When kids know their idea can actually reach the people in charge, they stop playing and start advocating.
You do not need any game experience. We build the worlds and structure the rounds. Your job is to guide the thinking, and we take care of the rest.
Students enter a Minecraft world modeled on their county. They walk the community, visit landmarks, and start noticing what makes the place particular. All of that happens before anyone tries to improve it.
Students meet community members, gather evidence, and investigate a real local challenge. They listen to several perspectives before settling on a direction. Understanding the problem comes first. Designing comes after.
Teams design a solution and build it in Minecraft. Every decision should respond to what they learned. The build is how they show their reasoning, which is a different job from making something that looks impressive.
Teams record a video walkthrough (up to 5 minutes) and submit. Top teams advance to the county finals and present live to judges and local leaders. An audience that can act on what it hears changes how hard students prepare.
Schools Reinventing Counties puts classroom learning next to the community it describes. The skills students practice outlast the game, and most of them belong to more than one subject.
The State Seal criteria describe civic knowledge, skills, dispositions and experiences. Schools Reinventing Counties and Battle of the Counties give your students a real setting to build most of them, and to show they can.
Students identify and inquire into a real need in their own community.
Students weigh multiple perspectives and possible responses before committing to one.
Students take action by designing and building a proposed community solution.
Students make the case for their ideas to authentic audiences and decision-makers.
Students reflect on their learning, their civic responsibility, and their potential impact.
Your local educational agency decides how its own students meet its locally adopted State Seal requirements. Level Up Civics does not award the Seal. What we provide is the kind of informed civic engagement project the criteria ask for. Learn about California's State Seal of Civic Engagement →
Level Up Civics runs teacher training and professional development on using Minecraft Education for community-based learning. It comes with the program, and it is available on its own to schools that want the practice without the competition.
Educator training runs ahead of the world launch, so you walk in knowing how the world works, how the rounds are structured, and what your students will be asked to produce.
The harder skill is not the software. It is running an investigation, holding students in the problem before they start building, and pushing them to defend a design choice out loud.
Schools that want Minecraft Education in the classroom outside Battle of the Counties can work with us on that directly. The pedagogy travels further than one competition.
Training is provided before launch. For questions about standalone professional development, contact us at info@levelupcivicsfoundation.org.
No. The students in your room who play Minecraft already know it better than most adults, and that is useful rather than awkward. Your role is to guide the thinking. The technical side belongs to them.
No. Schools Reinventing Counties is designed for learners at every level. Whether a student has never played or builds every day, the work is about understanding a community and solving a problem, not about build speed or technical polish.
The schedule is flexible. Schools run it during class, in a club period, or after school. You can spread the work across several weeks and fit it around your existing calendar.
Minecraft Education licensing is coordinated through your county office of education. Minecraft Education runs on Windows, Mac, iPad, and Chromebook. If your school has device questions, your COE can help you work out what's available.
Yes. You can fold in local discussions, extra research, community partnerships, or extension projects that fit your students and your neighborhood. The program is structured enough to run on its own and loose enough to wrap around what you already teach.
One team of four students per school. Each school enters one team in the virtual qualifiers. If your school has more interested students than spots, that is a good problem to have, but you will need to decide who represents the school before submitting.
Training is provided before the program launches, plus ongoing email support throughout. Reach us at info@levelupcivicsfoundation.org any time.
You do not need game experience. We build the worlds, structure the rounds, and run training through your county. You facilitate; your students do the advocating.