Royal High School students immerse in Cold War crisis at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Gabi Muñoz rested one hand on a wooden podium emblazoned with the seal of the President of the United States. With the other, she pointed toward a raised hand in the press briefing room crowd.

For the hour prior, the Royal High School senior had been next door in a scale replica of former President Ronald Reagan's Oval Office, leading her national defense staff through a simulated national crisis on Tuesday morning.

The role-playing reporter, another classmate, asked if Muñoz, playing the U.S. president, was worried her crisis response would affect her reelection campaign.

Muñoz hesitated, then broke out in laughter. "Yes," she replied.

The most honest president in American history and her Royal High School classmates were the first group to tackle the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's immersive leadership simulation. The new program assigns students to play roles as national defense officials, newspaper reporters and intelligence analysts responding to the downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007 by Soviet fighter jets in 1983.

The program built on the template the Reagan Leadership Center established in 2008, when it first started launching fifth- to eighth-graders into a simulation of Reagan's 1983 invasion of Grenada.

Megan Gately, the center's director of learning and engagement, said the new program, which has over 100 outcomes depending on player decisions and computer "dice rolls," was designed to give players some "some skin in the game."

"We want students to walk away and go, 'Being a leader is hard, but I can do it," Gately said.

Muñoz is a veteran of the program, having experienced the Grenada scenario as a fifth-grader and beta-tested an early version of the KAL 007 scenario. She said the Oval Office experience, which gives individual players "influence points" based on the outcomes of their decisions, made her more cautious about politics.

"Everyone has their own agenda," she said. "It makes me a little more judge-y."

Kate MacDonald, another Simi Valley senior who filled the role of a newspaper editor, agreed.

"I've always been a little skeptical," she said, noting that the game rewarded its mock newsrooms for sensationalism. "This is America. We're consumers."

Gately said the center had hired computer programmers to help build the game platform, which feeds decisions from three hubs – Oval Office, intelligence center, press briefing room – to each other as each formulates its response to the unfolding crisis.

It's a big step up in complexity from the middle school-targeted Grenada simulation, and Gately said she hopes the game will appeal to groups of adults as well.

She gestured toward the mock-up of the White House press briefing room, which designers worked to mimic down to the carpet pattern. "You can't replicate this."

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Royal High School class takes on Reagan-era Cold War crisis