Playing Spent!: FGWC Experiences of Poverty Simulation Games

Abstract

First-generation and working-class (FGWC) students bring a different set of life experiences to the classroom than students of privilege. As an instructor from an FGWC background, I use the poverty simulation game Spent! to make economic stratification understandable to students who have led lives of economic privilege and bring FGWC representation to the classroom in a way that honors their unique cultural capital. Despite a tendency toward consciousness raising for students of privilege, poverty simulation can still be a liberatory learning exercise for FGWC students when the cultural capital they bring to the classroom from their lived experience is valued and honored during the activity rather than objectified and subordinated. During the activity, as privileged students express shock at the realities of living paycheck to paycheck, FGWC students confidently share their situated knowledge of poverty. Building on prior assessments of the value of simulation games in the classroom, this article expands this knowledge by specifically looking at the experiences of FGWC students in addition to their more privileged peers in the context of Spent!