For my oldest son’s 13th birthday party, my wife arranged for him and his middle school friends to play an interactive game called “Escape the Room” in NYC. 

Seven middle school students are “locked” in a room and have 60 minutes to figure out how to escape the room.  Inside the room are an assortment of furniture and other seemingly random objects.  A guide sits outside the room and watches the drama unfold via monitors.  There’s a TV screen in the room that counts down the time from 60 minutes and occasionally gives the participants a clue.  You have to find in the room a key that unlocks the door but there are sequential clues and pre-cursor keys that open other objects in the room before getting to the final key that unlocks the main door.  The clues are clever and involve putting pieces together through creative thinking and problem solving.  You act as a single team and have the pressure of the clock countdown to keep your energy and excitement levels up. 

I and another father were inside the room to ensure everyone was safe and help guide the kids when they needed some help. 

Needless to say my son and his friends LOVED it.  It was the kind of experience that engaged all of their senses, pushed their minds and bodies as they tried to figure out codes and sequences that would unlock combination locks, interpret random signs and figure out objects (pieces of a photograph, maps, a book title, a clock frozen in time) that all laid out clues that unlocked further experiences in the room that drew you closer and closer to the final key and escape. 

We did not escape the room.  As one of the adults in the room, I felt slightly inadequate not being able to figure it out myself.  However, I later found out that the particular room we were in (there are more than one to choose from) has historically had about a 20% escape success rate.  Despite this seeming failure, I was amazed how my son and his friends LOVED the experience.  They collaborated, worked as a team, tried different strategies and not once felt defeated or discouraged. 

I thought how in a 60 minute period, these middle school students could experience the thrill, challenge and learning that comes from a group oriented, collaborative, creative and critically designed project can elicit.  It also made me wonder why we cannot design schools to be more like this? 

Consider that these 13 year old boys and girls all engaged in a learning experience that was cheaply constructed (square room of say 400 sq. ft. with random everyday objects), clear in its simply defined goal (escape the room), unclear in the sequence of activities and knowledge to reach the goal (how do I lock the combination lock on the cabinet?  How do the boarding passes in the suitcase relate to map coordinates which relate to a series of numbers?), and focused on a task that is likely beyond their intellectual and creative grasp?  And yet they LOVED it.  They engaged in a form of collaborative team play that both bonded and stretched them.  It’s the kind of experience that video game designers, amusement park creators and Broadway theater directors long to create with repeated success.  It also represents the kind of learning that gives our students the kind of passion and perseverance that everyday classroom experiences so often overwhelmingly fail to produce but our society demands in the workplace of the 21st century. 

Maybe Matchbook Learning should design our student projects that resemble this kind of experience: “Escape the Classroom”.