High Desert Rendezvous

Wednesday, May 6th, was the High Desert Rendezvous. Many of the teachers who had attended the different history lectures and most of the teachers who received a mini-grant were there. I did a short presentation about my Memoir '44 History Club by showing a movie that I made about the club. The other teachers were very interested in how I used the game to teach history. Most of the people I was talking to were high school or middle school history teachers and Memoir '44 fits perfectly with that age. I had several middle school teachers talk about starting their own clubs!

My presentation elicited a lot of questions. The teachers wanted to know how long we meet for, how the game works, how long it takes the students to set up the battles, and how well the game follows history. I was happy to explain the game system and was able to tell them what a powerful tool Memoir '44 has been for teaching history to my students.

Outside the conference room I set up two Memoir '44 battles: Omaha Beach and Ste. Mère-Église. Days of Wonder very generously donated a Memoir '44 poster for me to use in my presentation and it created quite a stir. Along with the poster and battles, I also displayed pictures from the club, one of our Campaign Bags, some resources I've created, and the three expansions we used in the Memoir '44 History Club (the Air Pack, Terrain Pack, and Pacific Theater). Before they left, every teacher received an educators discount coupon from Days of Wonder to start their own Memoir '44 Club!

The High Desert Rendezvous was a great platform for me to outline how I taught history this year through Memoir '44. I hope the other teachers had as much fun as I did.