32 Game Boys on the Wall and Zero Screens for Two Weeks: Inside the High School Class Teaching Video Games as Literature
In most high schools around the world, pulling out a gaming handheld during class guarantees an immediate trip to the principal's office. At Grants Pass High School, a public school in Southern Oregon, the rule is flipped entirely upside down. When senior students step into room 214, they are greeted by rows of clear hanging wall pockets holding 32 operational Nintendo Game Boy consoles, ready for study.
The mind behind this unique educational lab is John Kellogg, a veteran English teacher and lifelong gamer. Rather than using video games as casual entertainment or a digital babysitter, Kellogg built a formal, district-approved senior curriculum (English 12) titled "Video Games as Literature." His goal is clear: treating interactive digital media with the same analytical depth, narrative scrutiny, and academic rigor traditionally reserved for Shakespearean plays or classic novels.
32 Game Boys and 26 Xbox Consoles: A Grant-Funded Classroom Lab
The classroom setup is genuinely impressive. Alongside the 32 original DMG-01, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance units, Kellogg has gathered 26 Xbox Series S consoles, several Nintendo Switch systems, three PlayStation 5 units, and two Xbox Series X consoles. Yet the monochrome 8-bit handheld from 1989 remains the pedagogical centerpiece of the entire course. For Kellogg, the vintage Game Boy is the ideal teaching tool: it boasts unmatched durability, endless rechargeable battery life, and a distraction-free offline design that keeps students completely insulated from web notifications and social feeds.
Assembling this hardware took years of grants and personal dedication. Kellogg secured over $15,000 in educational funding, including a $5,000 grant from the Portland Trail Blazers Foundation, topped off with community contributions and money out of his own pocket.
Play for Hours, Then Write for Weeks Without a Screen
Anyone expecting a glorified arcade session will find quite the opposite. Screen time in Kellogg's syllabus represents only a fraction of the total hours. The class follows a disciplined two-phase structure: students play a designated title for a handful of focused sessions, and then the consoles are packed away. What follows is two full weeks of screen-free creative writing, essay drafting, and text analysis. Assignments are graded against traditional senior English standards, emphasizing thesis strength, grammar, structural coherence, and narrative insight.
Practical assignments illustrate this rigorous approach. While modern players debate the latest hardware releases like the new Switch 2 bundles, Kellogg uses Pokémon Red and Blue to examine elemental type advantages as metaphors for conflict dynamics and structural storytelling. With Red Dead Redemption, students examine historical fiction, the closing of the American Frontier, and the inevitable encroachment of industrial progress on individual agency. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, students adopt the perspective of an unnamed NPC, authoring first-person journals that explore silent witnesses caught in wartime. Meanwhile, titles like Hades and The Stanley Parable serve to dissect branching narrative pathways, agency, and ethical dilemmas.
District-Approved Rigor and an Open-Access Curriculum
The project quickly attracted regional and industry attention. Local television station KTVL News aired an in-depth report on Kellogg's classroom, highlighting the school district's formal approval of the program, which mirrors higher education college seminars. Specialized outlets such as 80 Level and GaGadget subsequently documented his unique teaching methodology as requests from other educators poured in.
In response to this growing demand, Kellogg launched his official pedagogical hub, Teaching With Video Games. Through the platform, he provides open-access workbooks, grading rubrics, and unit guides for teachers aiming to incorporate interactive storytelling into their own English curricula.
After Kellogg shared photos of his classroom setup on Reddit under the handle AnonymousCerealBowl, the initiative went viral, drawing heartfelt praise from educators, parents, and players worldwide. Former students credit the course with reigniting their interest in reading and written expression. As schools across the globe wrestle with screen time policies, Grants Pass High School demonstrates that when framed with discipline and academic depth, video games do not pull students away from literacy - they become one of its most compelling doorways.
SEO consultant for over 20 years and digital entrepreneur, Charles 'Grimtag' Ronchain is the founder of Pro-Gamer.gg, Retrocharting.com, and Gamescharting.com. A competitive gamer, streamer, and retro game collector, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years, notably as a consultant for leading game price comparison platforms. Passionate about real-time performance data and gaming technology, he analyzes competitive esports, gaming hardware benchmarks, and creator workflows on Pro-Gamer.gg with an authentic player perspective.
