I'm in my early 50s and have been seriously considering going to school. I have performed manual labor for most of my working career, and though I truly enjoy it, my body cannot keep up anymore. A few years ago I began looking for work in an office environment, and after a a demoralizing year of submitting resumes, I landed a minimum wage job in a small customer support office inside a larger organization. The work was soul suckingly boring. I applied to other departments and received job offers, but management would not let me leave customer service because I have a way of deescalating difficult situations. I was eventually offered the customer support manager role, but I refuse to manage people. Since the company would not let me move out of customer support, I left them and took a long vacation. That is where I am at now.

I am afraid that an educational investment will not pay out the dividends that I am hoping for. I don't have all the time in the world anymore. I guess I am looking for career / school advice, or if not advice, similar journeys.

Has anybody had much experience playing DnD or other tabletops with children? I've been toying with the idea of making a fairly straightforward and simplified RPG using Story Cubes and GURPS that kids can get involved with easily and have fun playing. I'm specifically aiming to play with my daughter (8) and my niece (5) on a big family holiday in August, though I see no real reason that this couldn't work with adults as well.
Essentially, the conceit would go along the lines of each player rolling a limited number of story dice to help with character creation and such. I'd ask the players a few simple questions about their powers (for example, are you more of a wizard or more of a warrior?) to get some basic stats stats together (STR, DEX, INT, CON), and then use story dice myself to quickly improvise a short one-shot session.

Does anyone have experience playing with kids, and if so - any pointers? Am I being too ambitious about children's ability to imagine stuff in this way? If so, are there any good systems out there that are good for young people to pick up and get stuck into roleplaying with?

What did you like about school?
What did you dislike about it?
What were the most important things that you learned?
What would you change about education if you had the power?
If you could go back and re-do things knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I'm not necessarily looking for individual answers to each question, I'm just putting those out there to frame the kind of thoughts I'm looking for. I'm really just interested in hearing other people's stories! I'm a teacher and frequently do a lot of talking about education from my own perspective, but I don't feel like I do enough listening to others' views.

Also, to avoid gumming up the questions with multiple tenses, I wrote everything in past tense. That doesn't mean I'm only interested in the responses of people who are done with their formal education though. I'd love to hear from people who are still in school as well!