TLC: Virtual Youth Development Program
December 1, 2022 2022-12-01 14:43TLC: Virtual Youth Development Program
TLC: Virtual Youth Development Program
Did you know?
Playing Minecraft can help your child develop advanced teamwork and leadership skills!
Minecraft is an online 3D fantasy world where students build structures using digital blocks of stone, dirt, metal and other materials. It is highly engaging and boasts a player base of over 75 million active players.
ReDesignYourGrind uses this popular game as a virtual development environment that allows kids to work together to solve challenges. We accomplish this by issuing intermittent ‘Quests’ to the players with a set of goals that must be accomplished, instituting a temporary leadership hierarchy to delegate tasks, and teaching teamwork and accountability through virtual shared experiences.
Our motto: When the team succeeds, we all succeed!
The Minecraft experience is fun and engaging, but it is also a catalyst for powerful learning. As personal development coaches, many of our biggest “teachable moments” — when we learn about civility and community and doing the right thing — actually occur when the computers are shut off and we are able to talk as a group about what’s happening. These lessons are inspired by Minecraft, but some transformational teaching occurs face to face.
For example, the task may be given to the player base to: “Obtain 7 Blaze Rods”.
This will require material gathering and processing to make armor and weapons, food farming to keep the players alive, construction of a portal to reach the dimension known as the ‘Nether’, and finally engaging in team based combat to slay the monsters and obtain the loot required to complete the challenge.
Upon successful completion of the tasks, we as coaches like to facilitate “mission de-briefs” to allow students to discuss the specific successes and challenges encountered and develop an understanding of ways to avoid future pitfalls or improve the overall experience the next time around.
These skills teach the students leadership and delegation techniques, as well as what it means to be an integral part of a cohesive team.
Our coaches monitor the communications between students and mediate any disputes between them to further reinforce the concepts at play; Teamwork, Leadership and Cooperation.
Minecraft offers powerful lessons in collaboration and relationship building.
Students learn how the Minecraft world works, then tackle big, difficult problems within that game world. At every step, Minecraft offers the promise of building or creating something that has never been done before, using skills and partnerships that players have developed over time.
Because the servers are up 24/7, students may play Minecraft outside of our normal session schedule. During online sessions we assign them goal orientated “missions”, but during our weekly in-person meetings, we go beyond just the gameplay to emphasize the desired teachings.
These online experiences lead to successful interactions in their face-to-face learning because the students will know and trust each other on a level beyond what they had previously experienced.
The power of Minecraft as a catalyst for learning is in its ability to involve students in creating a shared world together, in all its intricacies, challenges, and difficult conversations.
Our coaches are at the heart of this process, not just for providing a safe and powerful learning environment for students, but also in helping them create meaning from the challenges they face and the choices that they make. This teaching also takes place when the computers are off, face-to-face. As students become better citizens in the virtual world, so will they develop powerful skills for negotiation, diplomatic relations, and compromise that will serve them well in the real world.
Gamifying development learning is a core concept at ReDesignYourGrind and we are dedicated to helping your children learn to be more effective people through principles and avenues that they already resonate with.
Enrollment is limited.
ReDesignYourGrind only enrolls 10 students per month into this program so that we can guarantee that each student receives the attention and coaching that they require.
*Access to the Minecraft game is a prerequisite and must be obtained prior to the first session. This can be purchased here: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/store/minecraft-java-bedrock-edition-pc
Once enrollment is full, new spots will not become available until the following month.
Enrollment for January, 2023 is now OPEN.
