"Think Big! Do Something Awesome! Change the World!" This collection of statements came out of frustration years ago with a class of juniors who said “How can you expect us to choose anything we want to learn about and research it? We have never done that before!” I was stunned. While they may not have been the hardest working group, I thought giving them the option to learn about anything they wanted would fire them up rather than lock them up. This has become a mantra with which we begin each Genius Hour session. It is easily chanted or repeated as a class, but each part has to be undertaken with equal vigor. There were semesters or years where we missed the mark because students focused on the third part and felt they had to raise money rather than doing something they are truly interested in doing. They may learn about a topic, but most of their time was spent in doing the logistics of an event. It doesn't come off quite as pithy, but using Tim O'Reilly's lines "Work on stuff that matters," and "Create more value than you capture" could create more of the vision we are seeking for what has become one of our signature events (Ferris 221). "Think Big" stands on its own, because we want students to challenge themselves to do something beyond what they may have done before. Thinking big is about giving themselves confidence in their capabilities--and maybe even swagger.
"Do Something Awesome" was not a self evident statement. Doing something awesome could mean playing a video game that is awesome, watching a video that is awesome or hang out with friends, which may be awesome as well. The revised phrase should be "Learn Something Important" In the past, we have begun the semester saying those words, but lately haven't directly defined what we mean by each sentence. The whole goal behind Genius Hour is to pursue a topic that has always been intriguing but has never been a priority, or maybe it has been and they want to delve deeper. It may be a problem that exists in the world that the student wants to solve, or something else. Once a topic is identified, the first charge is to learn as much about it as possible. That will involve reading, experiencing it first hand and interacting with experts among other things. They should be able to explain why it is important and to whom it is important. That will lead to the third part, which recently has been the stickiest.
Where they become most confused is with "Change the World." "Change the World" does not mean raising money. It means take what you have learned out into the world and do something that matters. That is where they can "create more value than (they) capture." Taking their learning and giving it to the world in a way where it will benefit others at a magnitude greater than 1 is the goal. If, after doing the learning, a person is twice as good at something, the good they do for others or the learning they give to others should be greater than twice as much. That may mean it benefits one person. It may mean benefiting many more. It does not mean benefiting 7 billion people, but it may. Making others' lives better is not directly correlated with a dollar amount.
Genius Hour, Think Big, Do Something Awesome, Change the World, Learn Something Important, Arete Academy
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