It’s 2pm on a Thursday, and Danny Bennet’s classroom is silent.
Every child is completely captivated by the task at hand: painting miniature models, which, in the next lesson, will take part in an almighty war.
For some teachers, this image won’t be familiar. But for others, it will conjure up nostalgic memories from their own childhoods, of hours spent at a games table, discussing war tactics with their friends. And for a few, it won’t be an activity restricted to memory: but one that is very much alive today.
The game is Warhammer - and at Bennet’s school, it has worked wonders for engagement, emotional regulation and wellbeing.
Bennet is a secondary teacher at an independent secondary school in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. The school is attached to a residential care home, and the students are care-experienced with complex behaviour needs, with the majority - mostly girls aged between 12 and 15 - living in care units or with foster parents.
So where did the idea of integrating Warhammer into the curriculum come from? And how exactly does it work?
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It started with Bennet himself: as a student, he worked in the Warhammer shop in Edinburgh, where he saw the effect the game could have on children at first hand.
“So often, when I was in the shop, children would come in and parents would say, ‘Oh my God, he doesn’t make a sound while he’s painting.’ It’s naturally a quiet, relaxing and therapeutic activity,” he explains. “So I thought it was something we could give a go at school.”
He contacted the Warhammer Alliance - the educational support programme for the Warhammer hobby - which sent packs of materials for free. He then found dedicated space for the activity on the timetable. Every Thursday afternoon, students have a choice of a number of enrichment activities they can do: making jewellery is an option, drama is another. With a bit of persuasion, Bennet convinced the rest of the senior leadership team that Warhammer should be added to the list.
Warhammer: Improving behaviour in school
When introducing the game to the students, the resources from Warhammer were a big part of the appeal, he explains. Each pack was in a “really cool” box, with the models, brushes and paints included, as well as a magazine full of activities and information.
“It was a real ‘wow’ moment: they’d never seen anything like this before. Typically, Warhammer is a male-dominated game, but because the girls had never even heard of it, none of those stereotypes crept in,” he says.
Bennet then showed students how to build the models using the glue, how to spray-paint them to give a base coat, before then painting them properly. Once the armies had been created, the games began.
For Warhammer novices, the game works like this: players take their turn to move their models and position them. Each model has different abilities and powers, and to be able to use these, players have to roll a certain number on the dice. It’s a game that has links to maths, explains Bennet.
“It might be that to use their powers, they have to roll up to a three on the dice. To wound their opponent maybe they have to hit a four up on the dice. That’s all probability, and we talk about that: what are the chances that you’ll make a hit? What are the chances of taking out the other model? They’ve really engaged with that,” he says.
There are thousands of models and scenarios in which the game can be played, so Bennet naturally lets the students take the lead on when they are ready to start a new game.
While there is a maths connection, Bennet says that the main benefit of the game is that it has helped to foster better relationships - between the students, and with him as their teacher.
“During this time when they’re quiet and reflective, I’m able to talk to them about pastoral issues,” he says. “Some things have come up organically in discussions, which they’ve never talked about before.”
He describes a conversation he heard between two girls while they were painting. The girls were discussing the importance of privacy on Facebook, which had started when one of the girls remarked that she wanted to post a picture of her model on Facebook.
“It turned into a bit of a mentoring session around digital safety,” he says. “These two pupils would have never interacted before because they’re in different classes and are different ages. But on a Thursday afternoon, they’d been able to interact and speak in a way that was really beneficial, and they’ve built a relationship on that.”
And the benefits extend beyond Thursday afternoons. Because it’s such a relaxing activity, when students are heightened or go into crisis during other lessons, they are allowed to go to the Warhammer room to paint their models.
“It allows them to decompress, come back down to baseline and then re-enter the lesson at a different time, which wasn’t happening before,” Bennet says. “In the past, there would be an argument which would go on all day, but now they’ve got this regulation strategy that works for them.”
Other staff are really pleased with the outcome, he says.
“These are children who argue all the time; they fight, refuse to do work, they abscond,” he says. “Now, staff walk into the art room and the pupils are all sitting in peace and quiet, and saying things like ‘Can you pass me that paint? What colour are you using? I love what you’ve done - how did you do that?’ Their language and demeanour completely changes.”
It’s clear that the game is having a positive effect at Bennet’s school, but how could other schools, which don’t necessarily have time within the school day to dedicate to this, introduce something similar?
Running it as a lunch-time or after-school club would have the same benefits, Bennet suggests. Children of different ages can still interact and mentor each other, and, potentially, it could give parents who have an interest in Warhammer the opportunity to volunteer and become involved in school life.
When it comes to finding the resources, he recommends approaching your local Warhammer shop or looking for a community club.
“In Dumfries and Galloway, we have a really good local community Warhammer club, who have donated loads. Our local shop, too, donated a lot of stuff: I’ve got enough to run this club for years,” he says.
“I also sent a letter to Games Workshop’s Warhammer Alliance to show them what we’d done with the first packs they’d sent to us, and they were so happy that I gave them some feedback, they sent me £300-worth of games. They are pretty willing to send stuff if schools are going to use it.”
As for advice on how to introduce students to the game successfully, Bennet says it’s important to build confidence: the key to this is to build the models incrementally over periods of time.
“We spent a whole week building the models, so that everyone was successful. With a lot of children, there’s a lot of self doubt, so the first steps need to be achievable for everyone,” he says.
When you reach the painting stage, he recommends the Warhammer YouTube tutorials, in which experts demonstrate a whole range of specialist techniques.
“When children see their finished product at the end, they need to be really proud of all the techniques they’ve used. If I just gave them the models and said ‘paint these’, they wouldn’t have thought it was worth their time,” he says.
“But because they’ve seen real skill needed on the YouTube channel, they are so pleased with their end products. Often, they can’t believe what they’ve managed to achieve.”
