By Harold Goldberg

The New York Videogame Critics Circle has begun a compelling, new series of Games Writing classes at the Bronx’s Lab School of Finance and Technology. As part of our nonprofit’s Playing With Purpose program, Ryan O’Callaghan, Ronald Gordon, Isaac Espinosa and I are joining the Lab School for a compelling journalism program that takes our work to a new level with their middle schoolers.

This 13-week curriculum is perfect for this particular center of learning. That’s because the school already has a newspaper written by high schoolers. Our goal: Once the middle schoolers matriculate to grades 9 through 12, they’ll be much better prepared as young critics and feature writers.

Our class convenes for three days a week. We’re there on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays, the Lab School’s Mr. Fulco is joined by high school students who work on the school paper, The Eagle Express. They all come together to help our middle schoolers with their writing projects. So it’s an excellent Lab School community effort across middle through high school grades. It’s also a new way for us to teach team-building.

Early next week, we’ll begin to teach what’s necessary to create a story’s lead by using my New York Times review of Astro Bot and by playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Students already have gotten a jump on creating their Zelda: Echoes opinions. (See the photo below.)

All in all, it’s going to be a great semester from Fall all the way into Winter!