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Teacher "Genius Hour" PD!



Once a month, our district has what is referred to as "Green Day" PD. This is the one early release day where we have the opportunity to offer PD sessions for all of the teachers in the district. Typically, teachers have all been told which session they are supposed to attend, and it is based on content and/or grade level.

 This month we decided to try something new. We created "Choice Sessions" so that teachers could choose to learn about something meaningful and helpful for improving learning in their classrooms. We recruited Instructional Coaches and teachers so that we could offer a wide variety of sessions.

 We also decided to offer a Teacher "Genius Hour" session. I designed a website to walk teachers through the process, and I will be their point of contact if they have any questions or need support. 

The webpage starts with a quick overview of the session steps:


🎯 Goal: The goal of this session is to provide teachers with the time to       
explore, research, and learn about a topic of interest (related to education).

 📋Steps: (1) Learn about Genius Hour. (2) Choose a topic. (3) Create your        "Pitch." (4) Submit your idea.

💡Final Product: Your final product for today's session will be your "Pitch" 
 which is a simple slide deck that introduces your topic to your colleagues.

The rest of the page walks teachers through the four steps.

1) Explore: What is Genius Hour?



 The first section has some resources for teachers who are not familiar with the basic idea of Genius Hour. Here are the links:



2) Choose a topic!



 The guidelines for the topic were the following:

  • Something that will benefit students, staff, or the school
  • Driven by your passions
  • New to you as a professional

I found these on a website called "Genius Hour for Teachers Guide."

 I also provided some examples of possible education-related topics to give teachers a place to start, and I included a link to the full list of topics from Edutopia so they could explore further.  


3) Create your "Pitch"!


 Teachers will be creating a "Pitch" using Google Slides to share their idea with their colleagues. This idea came from A.J. Juliani in the blog post "Your Top 10 Genius Hour Questions Answered." 

The pitch is made up of four main components:

     - What are you going to learn about?
     - Why do you want to learn about?
     - How are you going to learn about it?
     - What will be a success in your mind?

 I created the example below to give teachers an idea of what their "Pitch" could look like:




4) Submit your idea!


Teachers will submit their topic and the link to their "Pitch" in a Google Form we created. 

 Click here to see the Google Form.


I am really excited to see how this session goes, and to get feedback from teachers about how we could possibly improve it. I would also like to see if we can find teachers who chose similar topics to collaborate as they research and try things out in their classrooms. 

 Have you tried Genius Hour with your teachers before? I would love to hear about it!



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