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As teachers, we have all been there. We have designed assignments during which students have expressed boredom, stress, or worst of all, apathy. We agree with Wettrick's (2014) argument that schools can often be perceived as "bastions of boredom" and "killers of creativity" and places that embrace "compliance and conformity" (p. xi). In response to Wettrick's call, we aim to build classroom cultures that support creativity and follow Juliani's (2014) conception of Genius Hour. We wondered how we might adapt the approach in different ways to meet the needs of middle level students. The pedagogical approach of Genius Hour offers students opportunities for deeper learning (O'Brien & Adam, 2016), grants students "the freedom to explore, create, and possibly change the world" (Juliani, 2014, p. 19), and follows Google's business model of granting employees 20 percent of their work time to pursue their individual passions (Katrein, 2016). Genius Hour is dedicated classroom time and space each week devoted to students' questions and curiosities in the form of a substantial project students design with the support of the classroom teacher (Juliani, 2014). Whether it be fifteen minutes each day or an entire class period each week, we use different approaches each year to devote 20 percent of our class time to allowing our students to develop these passion projects.
Genius Hour honors student voices and passions and affords them opportunities to ask authentic, meaningful questions that advance their learning. In our experience, students initially feel overwhelmed with the unstructured aspect of Genius Hour. Thus, we have developed strategies to foster student autonomy and support student growth as they pursue passion projects. In this article, we focus on implementation approaches and project development strategies for teachers regardless of their experience with Genius Hour. For each approach, we offer two examples of how this has looked in our classrooms. Strategies and approaches are adaptable to any grade level or content area. We invite readers to envision and revision our approaches to fit the needs of their classroom communities and structures.
Implementation Strategies
To begin Genius Hour, we share with students a wealth of examples from our previous students' work to serve as inspiration. We invite you to share our students' examples if you are implementing Genius Hour for the...