Don't Feel TOO Good About Yourself...

   🔺A few years ago, my wife took a detour into a McDonalds for a celebratory ice-cream cone. As she was revelling in whatever wonderfulness that had occured that day, she told the smiling drive-thru window associate that she just wanted a little custard and it was such a light dessert. The woman shrugged, and said "honey, don't feel too good about yourself." Victory lap meet screeching halt. It may just be just a little custard, but it's not kale salad.

I had a similar moment during my first shot at a Genius Hour in my classroom recently. I must have read about the Genius Hour on Twitter over the past couple of years, but I really had a good look at it at a Google for educators (GAFE) summit in Palo Alto, California last summer. I even won Esther Wokcicki's book "Moonshots in Education" at the conference. She discusses Genius Hour and the power of choice and passion in the classroom with some great real-world examples. I later read A.J. Juliani on Genius Hour: http://ajjuliani.com/genius-hour-whats-it-all-about/ I had time over the Winter Break to mull it over and decided it was time for me to give it a shot. Earlier in the school year, I tried several projects where students used their devices and I brought several old computers in from home to supplement my "bring your own device" approach for the students. I tried Pear Deck, an interactive slide-deck learning application and it is absolutely outstanding. Of course Kahoot is always a giant hit and I also used Socrative which I heard referred to as "Kahoot's serious brother" from a participant at a "Cool Tools 2016" education conference. My students found some success creating a Thinglink interactive image and I started to feel a victory lap coming on to celebrate using ed-tech success and engagment-topia. I too could roll through the golden arches and declare that I was not really eating anything bad with that creamy custard goodness and, in fact, great teaching is known to knock off 20% more calories than kayaking (no source, but it does sound true). I did have a slight setback with a Newsela.com project. Students had lots of questions for me about their reading and review questions but since I had not seen what the student user interface looked like I had no idea what they were talking about. By the way, using the phrase, "student user interface" makes me feel like a total fraud and I just wanted to throw a red challenge flag out there before continuing. So, I was feeling fairly good about myself. Christmas break was over and did I mention that the new Chromebooks were arriving! One Chromebook for every ninth grader...one ninth grader for every Chromebook. This was going to be amazing. Release the Genius Hour!

All systems were go. The students were bright eyed. A few students who usually looked like school was a very painful, soul sucking experience were walking around typing madly on their Chromebooks. Exploration, passion and inspiration had arrived! The sound of Angels may have been heard to those who, like me, were listening. "Genius Hour," I said, will be like your future college and career experience. You will research, question, and create. I drew a Venn diagram on the whiteboard that had a "your interest" circle and an "aviation" circle overlapping. The energy was fantastic as I roamed the room clarifying the objective and doing "sound board" work. Many students chose topics that were completely aviation focused. There were stealth technology enthusiasts and space plane explorers. Future police officers began looking into drones and the legal controversies about how they would be employed by law enforcement. A group of young ladies had a keen interest in shoes and were trying to step into the aviation circle but were hitting a few snags. I asked about Tom's Shoes and they were indeed aware of the for-profit Social Venture. This led to a discussion about the developing world, clothing, food and water. This led to the Syrian Civil War and humanitarian crisis. The discussion then broadened to crisis relief and one of the eager geniuses said that airplanes drop supplies into disaster areas. Bam! They quickly grabbed their Chromebooks and were off to the airdrops. Many heart-warming stories like this happened over the class period. As I scanned that scene I succumbed to a little of that amazing feeling-- feeling good about yourself. I gave a five-minute warning and asked them to write a quick reflection on what they learned on a piece of paper and we would return to the topics the next day for them to create their presentations on their topic. One particulary efficient group of young women had been so motivated that I simply stayed out of their way for the hour. One of them was giving me a quizzical look that had overtones of disappointment. I did not know that my victory lap was about to experience a mega-car pileup. I asked, "what's up?" She hesitated before the kill then said, why would we do all of this work and research and then write what we learned on paper, why don't we share Google Docs with you on Google Classroom." Then to make sure that I indeed did not feel too good about myself, she said, "that just feels so...last year." The Air Force used to declare over and over that some people just don't learn unless they have a "significant emotional event." Yep.