Demo being played by 1500 students

As of today we have gotten our demo into 17 schools, with over 1500 students set to play Faena! The Faena team is beyond ecstatic everytime we get to onboard a new teacher and help them set up any lesson plans or anything the teachers need so that the students can have the best possible time playing our demo.

When I was teaching middle school Spanish, I was given a curriculum that was entirely reading based as a way to promote school-wide literacy. But this was at the cost of the whole goal of learning a language: being able to use it in conversations! If I wanted to get my students to speak Spanish in the classroom, I really had to stretch myself thin to create activities that would still satisfy the curriculum. But If I wanted them to practice speaking at home? Forget it. Not an option.

I wanted Faena to function both as an in-class activity/curriculum and a take-home speaking practice where, even though your teacher isn’t around to make you speak, you want to anyway because the game world requires it to advance! Plus, we wanted students to practice with useful phrases, not antiquated conversations about the opera straight out of an old textbook. We wanted to empower teachers with this world and to do with it what they please. With the schools that have already played our demo, we’ve seen a wide variety of methods chosen by the instructors. Some wanted their students to speak more Spanish at home on their own time, and some wanted to see the entire classroom work together to move forward in the game world. It’s up to the teachers to decide what’s best for their students. :)

Because of how versatile the demo is, we also have a wide variety of schools playing from home schooling, to middle school and high schools, to universities!

Attached is a photo of our very first playing school, RFK Charter school in Albuquerque, NM! This was back at the end of January, 2023. We worked with the lovely bilingual coordinators at RFK Charter to get their hispanic heritage learners some fun speaking practice.

If you are a Spanish teacher and want your students to have speaking practice and get excited about basically being able to play minecraft in class, please fill out this brief google form! Once we have your email, the Faena team will set you up with the full-length demo and work one-on-one to prep for demo day in your classroom. All for free! All we ask is that you and your students take a few minutes afterward to give us feedback on your experience.

Stay tuned for more updates!