What is Genius Hour?
Genius hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It provides students a choice in what they learn during a set period of time during school.
Kesler, 2013
My class has embarked on the adventure of the Genius Hour. Some of my students had been involved with it last year, but a majority had never had the chance to explore an interest and create a project around it. I was surprised how many students chose topics that were either too broad or not broad enough. For example, a student wanted to choose the topic of a species of animal – with the limitations of time to both work on the project and present it, such a broad topic would not allow the student to truly explore and discover new information on their interest. Another student wanted to find the steps on how to fix something, and leave it at that. Through conversation and coaxing, the ideas morphed into presentation ideas – a presentation on a specific aspect of the animal species and a demonstration/lesson on how to fix the thing.
The downfall of a program like Genius Hour is that it only happens once a year, and for a short period of time. As is stated on the Genius Hour website, “[a]llow people to work on something that interests them, and productivity will go up” (Kesler, 2013). This information was gleamed from one of the origin stories of the program – Google, the massive tech company, allowed their workers the time to embark on passion projects, and in turn, more work got done. And some of the best programs and features of Google were discovered, including Gmail (Kesler, 2013). In a classroom, that could mean more student engagement which is a crucial key (at least in my opinion) to education. If Genius Hour was featured in the school year as part of the curriculum instead of a one off, two to three week project, could it create a better learning environment? And if you are going to give more priority to something like Genius Hour, what do you need to change and possibly let go to allow the students time to work on their projects?
That being said, is inquiry-based learning is truly meant to encompass all students or just the few who already have the innate curiosity to explore the things around them? It stands to reason that had they been introduced to the model of inquiry-based learning from the very start of their schooling (I won’t use the term education for reasons I will discuss in another blog post), they would be able to navigate their own path through the process. But even the current state of education does not work for every student. I am certain there is no right answer to the questions I have posed, only more avenues to explore and discover. And since it is my belief that education is something fluid, something ever changing and progressing, I wouldn’t want to stifle myself with a question that could so easily be answered within a year.
Bibliography
Kesler, C. (2013, March 29). What is Genius Hour? [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.geniushour.com/what-is-genius-hour/
This is an area of teaching I really want to explore; easier said than done to let kids just “go at it” … I really think we have to find more ways to let kids ‘explore’ their learning. My two cents. 😀
As you’ve suggested, many would argue that all children have this innate curiousity and it is the system of schooling that erodes this over time. I suspect this is why you are carefully using the term ‘learning’ and avoiding the term ‘education’ right now ;D
I will add a question of my own: How might teachers uncover this innate curiousity while ensuring students who are slower to ‘take up’ self-motivated or self-initiated studies don’t fall through the cracks?