Ryan grew up in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota. There he received a Masters of Education and started his teaching career of now over ten years. He has taught upper elementary children of grades three through six in Minnesota, New Hampshire and now Western New York.
Games have always been a part of Ryan’s life from the first board games he played as a child, to role-playing games in high school, to collectible card games in college, and now euro games as an adult.
Ryan has combined his passion for games and education. Throughout his teaching career Ryan has worked on developing curriculum for the classroom that incorporates games and game like structures. He is also very interested in the use of games to support social skills and character education. Ryan is currently hard at work developing some of this curriculum work for self-publication.
In wanting to make a contribution to the hobby of board games, in early 2008, Ryan used his education background to write a lengthy detailed article on the basics of teaching board games. This article was very well received and was even translated into Spanish and Portuguese and published in the Spanish gaming magazine, “Ludo.”
In the fall of 2009 he took the method developed in this article and used it to record a series of game explanations in his podcast, “How to Play.” This podcast is created with the focus for gamers to learn games as well as to learn to teach games. He also occasionally contributes segments to the highly popular podcast, “The Dice Tower.”
Ryan currently resides in Western New York with his wife and two small children. Through his continuing efforts, both professionally and as a hobby, he looks forward to sharing his passion for games and showing what they can be capable of.
Ryan can be contacted directly at howtoplaypodcast@msn.com, at the guild or through BGG.