Usually, what students learn at school is coming
from curriculum and because we learn by curriculum it is limited. To reinforce
that problem, there are some movements to try new items. One of trial is ‘Genius
hour’, there are more specific information in the CNN.com article, ‘'Genius
hour': What kids can learn from failure’’ by Emanuella Grinberg.
There is a school which operates ‘genius
hour’. Genius hour is motivated from Google’s 20% time initiative, which allows
employees to spend 20% of working hours to their own ideas, and there are some
schools which applies this idea, and spends this time as students-led passion
projects with focusing on creating and sharing. Genius hour has education
purpose to promote students-driven learning, and give opportunity to learn about
thinking without any help. During this time students ask their own questions
and do their research and make conclusions.
The teacher who is doing genius hours in
class is Nicholas Provenzano in Grosse Pointe South-High School in Michigan,
and he post student’s projects every week. He started to do Genius Hour because
he was inspired by Twitter, and he made commandments, and one of the commandment is “failure is an option” While genius hour proceed, Provenzano tell students, failure is
acceptable and allows students to take risks, and learning is from what they
fail to do. Traditional learning environments do not allow students to allow taking
risk. He learned from this time that students want some freedom to research
what they want to, and there are many things they wanted to study about. One
hour of the week when failure isn’t just an option, it is giving students
opportunity to learn. Proceeding genius hours are important, but it is
important to educate parents because the concept of genius hours is unfamiliar
to both parents and students. To help parents understand the concept, it is
better to inform parents what they did; therefore, parents will support and
like genius hours.
There are lots of succeed exampled of
genius hour; for instance, student named Emily, first had hard time to decide
conclusions with friends, and finally decide to research what brand of sneaker
is best. First, she surveyed her school students and teachers, and with teacher’s
help she surveyed other school’s teacher and students. After a few months of
gathering opinions, they decided to put the sneakers through more empirical
testing with the help of their science teacher. They contacted eight brands to
gather sample sneakers. From the research, she learned many things about
sneakers such as color and style mean a lot to consumers, functions are support
are also important especially for runners. From research, Emily felt intimidating
because it was first time calling company to request information and write formal
letters. Although, it helped her learn brainstorm and interact with others and
have confidence in her ideas.
Based on this, it is well know that just following
curriculum prevents students to have less creativity and just memorizing facts.
I believe students need opportunity to do projects which they wanted to do, and
not limited at the curriculum. One hour in one week is not much time, and it
will not harm curriculum. It will help students to develop their opportunities.
Also, giving more freedom in education will motivated students to study and get
interested in going to school
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