Genius Hour is Pure Genius!

Sir Ken Robinson is an author and leader in developing creativity and innovation in schools. If you've never heard of him and you're an educator, you're seriously missing out! He speaks about how schools kill creativity and how education needs to be reformed. Isn't this what teachers have felt like and thought for years? But the question becomes, what can we, as individual classroom teachers, really do about it? We can't always change the policy, but I think we can change how we implement it.

In comes Genius Hour. It starts with the idea that we all have genius inside of us. The thing is it varies from person to person. Why? First, we all have different talents. Second, we all have different passions. Could you imagine Mariah Carey creating the next innovation in tablet computing? Probably not. But I would say she could create a new innovation in the world of music.

Genius Hour has professionals and students set aside an hour each week to work on or learn about whatever they want. For the classroom, the teacher gives them a structure within to work and monitors to ensure they are on task, but gives them the choice to work on what they want. I thought it sounded pretty awesome. But does this really have a benefit?

Google has something similar called 20% time where their employees are allowed to utilize 20% of their work week, a day, to work on whatever they want. Sound crazy? If you use gmail, you wouldn't think so since that is one of the innovations that came from it!

So, interested to try it?

AJ Juliani has an article on 10 Reasons To Try 20% Time In The Classroom and even had a student redesign his handout into an infographic!! 

Chris Kesler's website, Genius Hour is an amazing resource for beginning Genius Hour in your classroom. He even has advice on how to approach your administrators about it!! (I'll need that for this year!)

Want hear from a teacher who has implemented Genius Hour for a year? Check out Joy Kirr's blog!

If you're still not sold, Genius Hour Manifesto is a great read to get you enthused about Genius Hour!

Now, I don't see this as a panacea for all of the issues in education, but I feel this idea could truly transform the way our classrooms work.

Are you going to try Genius Hour in your classroom? I am! I'll be blogging about our journey and so will my students! Look forward to seeing the amazing work they'll create!

As Always,

Overly Enthusiastic Jen