Our Approach

Ideology

How often do we in adult life say “If only I had known that sooner…” and think, this is something worth learning at school? It is not achieved with the “education-as-usual” type of thinking. It requires a new approach, it requires whole person learning.

Which basic life skills are required, when you step out on your own for the very first time?
It is such a wide variety of skills, that make up a balance of well-being in life, yet much can be achieved with some basic tools in the different areas that make most of the impact:

Relational Wellbeing: how to engage effectively with your surroundings.
Emotional Wellbeing: how to acknowledge, manage and express your feelings.
Spiritual Wellbeing: how to explore values, beliefs, practices and connections that provide meaning and direction for your life, while respecting others.
Environmental Wellbeing: how to live consciously to maintain and improve a healthy environment.
Physical Wellbeing: how to listen to, and take care of your body.
Financial Wellbeing: how to achieve confidence and security with your financial situation.
Vocational Wellbeing: how to find intentional, life-giving alignment with who you are and what you do.
Career Wellbeing: how to gain clarity and confidence to find direction in life.
Intellectual Wellbeing: how to use tools and awareness to integrate learning into your everyday life.

We believe in life-long-learning and personalized learning. Our approach to teaching is more along the lines of coaching, building knowledge based on the capacities and interests of each individual. We believe in learning from each other, whether teacher or student.

When you explore the world through your passions and interests, and if what you do is challenging, stimulating and rewarding, learning becomes engaging and fun. There’s no such thing as a 9th or 10th grader in our vocabulary. A person’s performance at any level may vary greatly and not be depending on age at all. We believe education should reflect each individual’s uniqueness.

Project-based learning and real-world inquiry bring learning to life. Through projects and exploration into a wide range of subjects, students put their skills directly into practice in an interdisciplinary way. Through attention to choices, interests, and roles the students gain greater insight into own desires and possible career direction.

The world is changing and education is changing with it. Studies show that we as humans learn better i.e. retain knowledge better and quicker when we are having fun learning – this is self-evident, just ask yourself! With the pace of technological inventions, many new tools have fortunately reached the educational field also. At MCGA we are looking into the world of games, studying the skill-sets required to produce games and aiming to have fun while learning.

We are also very focused on social skills, how to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language, and our personal appearance. We endeavor to create community – that is person to person communities and not just viral ones. We aim for community involvement through participating in local activities or sports events and us inviting people from the local community to participate in theater productions, concerts or art-shows that we might put on.

We find social skills, community involvement, and environmental awareness to be essential qualities and we will devote time to examine and discuss values and beliefs that make up the foundation for these.

Entrepreneurship

“Know thyself, and to thine own Self be true” a famous quote – Jesus said this.

At MillCamp we will look into this in great detail. Each one will be wiser as to “What are my strengths”? – One can only build performance on strengths.
Through research and feedback analysis, each one will uncover own strengths and weaknesses, and we will concentrate on directing competent students into star performances.
“How do I perform?” – Am I a reader or a listener?
Like one’s strengths, how one performs is unique. It is a matter of personality, says Peter Drucker in his book: “Managing Oneself”.
At MillCamp we will study those key elements crucial to success in life. “How do I learn?”, “What are my values?”, “Where do I belong?”, “What should I contribute?”.
We will research common traits in the pursuit of a balanced life in the main areas of physical wellbeing, financial wellbeing, relationships and fulfillment as common denominators to the above. We will study common ideas of successful people of all times.

In the 2000s, the definition of “entrepreneurship” has been expanded to explain how and why some individuals (or teams) identify opportunities, evaluate them as viable, and then decide to exploit them, whereas others do not, and, in turn, how entrepreneurs use these opportunities to develop new products or services, launch new firms or even new industries and create wealth (from Wikipedia).
At MillCamp we will look into what it takes to become an entrepreneur and what it means to have an entrepreneurial spirit.

Curriculum

All subjects at MCGA will be explored through the lens of telling a story to an audience.

Whether the next step for the students go in the direction of actual game development, film-making, script-writing, theater-directing or anything like it – it will be a basic required skill to be able to examine a subject, do research into it, find key points to hold on to or tell a story about, assign roles or create characters, create a story-board or flow, decide on ways to present the findings, create an environment for it and finally present it. And in order to always be able to improve oneself, the next step is reflection and evaluation – or doing a “post mortem” as they so cheerfully call it in the gaming industry (and in software development generally).

Daily Schedule

7:00-8:30
Morning assignments and Breakfast

8:30 – 9:30

Assembly – everybody meet up for morning activity… “Stand-up” – who is doing what today…

9:30 – 11:30

1^st session – Fruit break / tea – 2^nd session

11:30 – 13:30

Noon-assignments and Lunch (hot meal)

13:30 – 14:00

Movement for digestion

14:00 – 16:00

3^rd session – Tea-break – 4^th session

16:00 – 17:00

Movement

17:00 – 19:00

Afternoon-assignments –and Dinner (cold meal)

19:00 – 22:00

Free-time or evening activities (games/board games/movie night/art night…etc.)

22:00 – 22:30

Evening tidy-up
In own rooms – reflections / dairy…
Lights out!

The above routine will be the general framework – outings, trips and excursions will naturally affect the structure 🙂

Weekend Workshops and Excursions

Being an international boarding school, we assume that you’ll stay on 24/7 from school start until the 2-week X-mas break in the 1st semester, and again for the whole 2nd semester. We have fun and interesting weekend workshops and also lots of outdoor and sports-activities as well as excursions on the weekend.

We have planned some field-trips: We will visit exciting entrepreneurs and/or attend relevant conferences.

What is MillCamp Game Academy (MCGA)

This short film explains the concept of the Danish ‘efterskole’. MillCamp Game Academy (MCGA) is much like an ‘efterskole’ although it is not. MCGA is a Danish boarding school which offers the first IE Education: the first International Entrepreneurship Education with it’s full content.

The structure of the ‘efterskole’ is the same. This framework is exceptionally strong for networking and community-building and strengthening your communication skills, where you will learn how to build strong relationships across cultures, languages, ages and industries.

Where MCGA differs from the conventional Danish ‘efterskole’ is when it comes to subjects. MCGA does not teach the conventional 9th and 10th grade syllabus and there is no examn as such. This means you will have to have completed the mandatory school syllabus elsewhere.

In Denmark, there is no compulsory schooling, but there is compulsory education till the end of the 9th grade.

MCGA welcomes students from the age of 16 to 26 provided the compulsory education has been completed.

House rules and democracy

We have some general house rules – there is a no alcohol tolerance, no smoking on the premises and no fornication allowed – the breaking of which could lead to being expelled. There is also a set of common ground rules, which the students participate in setting up and upholding themselves. We aim to practice democracy and discuss the ramifications of such.

Much like the below idea…:)