Bringing Genius Hour to Your School
Course
Proposing Genius Hour to Faculty [5:25]
- Learn to win teachers over by letting them know what Genius Hour can do for them.
- Learn the importance acknowledging the risks that come with Genius Hour.
- Learn ways to gain teachers as your allies in implementing Genius Hour.
To begin a Genius Hour on campus, your best plan of action to win teachers over is to find inside support from key, well-respected members of your faculty. Let's approach key faculty with this question central in your mind. What can Genius Hour offer them? Lead with an explanation of how Genius Hour supports mandated curriculum. Ease their mind by letting them know that through it may seem risky, in fact, Genius Hour truly scaffold state standards. Then use your teacher's evaluation system to show them how Genius Hour can help them achieve more. Now, everybody wants to be a high achiever and you're giving them a guaranteed win. If you share peer-review journal articles, or perhaps a helpful book by yours truly on the topic, it'll let them know that you have a plan.
With all of this in hand, you'll significantly increase the chances of gaining support from your faculty, but perhaps the most powerful tool in your arsenal of persuasion is your assurance that you, the librarian, will undertake all of the risk that comes with Genius Hour. You just need two small things from them. The students need to make consistent visits throughout the year, and the teacher needs to be available to help students who need one-on-one attention. Promise that you will do everything else.
Once that you have one or two key supporters on your side, now's the time to talk to the remaining faculty at their grade level or department meetings. Would it be more efficient to make a presentation to the faculty as a whole group? You bet it would! But there might be some strategic reasons why you wouldn't want to do this. Consider this, you may experience an adverse reaction to speaking in front of large groups of people and therefore, you would probably not make your best case.
Maybe your faculty members succumb to groupthink, which overtakes reason and it squashes creative ideas at their inception. If this happens to your faculty members, then perhaps your allies may not want to speak up in a large group, so you don't want to put them in that situation. They would definitely speak up for you in a smaller group setting.
You'll find that there are additional benefits to small group discussion. Teachers can ask freely questions of a direct, personal, or curriculum-specific nature. There is a higher level of confidentiality, which means, as I'm sure you've experienced, that you'll get more honest and constructive discussion. If you're still not feeling confident, you can convince your teachers in school, I have a script that you can try using word for word in the learning support materials.
After the initial pitch, you can continue by describing Genius Hour in more detail and acknowledge the faculty that are already on board. Be sure not to present only the rosebuds. It's important to have a frank discussion of the potential thorns, too. We don't want any over-romanticized views of what's about to transpire. First, Genius Hour may not run as smoothly as a highly structured pre-planned lesson would, which might be particularly disconcerting to the classroom teacher. Second, it's important to have a wait-and-see and then respond approach to planning. In Genius Hour, the learning is so individualized that there is truly a world of contingencies that we can't even begin to anticipate.
We won't know what students will bring to the table, What topic are they going to choose to study? What skills have they mastered or not yet mastered that we'll need to work on? What presentation methods will they want to employ? We need to make it clear that we, the adults, need to remain flexible and responsive to the students. Giving students choices is not about our comfort level or our desire for predictability, it's about doing what is best for the students so that they can learn to love learning.
You can put your name in this sentence. I, Elizabeth Rush, or you the librarian, am here to do this with you and for you. All you ask of them is strong teacher support. They'll be able to see the kind of support that you seek is not burdensome at all, really. Especially considering that all of this is for the benefit of both the students and them, the teachers.
Now it is time to enlist your teammates as proponents of Genius Hour! Perhaps many have already heard of Genius Hour and greet you with their insecurities about the program. How will you win them over?
In this lesson, Elizabeth Rush gives you a central question to keep in mind when you are approaching your teammates to become proponents of implementing Genius Hour in your library program. What does Genius Hour offer them? It is easy to show how Genius Hour naturally addresses the needs of the entire school community but you also need to be prepared to meet any fears or hesitations about Genius Hour. Using page 6 of the Course Packet (in the Resources above), take a few moments and reflect on the central question, "What can Genius Hour offer them?" How will you answer this question for your teammates?
MLA Citation
Editorial Team, SLC. "Bringing Genius Hour to Your School: What Can Genius Hour Offer You?" School Library Connection, September 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2264413?learningModuleId=2264392&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2268586
You have gathered a small group of teammates together to discuss Genius Hour and it is your time to shine. You have done your research, prepared your materials, and supplied your documentation. Now it is time to stand in front of your audience, confidently, and convince them to implement Genius Hour.
One of the key goals of Genius Hour is the final presentation—providing your audience with the knowledge you have gained. In Genius Hour, we don't demand public speaking from our students just in case that is too much for them. Maybe it is too much for you as well! In this lesson, Elizabeth Rush talks about the main points to cover in your presentation and also provides a script that you can follow word-for-word, adapt, or use for inspiration. Read through the script (provided in the Resources above) and then use page 7 of the Course Packet (in the Resources above) to write your own script to use during your presentation.
MLA Citation
Editorial Team, SLC. "Bringing Genius Hour to Your School: Writing Your Pitch." School Library Connection, September 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2264413?learningModuleId=2264392&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2268589
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Rush, Elizabeth Barrera. "Bringing Genius Hour to Your School. Proposing Genius Hour to Faculty [5:25]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, September 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2264413?learningModuleId=2264392&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2264413?learningModuleId=2264392&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2264413