Giving Compass' Take:

• Paul Darvasi is a 12th-grade teacher who uses video games to help students understand their own identities and stimulate a broader conversation about identity development. 

• How are conversations about identity related to social-emotional learning? Can SEL potentially help decrease interpersonal conflicts in the classroom and lead to a safer school environment? 

• Here are five ways video games can transform learning and prepare students for tomorrow's workforce. 

Paul Darvasi is teaching his 12th graders that if there’s something about themselves they don’t like, they have the power to change it.

To do so, he’s using a video game called “What Remains of Edith Finch,” projecting it on a screen while students take turns playing. This year, Darvasi wants his students to use “Edith Finch” to explore identity, a topic that has a lot to do with SEL, according to Melissa Schlinger, vice president of practice and programs at CASEL, a research and policy organization devoted to SEL.

Darvasi doesn’t want students to just play the video game and call it a day. He’s also designed a range of activities that students will complete alongside the game. He wants students to start out thinking about identity in general, and how it can change situationally or throughout a person’s life.

As part of the unit, students create memes to show how various people in their lives see them. They make short videos where they connect their private and public identities. And they build social media profiles and write journal entries for a character in the game to highlight the dichotomy between how people present themselves publicly versus how they really are. To cap it off, students must curate an online museum exhibit about themselves and their identity.

“When you're delving into identity and asking students to reveal an element about their journey, their ongoing journey and identity development, you're touching on things like race, gender, how you identify,” Darvasi says. “Those could lead you to discussions that may make certain students uncomfortable, or might in some ways make them feel like they’re being asked to reveal more than what they’re prepared to reveal.”

Read the full article about how video games help with social-emotional learning by Tina Nazerian at EdSurge