Dean is a high school teacher who uses Dungeons and Dragons to teach numeracy and literacy in a school setting, and to identify and enable at-risk teens in the school system.
Michael recruited Dean to run Dungeons and Dragons games for the teen cohort of Asperger’s Victoria.
“In the late seventies the U.K. education policies meant that kids did minimal maths in junior schools. Arriving in Australia as an 8 year old, I was expected to understand a higher level of maths than I did. In short, I hated maths and suffered major anxieties during maths lessons. This caused me to act out sometimes in class. By grade 5, a kindly teacher took enough interest in me to understand the frustrations I felt which caused me to throw chairs or maths equipment around the room. With a little extra assistance and assurance I began to fill in my learning gaps and experience some success.”
“I continued to work hard on my maths when I got to High School. Fortunately I had a good supportive group of friends and challenged myself to take maths all the way to year 12. Well, things happened… After lots of different jobs I didn’t get to Uni till I was 34. After graduating I spent 3 years in cellular research and then pushed myself through a teaching (graduate) Diploma.”
Dean will also be presenting (with Michael Thorburn & Brady Irwin) The How To Be A Dungeon Master When You Have Anxiety program for various organisations like Aspergers Victoria.
Fellow Therapeutic Game Master, Michael Thorburn uses recordings of Dean’s prose descriptions of scene changes in the Dungeons and Dragons game for personal guided relaxation hypnosis sessions.