Rocket Talks: Games, PBL and the Living Curriculum

What might a role-playing game reveal about motivation, identity or the pleasure of trying again? Teacher-gamer and curriculum designer Zachary Reznichek has spent years exploring those questions through role-playing games, project-based learning and social-emotional learning. Joining Winsy Flores for Rocket Talks, he considered how games create worlds in which choices have consequences, relationships matter and learners have their own reasons to stay involved. It was a conversation that moved well beyond games as entertainment.

Drawing on Zachary’s experience at Green School Bali and in other educational projects, the discussion explored his idea of a living curriculum: learning that responds to people, places and meaningful problems rather than arriving entirely scripted. These ideas connected naturally with Rocket’s work on deep play, agency and child-led inquiry, while introducing perspectives from beyond early childhood. The talk offered parents and educators a different way to consider engagement: what makes an experience feel worthwhile to the learner, and how might schools design for that sense of purpose without taking away children’s ownership of their learning?