wow. Sorry, Joe. Yeah, I mean, how does education relate to the greater economy? Has it ever been spelled out anywhere?
00:29:15
Speaker
Anybody can apply to get in here? Are people entitled to any kind of education, or is it more of a medieval thing where it's this very cloistered passing on of information in a very limited way?
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. I don't think there is any answer to that. I know that, you know, it seems to be like a school where most of their budget comes from tuition. Like, you know, if you can afford to go, you go.
00:29:50
Speaker
I don't know if they have any sort of like scholarship programs, you know, like like I remember when I was applying for colleges I shot one application out to Yale because I was like, yeah, why not? Let's see. Let's see if I can get in and like if I had Qualified to get in they would have like paid for a full ride because of you know, whatever economic socioeconomic bracket my family fell into and I think I
00:30:17
Speaker
They would have taken pity on me as a poor Midwestern boy going out to the East Coast. So maybe they'll have one token held in there every year that they give a full scholarship to. I'm not sure. Nothing but a bunch of 1% legacy students at Tulane Academy. Legacy weapons students? Wow. That makes me so happy.
00:30:53
Speaker
from what I've seen, we haven't really seen any information about that too much, especially in the like the Dominaria storyline, the only school that I know of that had anything like that was the School of the Unseen, when read the kind of the Ice Age books, and that one was very much the cloistered school that, you know, their knowledge is secret, and you have to kind of know they exist to even go and apply. And
00:31:13
Speaker
It's not far off from the truth.
00:31:22
Speaker
in that sort of medieval, not even really guilds, because it wasn't a publicly known thing. That's why it's in the name, School of the Unseen.
00:31:30
Speaker
this this actually does seem to be more of the ivy league of of dominaria honestly is is you know you have to know somebody who knows somebody to get in there and like you know like a whole skull and bones type thing is that that's what that's what the the fraternity is is that is that what they're called skull and bones yes the one the bush and carrion or whoever all those people belong to yeah all the rich politician people
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yep. I mean, you know, I, I guess the, um, I guess the, the in opposition to that would be, and maybe you can talk a little bit to this mic, um, is sort of the, the public school education of Dominaria is that sort of like, like we were saying, apprentice journeyman, uh, master type system, which is.
Education Systems in Magic Universe
00:32:27
Speaker
a little it's not quite the whole you know the public schools that we see today in the real world where everyone's entitled to the same education but it's the closest thing you get to like you know an access point where we see people finding mentors in whether it be in their trade and their craft or in their school of magic and we see that like for instance with Chandra and Jaya
00:32:56
Speaker
with, you know, Siddharth Kondo, who was Gerard's father and mentor, like adoptive father and mentor. You know, could you maybe talk to that for a bit? Yeah, I mean, the education system on Dominaria, you know, seems to have kind of that medieval feel to it where not everybody can get in on it and you, you know,
00:33:20
Speaker
maybe your talents can get noticed by some of these people who could potentially be your mentors and you end up in this or that sort of trade, but it seems like the institutions of education are very selective and it makes them vulnerable to the loss of knowledge. And I think that's a kind of a trope that they play with a lot.
00:33:50
Speaker
you know, that the schools can be destroyed and the knowledge lost forever. I think there's something that's fascinates us about that. You know, you have your library of Alexandria and who knows what was in there. And we have, you know, uh, fragments of things that, uh, say, Oh yeah, you know, here, this here's a clip from, uh, this book in the library of Alexandria. And it's like, Oh wow, here's this theorem that was figured out way long ago. And I wonder what else was in that book. And nobody knows.
00:34:17
Speaker
because the school was lost. And so we have these schools, and the schools seem to get destroyed a lot. And maybe that's why they're perpetually in a medieval time period. Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair point. It's kind of funny, but it's also kind of true. It's a thing that's not really tackled a lot in fantasy. Like you have this perpetual sort of medieval
00:34:46
Speaker
dark ages, depending on kind of where, how the world is set up. And it's the thing that's not really talked about a lot as to why things haven't advanced. And when it does show up, it's sometimes like that, where it's literally, there's this oppressive force that's just decided, we're gonna stay here. I'm not gonna go any further. And they just destroy and make sure that no one does the research, no one does learning, and they destroy anything that goes beyond a certain point.
00:35:13
Speaker
I'm pretty sure I heard Mark Rosewater comment on that that it's Any ideas that bring the game very far out of that medieval
00:35:25
Speaker
trope that it's in, he's not about. We're not going to see big mecha warriors and rocket launchers and guns and any of those kinds of things, which you could completely do with the game. But apparently he quashes those kinds of ideas to keep it grounded in this thoroughly fantasy world that we've had for 25 years. And that's something I very much agree with. I enjoy that a lot about the game.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, and it's.
00:36:00
Speaker
it would be no it would be i i think there is an interesting idea though of what would you know yeah i think you're 100 right that that same that similar sort of cultural feel to that medieval you know high fantasy type thing does keep that that vibe there of this is you know a world outside of our own but i think we've seen i mean we've seen worlds where
00:36:25
Speaker
you know, there is some progress or there is some element of our modern day that fits into it. And it's kind of cool to see those little elements reflected like on Kaladesh, for instance, you know, we do see technological progression and that's kind of cool. That's an interesting thing to witness that being reflected. I wonder if we would ever see, you know, what a world that has a
00:36:47
Speaker
fleshed out education system what that would look like you know that isn't just a you know a civilization that lives in you know like on Ixalan we just had you know conquistador spain for the vampires we had you know the Mesoamericans in their you know flat top pyramids we had merfolk who literally just live in the rivers and then
00:37:14
Speaker
Dinosaurs. Oh, yeah, and pirates. And so there's like no infrastructure anywhere. I mean, like Torazon, the vampires, the vampires capital is the only place that has some sort of like something that vaguely looks like a civilization that we could notice. I mean, even on we're on Ravnica right now, so I wonder like
00:37:36
Speaker
What do the Ravnican kids do all day? Or is this like Oliver Twist where they're all in factories? And like, you know, what are they? Where are they? You know, do they go to school? What do they learn at school? I don't know. I would just be fascinated to find that out. And I don't know that they've talked about that specifically yet, or that they necessarily will this time around. But I can say the stories and I haven't caught up on them yet.
00:38:03
Speaker
The last several weeks, they've all been sort of vignette stories talking about the common random dock worker who just how their life is on Ramnica and kind of how the guilds intersect with that in positive and negative ways.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so it's very possible that as they develop this world or they pick a different world to start to do that more granular world building that we might see something more details about an education system, something like that come up. Yeah, absolutely. The thing that keeps societies in a similar level of technological process is a progress is big steps backwards in
00:38:52
Speaker
in technology, you know, and whether it's because of some ecological disaster or a war, you know, and a lot of times, you know, we're seeing civilizations in decline. And, you know, the in our lives, that is not been the case. But for the vast majority of human history, it's oscillated in terms of, you know, scientific progress going up and down. Yeah.
00:39:18
Speaker
I mean, I think one of the things that Wizards and probably the Game of Magic struggles with is us being dropped into a society that is flourishing does not make for good storytelling. If there's not conflict of some sort, we don't really have stakes or it's harder to make those stakes. Whereas I think we are seeing with the ships with especially the Ravnica storyline that people would be more interested in knowing maybe what an education system looks like.
00:39:47
Speaker
So that kind of brings us to our real world topic.
Founding a Magic Club for Inclusivity
00:39:51
Speaker
And this is what we have here for today, Mike, is to talk about your high school's magic club. And so why don't you start us off with telling us about how the club started. What were your ideas behind bringing magic to your students? Why magic of all things? So a colleague and I started the club, and I think it was 2012. And we're both gamers.
00:40:18
Speaker
And really into it, we've played games with each other and our families leading up to this. And we decided to create the club. And we want to make a space for students to just enjoy all the multifaceted benefits of gaming. We wanted to bring the benefits of gaming to what are, for the most part, underrepresented demographics in the board game, card game world. Our school is mostly African-American.
00:40:48
Speaker
Not overwhelmingly. It's really a great melting pot of our Milwaukee community. It's got Africans, Americans, and Latinos, and whites, and there's a big mung population. And that's all represented in the club as well. They all come and play games and D&D. And I teach and play a bunch of magic. I just gravitated towards magic because I especially love that game. We have lots of other board games there that are played a lot in a D&D group that
00:41:18
Speaker
does campaigns. But I just love introducing people to this game that are the age when that I was when I got into it. It's it's such a vast, complex universe and people are grabbed for it for so many different reasons. There's so much going on, you know, there's the art of it and there's the lore, and there's the competitiveness or the deck building or the min maxing of every little bit of it.
00:41:45
Speaker
You know, I love seeing kids discover what they love about this game. And in the beginning, I supplied all the stuff for Magic. And, you know, I ran out of all my fallen empires bulk pretty fast. Bought a lot of that when I was in high school. But, you know, yeah, my own cards, I just kind of gave away the bulk stuff I had. And, you know, only some of the kids have access to a great deal of the game financially.
00:42:16
Speaker
you know, and it really broke my heart to see kids really limited by that, you know, and you get you get the kid, he's got like a fat allowance, or the kid, he's got a job. And, you know, they're, they're coming and bringing these awesome decks and, and the other kids that can't do that, for whatever reason, are really bummed out. So I started reaching out to the community, starting with people I knew personally, and then people I met on Twitter, and I found their generosity to be absolutely amazing.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's a great community for helping out when you need something like that. And that's kind of how we got in touch is I started putting out a call similarly. I wanted to start a club for kids up here in Minneapolis and found out you were doing the same thing and had been doing it for multiple years, which is so great to see.
00:43:04
Speaker
I'm curious too, did you find that when you had that disparity of kids bringing great decks because they could afford the better cards and all that stuff, did that dissuade you from doing more constructed type things into something a little more egalitarian like draft? Did you ever consider format in that or were you just like
00:43:29
Speaker
just sort of trying to find ways to help everybody up themselves to be on that same playing field? Yeah, more of the latter. I mean, it's a lot of total pure kitchen table magic that's played there where you just bring what you got and everybody's at totally different levels. It's a different group of kids every time we have the club. So you never know what you're going to get. I mean, as far as constructed formats, Commander is far and away
00:43:58
Speaker
the favored constructed format. And aside from that, it's it's mostly, yeah, just kitchen table stuff and kids bring what they have. And if kids get a, you know, get access to some funds, they usually buy a pre con commander deck and start rocking that and, you know, adding on to it when they can and yeah, that's that's what you get there.
00:44:22
Speaker
I was thinking too that one of the things I wasn't sure if you tried and this kind of comes to the learning aspect of it and kind of social and emotional development but when we're talking a little bit about bringing in something like multiplayer formats or something that may allow for some of that cooperation but also working together to overcome what is perceived at least as a stronger deck based on either financial or just stronger deck building is a way to kind of mediate some of that.
00:44:51
Speaker
Uh, yeah, that's, that's a challenge, you know, and I, uh, um, you know, the, the constructed nature of the format is just the, the cards are what they are. Right. And what, what you, uh, what I try to model and, and teach a lot is, uh, positive interactions, regardless of what's going on in the game, you know, having everybody have a good time and, uh, you know, playing fairly and, and, uh, not letting that, uh, ruin anybody's time.
00:45:21
Speaker
And I feel like I do a very good job of that. And so it's something I consciously think about constantly at the club. So out of curiosity, does the Magic Club tie into your curriculum at all? How do you tie learning targets like that social emotional type stuff into the club? What sort of thought process do you have about
00:45:50
Speaker
bringing specific learning goals in, or is it much more of like you wanna facilitate an environment where kids come and play and just naturally engage? Yeah,
Teaching Social Skills through Magic
00:46:04
Speaker
I mean, I don't tie my in-class curriculum into magic. I promote the game in class and I talk about it. I've decorated my room with a bunch of magic art and Funko Pops and posters and cool stuff like that. I actually just got a bunch of store props donated from my LGS.
00:46:20
Speaker
shout out to board game barrister and they're I'm trying to figure out how to how to put this four foot tall to fairy up in my room. I'm really excited about that. But when I teach biology, I focus on biology. And as far as the club itself, you know, I tried to develop the students, definitely their their social development, their emotional development, make it a
00:46:47
Speaker
welcoming, accepting space for anybody that comes through the door and make sure that's happening all the time for everybody. Just have a place that kids can play and be themselves. That's something I didn't get when I was in high school. I played at lunch or played at recess and stuff. And if I'd had a teacher that not only said like,
00:47:17
Speaker
It's OK that you can play magic in the school, but let you celebrate playing magic in the school and promote it and reward you for doing so. That would have been a game changer for me.
00:47:29
Speaker
have you had any hitches with with fostering that with kids i mean high school obviously you got a lot more i think you have kids at that age tend to be a lot more uh... socially uh... savvy they know how to you know engage with each other with each other and i'm sure a lot of these kids are friends you know outside of school as well uh... but have you had any uh... tough time sort of
00:47:55
Speaker
bringing those kids together or are you finding that you know, this is a space and that magic's something that they can easily bond over, that they can easily negotiate through? I haven't had a ton of trouble with it, but I think it's because I put a lot of effort into keeping it a positive place. You know, a big part of what's rewarding about teaching magic and running this club is being able to
00:48:22
Speaker
shape these formative experiences for the better. You know, in the club I'm huge on playing honestly and never cheating and being a good sports person. You know, teenagers struggle with these kinds of things. You know, there's a lot of research on that stuff, right? You know, they're often poor at reading each other's emotions and responding appropriately and they tend to be way more impulsive. You know, they have less impulse control and they'll snap, decide to cheat or say something mean
00:48:50
Speaker
for example, you know, and what I do is as more than anything, try to model appropriate behavior, you know, I make sure that I'm inclusive, and I respond positively to people's emotions, and I'm really patient. And, you know, I play the game, honestly, and compliment people and turn mistakes into lessons. You know, teenagers make fun of each other a lot, right? And they're very self conscious. And, and playing magic is a is a really,
00:49:20
Speaker
easy thing to get self-conscious about, right? Because you can easily make a mistake and feel embarrassed about it. And somebody can point out that the thing you did was clearly wrong. And so when somebody says something negative in that situation, I reframe it, I guess. I say, yeah, we all make this mistake a lot at first. But once you realize, and it helps them empathize with each other.
00:49:51
Speaker
realize we're all in this together to make this positive space. At the start of the club, I very explicitly lay out that these are expectations. And everybody's coming at it with different levels. Some students learn the game very slowly, and some pick it up and go really far. And then they're reading deck texts and articles and taking it to the next level.
00:50:18
Speaker
You know what I try to get them to mentor each other, you know, I was just gonna ask about that Have you found that they've started to like work together on on? Whether it's deck techs or you know, like coaching each other through certain plays or yeah. Yeah, absolutely and You know, I think we can all benefit from from hearing that That lesson, you know that yeah, we all went through
00:50:44
Speaker
this learning curve of magic because it's such a hugely complicated difficult game and we all have more learning to go you know and don't be negative to anyone who is making their own journey through that you know we all had somebody somebody who took the time to explain things about this extremely complex game you know it might be somebody in person that was your best friend or it might be a content creator that you know
00:51:09
Speaker
laid out all these strategies and level by level, right, and helps you along. And so be that person for the next player, you know, be the one that is takes the time to patiently explain something to them, you know, and turn it into a really positive experience instead of just, you know,
00:51:25
Speaker
No, I'm just going to wreck you in this game and make fun of how poor of a player you are. We want a community that's like that. That's going to be welcoming and inclusive and honest and help each other out. And that's how the game's going to grow and survive. Mike, and I'm kind of curious, how did you go about teaching magic? I mean, I'm guessing when you started this club that this wasn't necessarily a game that you came into that you had half the class or half the group already knew how to play.
Engaging New Students with Magic
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's a few that did. And they immediately gravitated towards the club. But I mean, a ton of what I spend my time doing at the club is teaching the game. And, you know, I can I can go into that whole process. Yeah, especially at the start of the year, I spend tons and tons of time teaching magic over and over over and over to kids that come through the door. And
00:52:21
Speaker
You know, I encourage other people to be an ambassador to the game and teach other people how to play magic. And it's definitely a skill that you can go about it a way that makes the person you're trying to teach turned off to the game or turned on to the game. You know, this first impression is really important. You just have to keep in mind that when you're teaching somebody magic, your primary objective isn't to actually teach magic.
00:52:51
Speaker
It's to have the person have fun and want to play the game again. You know, they have their whole life to learn the game, but you just want them to have a fun time the first time that you do it. One of the things I do is, you know, I really like the welcome decks that Wizards makes. They're an awesome, awesome product that they've put together that are these low complexity decks. And so I go to my LGS and I get lots of those.
00:53:19
Speaker
And I always like to give the person that I'm teaching a deck of cards. So I'll take out the welcome decks that's got the five colors. And the first thing I do is explain what the color pie is. And that's, I think, one of the most elegant, beautiful parts of the design of the game is the color pie, right? And so I tell them, okay.
00:53:45
Speaker
White is all about healing and protection and civilization and soldiery and red is about fire and emotion and chaos and whatever resonates with them, they're already picking out a deck and they're emotionally invested in the game. You're giving them choices to start with. And your choices are based on what we're gonna kind of see as more the pro-social aspects of each color. Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
So many other games, right? It's just like, oh, okay, I'm the orange meeple, you know? That's it. You know, uh, the orange means something. Yeah. Uh, exactly. Right. It's so customizable. You've made tons of choices way before you even sit down to play with somebody, you know? And so what kind of grabs somebody is like, they, they, they're not just making a, um, a random choice. Uh, they're making a choice that sort of represents their identity.
00:54:38
Speaker
in Subway, you know, they're already unique. You know, I think all of us, when we first sort of learned magic, we latched onto a color at first, right? You know, I'm the green mage, and I'm gonna trade for all the green cards, and you know, I think we all kind of go through that phase, right? And then, you know, if somebody asks you what kind of deck you have, you say, I have a green deck. You know, people know that you're, you know, where you're at on the game.
00:55:05
Speaker
Uh, but, but cause it's such an attractive thing to, uh, to buy into and to identify with. Yeah, it's that easy. Like this is me. This is who I am. I mean, this is, that's why I have a, you know, a magic shirt that has YOLO with, uh, with the red mana symbol as the yo, like it's perfect.
00:55:25
Speaker
It says boom. Yeah Yeah, the deeper we get into the fourth of us, right? I mean we fall in love with these characters and you know because we relate to them or or you know find their stories Fascinating or compelling and you know, it's the same process. I guess just in a more time To look at it. I will say the welcome ducks have been amazing for this I a couple of years ago started a group teaching in a kind of a milieu based
00:55:54
Speaker
psychology program at the VA where I worked and Wizards donated a bunch of the welcome decks to us and this is exactly how I went about teaching it to the group of veterans that I was working with it was just this idea that you know one or two had played before most people hadn't but the welcome decks were just a great way that somebody was gonna be able to have something to take home with them after they got done and
00:56:19
Speaker
You know, it's amazing, because if you think magic players are entitled people at times when it comes to cards and free things and, you know, the value, while those welcome decks have no value, forgetting that the value simply to somebody who's never played is that they left with now being able to play a game and take something home with them. Yeah, and keep looking at it if they're compelled by it.
00:56:44
Speaker
Just having this artifact of your experience is is great, right? And you know, they're probably not gonna throw it away, right? They're gonna get the hold on to it You know and that that's something that can Keeps them coming back
00:56:59
Speaker
You mentioned the Teferi that you have in your classroom now, and I know that as you were talking about...
Representation in Magic Characters
00:57:07
Speaker
Not yet, but soon. Oh, soon. Get him over there. Gotcha. Well, and I know that you were talking about your kids that you don't usually see some of these demographics represented as heavily in the Magic the Gathering scene.
00:57:23
Speaker
Mostly be it being you know kids of color I'm not sure if you have any young women in your in your club, but those are also underrepresented as well But specifically talking about you know young african-american boys You know to fairy is kind of the closest representation in the main storyline that they would have do you do you find that he's a character that some of your you know students have have
00:57:50
Speaker
Inquired about or identified with or anything like that and and how does representation play into your kids getting attached to magic yeah, representation is huge and the Design of the game has taken the absolutely right turn In that direction and so I'll share a story about that that was sort of what led to that tweet you referred to that's you know my my most like tweet I think that I've had and
00:58:20
Speaker
So the students love play mats, and I don't get a lot of them. I actually just got a whole bunch at GP Milwaukee, so I'm really excited about that. They're going to have this nice selection of them. But in the past, I had very few to choose from. As adults, we just order online whatever our favorite art is or whatever, and it's extremely thought out.
00:58:46
Speaker
It's a very personal thing. You know, you're gonna plunk this thing down and you've thought about it a lot, right? But in my game club, the kids just like pick from whatever I get donated, you know? And so it's like, well, you know, Chandra isn't my thing, I guess, but you know, this is the play mat that, you know, we have here. So I'll just take that from the prize bucket. You know, I get all the magic swag and make these prize buckets and they can pick from by turning in good grades. So,
00:59:16
Speaker
I was at the Card Kingdom website buying some cards and I was browsing through their stuff on sale and they had a whole bunch of these glorious to fairy play mats and they were on clearance. So I bought two of them to throw into the game for grades prize wall, prize buckets there and they show up and I plunk them in there and I bring them out next time. African American males make up most of the members of the club.
00:59:46
Speaker
And I hadn't had any play mats or boxes or anything that had this kind of representation before because I just got what people gave me and, you know, that that hadn't been a representation emphasize up until to fairy, you know, was really celebrated, right. And so I show them and they're these two clubs, they're these two kids at the club that are just ecstatic. They see this, this play mat and they're just like,
01:00:15
Speaker
Dude, look at this guy. Like, Teferi is my guy. And they're just so floored and excited, you know? And I see this, and I start to tell them about who Teferi is, you know? Like, oh, yeah, man. You know, he's called the hero of Dominaria. And check this out. This is what he did. He phased out an entire continent. And they're just like, oh, yeah. And so they made me promise that I'd save these playmats just for them.
01:00:45
Speaker
And they had to save up five A's to get a play mat. And so the next club, they come, they got their five A's, and they walk right in, and here we go. They give me my play mat. And it was just such a stunning example of how much representation matters. Yeah, and I'm sure they hadn't expressed anything like that for any of the other characters previously.
01:01:09
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, they like the fantasy stuff, but you know, they don't get that kind of representation, you know, and that tweet I made that became kind of viral for me was, you know, something like, as a person who's been ubiquitously represented in magic from the beginning of it, it's really easy to under appreciate the experience of having this game you love celebrate someone like you for the first time in your life.
01:01:40
Speaker
You know, it's just a lot of the gamers playing Magic can't relate to that. It's just always been there from the start, you know, and and these kids like see to fairy on this huge playmat just looking awesome and like just lose their minds. So excited. It was it was just awesome, you know, and it's great that Wizards has totally embraced this. It, you know, it just like for everyone to have that experience, you know, for just overall human happiness.
01:02:09
Speaker
It is so awesome, and I just want that replicated for everyone across the breadth of human diversity.
Conclusion and Call to Support
01:02:21
Speaker
That's our show. You can find the podcast on Twitter, at goblinlorepod, or you can email any questions, comments, or concerns to goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com. This episode was written and produced by Joe Redman, who you can find on Twitter, at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D, Horn.
01:02:40
Speaker
Alex Newman co-hosted. You can find him on Twitter at AlexanderNewM. HobbsQ also co-hosted who you can find on Twitter at HobbsQ. Mike Lawton can be found on Twitter at Mike Wild Speaker, all one word. Follow him for more updates on the High School Magic Club in Milwaukee and please, if you can, donate any supplies that you are able to.
01:03:06
Speaker
Remember, you can join our Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Check us out at patreon.com slash GoblinLorePod. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.