AUSTIN, Texas — There's a new esports academy private school in Austin called NextGEN Academy that focuses on using gaming as a pathway to learning life skills.
The owners of Alpha Private School, which uses two-hour learning concepts using artificial intelligence (AI) instead of teachers, run the esports academy as well.
With virtual reality sets on, manuals in hand, students in the academy were given five minutes to defuse a virtual bomb in an exercise when KVUE visited the school. The class got a lesson on communicating under pressure, while one student read the manual to give instructions to the student with the VR set deactivating the bomb.
That is what most of the school day looks like for the fifth through eighth graders at the academy.
"We're using esports and gaming as the motivator to help drive kids towards what they want to do and accomplish," campus director Beau Sydes said. "We base our workshops around the things that our students love. So, if our kids love Fortnite, then we're going to build a workshop around Fortnite, teaching them communication or leadership, strategic planning."
Sydes said students do gaming workshops for four hours. The other two hours are dedicated to learning core subjects at their own pace through an AI tutor online. There are no teachers, but what they call coaches or guides help the students along the way.
"Makes me excited because it's more fast-paced," 13-year-old student Bennett Morris said. "I can go at my own speed."
Sydes said students who went through a similar program learned 4.6 times faster than public school students.
The private school just opened this semester and right now, it's a small group of about eight students.
"I am a believer that our current education system, you know, the greater public system is a broken system," parent Michael Morris said.
Morris is Bennet's dad, who saw how gaming at home was already improving his life skills.
"He was writing proposals in some of the games that he was interacting with, and I was really impressed," Michael Morris said.
Even though Bennett Morris' gaming skills are impressive, he wants to use them differently.
"When I grow up I want to be a law enforcement officer," he said.
Sydes said the academy isn't just for students who want to be professional gamers.
"If they want to leave our program and become an engineer, we want to set them up with those tools," Sydes said.
In September, the academy plans to move to its permanent North Austin campus, where it will have a professional esports arena.
"They're going to have top-of-the-line, Alienware computers," Sydes said. "They're going to have a professional shout-casting booth, a professional content creation booth."
Back in the classroom, no one defused the virtual bomb, but that means there's more room to grow and learn.
Tuition is $25,000 a year.