The Genius Hour
On April 22, students in the freshmen and sophomore classes completed their Genius Hour Project. Genius Hour is based off of something Google does where they let their employees have an hour of free time a week to brainstorm ideas to help the company. It can be anything that interests a person and can be even outside their job description. It’s often easier to learn something when it interests you or you’re passionate about it, so that was the approach with this project.
Students began working on this project in January 2021. Mrs. Moore, the 9/10 English teacher, explained the reasons why the project was chosen, saying, “...they exercised and applied countless academic and life skills that will carry them far into the future, such as how to phrase questions effectively to find the answers they desire, how to organize information to make sense of it, how to give credit to sources, and how to share that information in engaging methods. Students had the particular benefit of perusing a topic THEY were passionate about, instead of a pre-assigned topic or category, to allow them to invest in their areas of interest.”
To begin with, students had to come up with a “driving question” about their topic. This question had to be one that would require extensive research and time to answer and one that provoked other questions as well. They then broke the driving question down into three smaller questions which would be easier to tackle. They were to create a professional and engaging presentation to then explain and answer the questions to their classmates. An eclectic variety of topics were chosen and Mrs Moore again commented on them: “We enjoyed a wide variety of topics, from how music affects the brain and emotions, alternative methods to generate energy, space travel, forensic anthropology, computer animation, and SFX makeup, mental health and abuse, and the science of love. Some hands-on highlights included a live demonstration of the bass guitar, a tutorial on crafting paradox bracelets, and a 3D model of a car engine, as we learned the history and background of each. Students demonstrated a vast array of knowledge they gathered and compiled to the benefit of their personal and mental growth.”
This project was fun, entertaining, and truly interesting seeing that you got to learn so much about such a myriad of topics and ideas, and even more about the students themselves.
