Episode 406: Step-by-Step Approach for Implementing "Genius Hour" in Middle School

In today's Teaching Middle School ELA podcast episode, I share Step-by-Step Approach for Implementing "Genius Hour" in Middle School. The last few weeks of school can feel like you’re holding your classroom together with tape and sheer willpower. I’m sharing a smarter option: Genius Hour, a structured way to give middle school students real autonomy without turning your class into a free-for-all. When kids get to pursue something they genuinely care about, engagement changes fast and the learning gets deeper, even when the topics stretch beyond ELA standards.

Subscribe for weekly support, share this with a fellow ELA teacher, and leave a review so more teachers can find the show.

Transcript

Why Genius Hour Fits Now

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello, teachers, and welcome to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Today I'm going to talk about a step-by-step approach for implementing genius hour in your middle school classroom. And if you've been teaching for any length of time, you know that the last few weeks of school are just kind of chaos, right? The energy shifts, students' focus goes out the window, you are trying to hold it together through the end. And this is actually such a great time of the year to bring Genius Hour into your classroom. Because instead of white knuckling it to the finish line, we're giving our students something that actually lights them up, something that they can't wait to come to class and work on. And that's what we're talking about today is Genius Hour, what it is, why it works, and exactly how to implement it in your classroom between now and the end of the year. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune in to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple: to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. So the term genius hour is most commonly associated with Google, but the concept actually predates them. And I was reading information about it having to do with um, gosh, the founder of Post-its of 3M. So 3M, that company, had like a 15% culture concept back in the 40s. And that actually led to the invention of the Post-it note, which I find to be fascinating. And so Google actually famously gives their employees roughly 20% of their work week, which is essentially a full day, to pursue whatever interests them. Imagine if they did that for us as teachers. Imagine how creative we would be in another in another lifetime. And this is time for them to work on anything that interests them. So not their assigned projects, not their deliverables, but these are their own ideas, their own curiosity, their own creative instincts, whatever it might be that they want to focus on. And when I first heard about this, my initial reaction was like, that is a great perk, right? It keeps employees happy, it gives them something to look forward to, it makes the company a more attractive place to work. And I think that's all a part of it. But what's more interesting is that unstructured time has actually been extremely productive for the company. Like Google News and AdSense were born out of this creative time, and AdSense accounts for a pretty significant chunk of Google's revenue now, which is very interesting. And so think about what that tells us, right? When people are given space to pursue something that they genuinely care about, the depth of engagement they bring to it is extraordinarily different from what they bring to their assigned work. And that is not a small thing, right? That's the whole argument for bringing this into your classroom. Because your students are not very different from those Google employees, right? They have things that they're deeply curious about, things that have nothing to do with the standards that you're required to teach, maybe nothing to do with English at all, and everything to do with who they are and what they care about. And most of the time, school doesn't ask that of them at all, right? We don't give them the space to pursue those things that are very interesting to them. But genius hour does. So talking about genius hour and this time of year, I think there's this timing argument that I think is worth making explicitly and just uh put shedding light on, right? The end of the school year is when students are most desperate for autonomy. They feel summer coming, they're ready for freedom, they want to do their own thing, they want out. And what Genius Hour essentially says is okay, you can have that, but we're gonna put structure around it, right? So it really is meeting their end-of-the-year needs of just wanting to do their own thing and just being, quite frankly, done with school. So beyond engagement, though, the academic case for Genius Hour is really strong. When students choose their own topic and when they drive their own project, they really start working to find the answer. They're just engaged, they go deeper, they ask follow-up questions, they interview people, they seek out sources, they hit obstacles and they problem solve them. And it's not because you told them to, but it's because they actually genuinely want to figure it out. So the critical thinking that happens organically in a well-run Genius Hour project, that's gonna be some of the most authentic critical thinking that you will see all year long. And there's something that extends beyond this one project. When a student starts to learn that learning something new can feel like this, like something they chose, something that matters to them, something that they're proud of, that really changes their relationship in with learning in a way that goes far beyond your classroom. So you're not just assigning a project, you're potentially shifting how they see themselves, not just as learners, but as creators, right? As people. So I was recently invited, and actually I was there, gosh, maybe a month ago, but I am a part of, I'm on the board for the Principaled Entrepreneurship Institute at my former high school. And I go speak to the class of juniors and seniors every year. And essentially what it is, is it's a two-year-long program. So it's junior and senior year, and students develop their own entrepreneurial ideas. It's very similar to Shark Tank. And this past time that I went to them, I talked to them about mission statement and core values. Well, let me tell you, that stuff is not particularly like sexy, riveting topics for teenagers, but the engagement in that room with those students was remarkable. Those kids were locked in, they were asking me questions, they were making real connections because they were processing everything that I was saying through the lens of something that they were building themselves, something that they cared about, right? There was a student who was developing a specific type of surfboard thing. There was another student who is creating like throwback um like sweatshirts and t-shirts to uh, gosh, like the 1960s logos of each of the local high schools from back of the day. There was another student who is developing an app to help with search and rescue. So, like they have these varied topics that are all very important to them. And they're learning about mission statement and core values, which can be boring, but they're learning about it through the lens of something that matters to them. And that is what investment does in learning for our students. So genius hour really creates that same condition in your classroom. So here's where I want to be practical, because one of the most common reactions that teachers have when I talk about genius hour is like, oh, Caitlin, that sounds great in theory, but if I just tell my students to explore their passions, I'm gonna spend 40 minutes watching them do absolutely nothing. And that is a totally valid, totally fair concern. And that's where structure and expectations are what make this work. So step one, before students do anything, is that they're going to start with a proposal. So before a single minute of genius hour time begins, every student writes a proposal. This is a non-negotiable, and it really is actually one of the most valuable parts of the whole project. And this is very similar to what they do at the in the entrepreneurship class at my local high school. And the proposal asks students to commit not just to a topic, but a question that they want to answer and a project that they're going to produce. So here's a template of what that looks like. I would like to create a genius hour project on the topic of blank. This topic interests me because blank, my guiding question will be blank. This is important because blank through planning, research, and other strategies, I will blank, and the goal of this assignment will be to blank. So that's the um template that you're going to provide for your students. So I want to give you a concrete example of what a student might write for this. I would like to create a genius hour project on the topic of food allergies. This topic interests me because food allergies run in my family, and I want to understand how to keep people safe. My guiding question will be: how can we keep people with food allergies safe? This question is important because if the general public understands food allergies and how to respond to reactions, people with allergies can live safer lives. Through planning, research, and other strategies, I will create a short film that teaches my classmates the basics of food allergies, how to prevent reactions, and what to do if someone is having one. The goal of this assignment will be to help my audience understand their role in keeping others safe. So notice how specific that was. We know the topic, the driving question, the intended outcome, we know the purpose, and that specificity is what we are approving as teachers before students even begin their work. So you'll read through their proposals, give them feedback where needed, you know, steer them in the right direction of more specificity and um what's the word I'm looking for? More specificity and it's not gonna come to me. Um, structure. That was the word. And you're doing that and approving it before they even get to work. So you read through them, give feedback, don't green light anything that is too vague to even produce a real project. And so students might produce a presentation or a film or I anything, a song, whatever it might be, they're producing some sort of real project at the end to share their findings with the class. So one more thing about the guiding question is that you want to keep coming back to it, right? When students start to lose steam like three weeks into their project, and some of them will, that's just the reality. That question is what you bring them back to, right? Ask them, why did you care about this when you originally chose this topic? What did you want to find out? Like, why do you care about this? And that why is what's going to reconnect them to the work. So, step two is to set your schedule. Genius Hour can take many forms depending on your specific constraints. So, some teachers dedicate every Friday to it, which for when I said that, some of you might have freaked out a little bit. So that's not gonna be you. Others give one full class period every other week. Some teachers run it as a standalone project for a week or two. There really is no single right answer. The right answer is whatever fits your pacing schedule and your students and what they're capable of. But what matters is that the time is protected and consistent. So when students know that Thursday at one o'clock, it's genius hour time, it becomes something that they look forward to and that they plan for. When we are inconsistent, it will kill the momentum on these long-term projects. So just like we talked about in last week's episode with planning our prep periods, we want to protect these genius hour periods, put them on your calendar. It is a non-negotiable. Never question the decision, just like we talked about in yesterday's Monday mindset episode. All right, step three is to build in structure at every work session. And this is a piece that separates a productive genius hour from just a free period, essentially. So the very first work session should function as a planning period. You want to give students an organizer that has guided questions, like what is your guiding question? What do you need to research in order to answer it? What materials will you need? Is there anyone that you need to contact? An expert, a community member, someone with lived experience? If you do need to contact somebody, how will you reach them? When will you reach out to them? How can an adult in your life support this project? And how will you present your final product? And that last question matters more than it might seem. All right, students who know from day one that they're building toward a film or a demonstration or a presentation, or maybe they're making a physical prototype, like a physical product, they're going to make better decisions throughout the project because they have that end product in their mind that shapes every step that leads to it. And then for every subsequent work session, we're shifting from planning to reflection. So a short exit ticket at the end of each period of Genius Hour is plenty. You can simply ask students, what did you accomplish today? What obstacles came up and how did you handle them? What do you need to do before our next session? And what is your goal for next time? And those check-ins serve two purposes. The first is that they keep students accountable between sessions, and then they also give you real-time visibility into who's on track and who needs a nudge before a smaller problem becomes a big one. One more tool that I think is worth considering is the Pomodoro method when your students are working on their genius hour. So for the work sessions themselves, you might want to consider introducing your students to this concept of the Pomodoro method. It's very simple. Basically, it's 25 minutes of fully focused work followed by a five-minute break. So you set a timer, you commit to the interval, and you do not let anything interrupt it. And this really works. It's how I wrote my sections of our book. I needed the Pomodoro method when I'm in like a deep work of six hours that I have to get something done and I'm not gonna get up from my desk. I follow the Pomodoro method because it keeps me on track and like working really hard and dialed in during that 25 minutes because I know I'm gonna get a break soon. And so what it does is it makes that deep work feel really manageable for our students. So instead of them sitting down in front of like this huge project with no endpoint, students are only committing to working for 25 minutes and that's it. And you might even want to set like a clock that students can see. And within those 25 minutes, especially if you have like instrumental music playing in the background, the focus that emerges is remarkable. Like every time I do it, I'm like, God, this is the best thing ever. It just works. So I'm actually gonna include my journaling Spotify playlist for you guys in the show notes. So you can use that with your students if you'd like to. It's a great playlist and is appropriate for school. And before each Pomodoro method, before you move into this, you want to have students write down the one specific thing, one specific thing that they're going to accomplish in that Pomodoro interval. And it's not some vague intention like, oh, I just want to, blah, blah, blah. It's like a concrete outcome, meaning by the end of this 25 minutes, I will have drafted my interview questions. And that act of naming the goal is remarkably effective at keeping students on task. And then you know what they should be working on and you can walk around the classroom and check in with them. You might even have them put that outcome on a post-it note next to them so that you can see as you walk around the classroom what their concrete outcome is and just hold them accountable to that. So Genius Hour is engaging, yes. It is a great end of the year project, yes. But I think it's also important to like name what's happening truly at the heart of all of this, is that when you give a student the experience of pursuing something that they actually care about, you're showing them what learning can feel like when it belongs to them, when it's not math class or science class or English class. And what happens is that experience of ownership, of pursuing their interests, it becomes a part of who how they understand themselves as human beings. And that might even have a huge impact on the job that the jobs that they apply for, the way that they show up in their professions, right? All of those things. So this isn't a small thing to give someone at the end of the school year. It's actually really impactful. So if you do decide to try Genius Hour with your students, I really want to hear how it goes. Come find me over on Instagram at EB Academics. And if you are an EB teacher, um, some of you do have access to our genius hour version of this inside of the portal. Just type in Genius Hour and you'll see if you have access to that, depending on your level of membership. And if you are an EB teacher and you do use this with your students at the end of the year, definitely share inside of the Facebook group and let us know and hopefully inspire some others to take this on. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I will see you next week on the podcast. We have some more like mindset stuff coming up on May 5th and May 12th that I'm really excited about those episodes. So make sure that you are tuning in each week and hopefully just taking away some really great content from the podcast. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining me. Have a wonderful rest of your week, and I will see you in May on the podcast. Bye, everyone.