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<\/a>Anyone paying attention to education in the US lately has seen the proliferation of the \u201cGenius Hour.\u201d Presumably inspired by Google\u2019s 20% rule, through which employees of the search engine giant spend a day a week on projects of their own choosing, many schools are adopting a model described by best selling author Daniel Pink as \u201c60 minutes to work on new ideas or master new skills.\u201d By setting aside an hour of instructional time, schools enable students to connect, construct or create, without the constraints or distractions of business-as-usual. What could be better than that?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Genius Hour holds great promise at face value. It\u2019s intended to provide students with a chance to pursue their own questions, delving deeply into their interests and concerns in a self-directed manner. Blogger A. J. Juliani shares the successful outcomes<\/a> in his classroom, \u201cI’ve never received a better response from my students than when we did 20% time. Our class came together and learned everyone’s true interests and passions. We got over the fear of failing together. We cheered for each other during presentations, and picked each other up when things didn’t go as planned. We had conversations about standards, skills and learning goals.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m always heartened to read about deep student engagement, but the ramping up in our nation\u2019s schools of Genius Hour has really thrown me. Have we come to expect so little from schools (and so much from this era of testing) that we now celebrate relegating student self-direction, dialogue about learning, and community building to a mere 60 minutes?<\/p>\n The danger of Genius Hour–just like Women\u2019s History Month, Black History Month and all of those special months–is that it encourages people to think the problem has been solved. \u00a0For 60 minutes, students are engaged, they have choice, and they are following their passion. Yet, just as Black History Month relieves schools during the other months from seriously considering how an entire group of people was summarily excluded from America\u2019s history books, so too can Genius Hour free schools up to devote the many other hours of the day to the kind of rote learning and test-taking we know to be both ineffective and disengaging.<\/p>\n We are fortunate that in Vermont we have long-standing examples of rich, student-centered learning that meet the Bernstein\u2019s widely accepted description of Genius Hour<\/a>: \u201cInstead of giving students assignments with predetermined topics and step-by-step instructions, teachers set aside a designated amount of time during the week for students to engage in self-directed projects that allow them to pursue their own questions, interests, and passions.\u201d<\/p>\n Check out this Vermont middle grades team that has long demonstrated that learning can- and should- be based on student interests and extend well beyond an hour.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>Students on the Alpha Team<\/a> at Shelburne Community School<\/a> \u00a0spend time brainstorming questions about themselves and the world around them. Here is an example of some of the rich and compelling questions learners pose, when given the chance. Their work reminds us that students truly do wonder about the world around them, and that those wonderings are rich fodder for curriculum.<\/p>\n