Genius Hour and Community Involvement

When I first thought about trying Genius Hour in my classroom, I thought, "Ok, I can do this and I'll just keep this within my four walls.  That way, if it doesn't work, no one will need to know."  How many teachers think this way when trying new things? Well, that thought lasted all of 15 minutes for me!  I am a teacher who wants learn from my mistakes.

Well, now I've really opened it up!  I've invited many people from the district and the community to come and help us with our Genius Hour projects.  So far I have a student going to the high school to weld with the instructor (which I will video tape for him and Periscope), an instructor from a local business called, The Paint Factory to work with two students to do acrylic painting, and a teacher from the district who is a master gardener to come and plant container gardens with two students. We've invited a technology specialist from the district to come and build a car from a recycled pop bottle, but we haven't heard back yet (we invited him on Friday afternoon), and we are sending emails on Monday to two local business to help with the green screen work (I have 3 students who are working on DoInk projects).  We will email parents to ask who can come and work with studetns who are working on sewing (four students, and two of them are challenging projects!).  If I can't get parents to help, I will ask the Middle School and High School teachers and students for help.  My final emails I'm working on are to a professional football player to ask if we could Skype for 10-15 minutes with questions they receive ahead of time.  Wish us luck!!!

My purpose of blogging about Genius Hour is simple: 

• Try Genius Hour, and think BIG!!  
• Get the help you need to make it all work.  
• You definitely want extra hands in your classroom when you are doing Genius Hour in primary grades.
• Video as much as you can, or ask someone else to come in and video it for you.  It is awesome to go back and see their excitement and watch their learning happen!

By the way, when I was at Walmart, explaining to the employee cutting all my fabric what it was for, he was LIT UP!  He kept saying, "Why couldn't I have had you when I was in first grade.  I would have loved to learn about things I was interested in!"  

FIND THAT PASSION, PEOPLE!!!! :)