On the Hero’s Journey
The Hero's Journey: Our Minecraft Economics Quest
Here at Chisholm Creek Academy, we talk a lot, and I mean a lot, about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Campbell recognized that there’s something innate in human nature, our myths, and our stories that follow a similar pattern. We use this language to help our learners tackle the challenges and responsibilities they face every day at school.
One promise I make to our learners is that I will never ask them to do something I wouldn’t do myself. So, I want to share with you a Hero’s Journey that we, as guides, recently went on. It starts like this:
The Call
Long ago—well, sometime last year—we began kicking around an idea: teaching economics.
We knew that for learning to stick, it had to be experienced. Memorization alone wouldn’t cut it. The brain has to see that learning something is worth the effort—that it’s easier to remember and apply than just Googling it. So we asked ourselves: How can we show our learners how economics works, rather than just tell them?
That question was our “Call to Adventure.”
Crossing the Threshold
Our first task was to accept the call, and we did, enthusiastically. We were excited to explore the idea of an experiential Quest centered on economics.
Next, we needed a tool. We explored several ideas, but ultimately chose Minecraft. It was a shared experience—most, if not all, of our learners had played it before. That meant we wouldn’t need to waste energy on learning mechanics. Instead, we could focus entirely on crafting the in-game experiences and interactions that would bring economic principles to life.
This marked our “Crossing into the Unknown.”
Trials and Building the Quest
Much of economics involves learning specific terms—trade, scarcity, inflation, and cost-benefit analysis. Fascinating? Yes, for adults. But how could we make these ideas engaging for elementary and middle school learners?
We knew that if the concepts were going to stick, learners had to experience them. So we divided the workload:
Nick Nelson, our Elementary Studio Guide, researched how to build a customizable Minecraft server.
Renee Weed, our Primary Guide, began building out the tasks and key terms learners would encounter outside the game.
And I? I panicked.
Having just finished Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, I felt like I was barely at an elementary understanding myself. So I turned to those who had walked this path before. Dr. Shawn Broyals, our High School Guide, and his friend Gavin, a Ph.D. economist from the University of Florida, patiently broke things down for me.
I often repeated:
“Please explain that like I’m in middle school.”
And then:
“Please explain again… but like I’m five.”
In Campbell’s language, I was “Meeting the Mentor .”
Preparing the World
Over the course of the year, we pieced the Quest together. We built Socratic discussions around key concepts. We gathered resources. Nick poured hours and hours into building the Minecraft server and making sure our Chromebooks could run it.
Excitement built as we transformed the studio into a Minecraft world:
Posters with hidden tasks and codes lined the walls.
A glittering portal of purple streamers guarded the entrance.
Minecraft blocks, rugs, stickers, and even a tree stretching across the ceiling brought the game to life.
Even the windows looked like they’d been pulled straight from the game.
After a year of planning, we were ready.
The Adventure Begins
At Chisholm Creek Academy, a Quest is a 5–6 week deep dive into a subject, often rooted in science, history, or art. Learners immerse themselves fully, building connections across disciplines.
On that first day, as learners walked into the transformed studio, the excitement was electric.
They dove into the Quest with enthusiasm, defining terms, completing tasks, and entering the server to begin gameplay. Words like scarcity, needs vs. wants, and trade became part of their vocabulary, not because we told them to memorize them, but because they lived them.
Everything was working exactly as planned.
That should’ve been my first clue: the next step in the Hero’s Journey was fast approaching.
The Ordeal
In Campbell’s terms, this is the approach to “The Innermost Cave”—the moment when the hero faces their greatest challenge.
For me, it was inflation.
Despite their success with earlier terms, learners struggled to grasp inflation. With only two weeks left, we needed a solution, not a definition, but an experience.
As guides, we brainstormed: What if we staged an auction? We’d offer three boxes a day, one of which would always contain a coupon for a McDonald’s meal. (our control) At the same time, we’d flood the economy with coins to simulate inflation.
The conversation took ten minutes. Then we were off.
We packed boxes, announced the auction, and began inflating the currency. No red tape. No “district curriculum” telling us we couldn’t. Just educators solving a problem in real time.
Day one: The first box sold for 30 coins.
By day two, the price had doubled.
And it kept climbing.
We began printing paper money—Buck Bucks. I rushed to Office Depot for prints. Nick frantically stamped more zeros onto bills to keep up.
And just like that, inflation became real for our learners.
The Return and Sharing the Elixir
At the end of each session, learners participate in an Exhibition, where they share what they’ve learned with family and the community.
We held the final auction in front of parents, grandparents, and guests. The final box?
It sold for 8 million Buck Bucks.
Afterward, we held a Socratic discussion:
“What is inflation? Why do prices rise? What happens when money is added to the economy without more goods?”
And they got it.
Not because we told them. Because they lived it.
What We Learned
My wife and I started this school nearly five years ago because we weren’t satisfied with traditional education. Even the best private schools we saw were still built on the same 150-year-old model—one that prepares kids to be compliant, quiet citizens who follow orders.
We knew there had to be something better.
When we discovered a model that gave structure and language to what we had only imagined, we were overjoyed. And we also knew: if we put our sons into a school like this, it would ruin them for all other schools. So, we built one.
What about the guides? We learned and embraced that just because a Quest is not working fully as we planned, that does not equate to failure. We learned we can adapt and pivot as a team with confidence in our ability to problem solve.
In this process, I (Dave) have learned and hopefully modeled rejecting a Victim Mentality to our learners and learning from our failures. We have learned to let go of our preconceived notions and roll with the punches, weather that looks like an immediate adjustment of the learning plan and printing out thousands and thousands in reward monies, or recognizing that the lesson plan I meticulously wrote out… is boring and needs adjustment, we must meet the learners where they are at and give them the tools they need to succeed.
I (Renee) admit to feeling defeated anytime an aspect of a quest does not "work out." As much as we preach learning from failure to our learners, experiencing it is what I needed, over and over, to grow. Just like the learners needed to experience the economic terms for themselves, I needed to experience the failure and the successful pivot. Funny how that works out, practicing what you preach, applying the same concepts to my own life and Hero's Journey. To me that is proof that what we are doing here is equipping learners with lifelong skills.
Every time we build a quest, I (Nick) am humbled by the constant tweaking they need. My fellow guides are truly exceptional, and few things bring me more joy than collaborating on building these adventures for our learners. But, there is not a single one that has gone off without a hitch. Every single one, we’ve adjusted on the fly, to adapt to changing circumstances in the studios and/or addressing aspects of the quest we hadn’t considered. It has reinforced the trust we put in our learners. We are wholly inadequate to the task of giving our learners an education. Our learners possess so much more than we are able to give, that to limit them to what we provide would be to limit their growth. This is why we don’t teach, we don’t transfer knowledge and skill from ourselves to our learners. We build worlds for them to explore, and in that exploration, they find in themselves that which we are incapable of giving them: independence, confidence, and true understanding, things that can only be discovered and seized, not bestowed.
This quest, as do most, continually showed me that my job is to provide adventures for our learners to take on, and to pay attention. Our learners are the ones who show us what works and what doesn’t. I always learn something new from watching our learners. If I didn’t, if our learners engaged in the quests in a wholly predictable way, that would be my true failure as a guide. It’s the constant adjustments and tweaking that shows me we’re on the right track, that our learners are going beyond that which we could give them, that they are taking up the call to adventure and running with it further than we had imagined.
This is Chisholm Creek Academy.
A school that:
Bucks the norms
Fosters creativity instead of crushing it
Grants freedom to those who can wield it responsibly
Builds community instead of compliance
Allows learners to own their education
It also allows us, as guides and parents, to experiment and adapt in real time, to build solutions for real problems, and to explore what’s possible when we step outside the box of “what school is supposed to look like.”
We are honored to walk this journey with your families.
We are humbled to be trusted with your children’s education.
And we are so, so excited to see what comes next.