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What is Genius Hour? - Introduction to Genius Hour in the Classroom

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How do you convince people to drive less? When a team of University of California-Berkeley students considered the problem in the city of Berkeley-where traffic is increasing despite the city's reputation as a bastion of progressive politics-they focused on how to improve the experience of riding the bus. One challenge is reliability; in a series of tests at bus stops, they found that the local transit app predicted arrival times incorrectly 9 out of 10 times. But when they learned that the transit agency already had plans for some interventions to improve reliability, they pivoted to another idea: making the bus free to ride. They estimated that it would cost roughly $4 million, and could potentially be covered in part by local businesses. The change, their research suggested, could make a meaningful difference in the number of people who choose to ride the bus rather than drive.

The solution was one of a handful of proposals from Hacking for Local, a new class that asked teams of students to tackle complex local problems in Oakland and Berkeley using lean startup methodologies. It grew out of another class called Lean Launchpad, which helps students create startups over the course of a semester. "We started thinking about how would this apply to the non-startup world," says Steve Weinstein, an executive who collaborates with other lecturers to teach Lean Launchpad at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and who was one of five members of the teaching team for the new class. The first variation on the class focused on Defense Department challenges, and another focused on diplomacy. The latest iteration is designed to help students-and the local governments and nonprofits they work with-think about local challenges differently.

In the class, local groups and city council members suggested a set of challenges, and students spent 14 weeks making sense of the issues, conducting dozens of interviews with stakeholders and rapidly iterating on solutions, often pivoting from week to week. With a "flipped classroom" format, there were no lectures in class. Students prepared in advance and spent class time discussing ideas. The majority of the work happened off campus in the community. "The problem might be very different than what your preconceived notions were," says Weinstein. "At a university like Berkeley, the students are super smart-that's why they're there-but the collective wisdom of all these students pales next to the collective wisdom of people on the streets living the problem." (This was especially true because most of the students weren't majoring in public policy or the particular issues that they were considering in the class.)

One team looked at the challenge of fire risk in the Berkeley-Oakland Hills, where a 1990s fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 25 people, and where climate change is increasing the risk of another fire. Because homeowners weren't taking action to reduce the risk on their own properties, the students proposed an app that would offer rewards-like a potential insurance discount-for completing a series of steps. Another group considered how to improve health in South Berkeley, where you're more likely to get sick and die early if you're black than if you're white. After brainstorming a number of solutions, the students realized that community members wanted to find their own solutions, and proposed a community-led health initiative that would test new ideas with local health organizations.

Another team looked at the challenge of affordable housing in the area, and proposed a new podcast that would share personal stories of people experiencing homelessness as a way to build empathy in Berkeley's wealthy population, and create more support for broader change. A group focused on Oakland proposed an app that citizens-particularly the African-American community, which is shrinking in the area-could use to easily give feedback on new developments so that their voices are included as the city transforms.

Many cities are trying to incorporate more innovative thinking, and many now have innovation departments. Still, the type of approach the class takes could lead to new solutions that might not have otherwise been considered. "I think the biggest strength of our project was actually taking the time to go and speak with people with genuine openness without having some sort of task that we were hoping to accomplish," says Lucas Duffy, a masters student in development practice, a major focused on sustainable development, who worked on the team that created the concept for the podcast about homelessness. "And I think that if you do have a goal, it can be very difficult to go in and speak with communities without being extractive."

"It wasn't feasible for us to suddenly become policy experts on housing," says Pratik Sachdeva, a graduate student in physics who also worked on the podcast concept. But the students could look at the problems from a different angle. "We were trying to get at a higher leverage point of trying to get people to move against the status quo-removing that inertia."

As in the business startup version of the class, the solutions were shaped by the reality of what stakeholders would actually want, and what would be possible to actually accomplish. "In this area, lots of people do what I'll call 'innovation theater,' in the sense that they show an idea, but they haven't figured out how that actually would take the idea and get it deployed," says Weinstein. "So they say, we did a hackathon, or we brought a bunch of people together and they worked on this idea. And then no one's thought through who would their partners be? What would they really have to do to get it? How would they get funding? And all of these things we make the students start thinking about once they have figured out what problem are they trying to solve."

"Since we actually had to demonstrate what we learned through weekly presentations and interview analyses, there was no cutting corners with these projects, and as a result I believe all the teams put together ideas that were actually useful to the public and to some extent validated, making them more likely to be successful later on," says Rafael Grillo Avila, who is a doctoral student in the law school's jurisprudence and social policy program. "This was different from other project-based classes I've taken that did not hold students as accountable to the communities they were purportedly trying to serve."

Weinstein says that he is now interested in expanding the class to other universities.

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In this college class, the assignment is to solve a local problem

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How do you convince people to drive less? When a team of University of California-Berkeley students considered the problem in the city of Berkeley-where traffic is increasing despite the city's reputation as a bastion of progressive politics-they focused on how to improve the experience of riding the bus.

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You Get to Have Your Own Genius Hour (A Video for Students)

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Web site

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Genius Hour In The Classroom: 6 Principles

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Genius Hour in the classroom is driven by curiosity. Critical principles include inquiry, purpose, socialization, and design.

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Levels of Engagement

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The 5 Levels of Engagement by Schlechty:  A Simple Guide

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Read over page 14 and pages 34 - 36

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Product:  Thinking, Saying, Doing for each profile element. 

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Product:  Thinking, Saying, Doing for each profile element. 

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On the Chart paper, draw a person with thought bubbles

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Plcc Designed Unit Examples - Lessons - Tes Teach

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Phillip Schlechty on Design and Planning.design vs plan.pptx..Schlechty Center - Video Journal.11th Grade Example of an Engaging Lesson on Polynomial Functions.Polynomial Functions unit template.pdf.8th Grade Example of an Engaging Lesson on the Census.8 Census Unit.pdf.Dayton Students.m4v.may14alicia_final22.pptx.Becky Burch on Power of Design.WOW what a change!!

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Abby Sheeler is graduating from the University of Kentucky, but not before bringing her passion to train service dogs to the stage.

LEXINGTON, Ky. When Abby Sheeler walks across the stage at the University of Kentucky's commencement later this month, she won't be alone. In fact, she'll have several four-legged friends with her.

Anu, a year-old golden retriever service dog in training, is one of several dogs that will be crossing the graduation stage with their student handlers.

A member of the sky day litter, Anu is currently majoring in socialization and basic obedience.

He is one of the dogs working with 4 Paws for Ability, a nonprofit organization based in Xenia, Ohio, that breeds, trains and places service dogs with children and veterans with disabilities.

The students at the University of Kentucky involved in the program volunteer to train the dogs until they are ready to move on to advanced training. They receive the puppies as young as 10 weeks old and typically keep them until they are a year old.

The dogs go everywhere with their student handlers whether it is a lecture, a trip to the mall or a sporting event.

Anu's handler, Abby Sheeler, has been involved with the 4 Paws for Ability since she started at UK in 2014. Anu is the sixth dog she has fostered with the program.

"I was an out-of-state student and did not know anyone at UK, let alone Kentucky. I wanted to find something at UK that would keep me busy and provide me with a place where I could meet different people," Sheeler said. "The program combines my two favorite passions: working with dogs and working with individuals with disabilities."

Sheeler and the other handlers at UK have one end goal - to make their pups successful. They introduce the dogs to various environments to make sure their dogs will be fully confident in any surrounding once they are assigned their positions.

Along with socializing the dogs, the handlers also volunteer at nursing homes and schools throughout Lexington with their dogs.

Sheeler, who is president of the 4 Paws for Ability student organization at UK, will graduate this week with bachelor's degrees in psychology and special education, with dual specialization in learning and behavior disorders and moderate and severe disabilities.

"Being a part of this program has brought me so much joy. I don't know what I would do without it."

After Commencement, Sheeler and her four-legged pal will be together for a little bit longer. Anu has an evaluation in May to see if he is ready for advanced training, or if he needs to be socialized more.

During this evaluation they will also decide what "specialty task" he is naturally good at to determine what type of service dog he will become. He could assist with mobility, seizure alert, diabetic alert, autism assistance, post-traumatic stress disorder assistance, hearing alert and much more.

By this fall, Sheeler will move on to a position as a special education teacher at Creekside Elementary in Scott County, Kentucky, and Anu will move on to the next phase of his career as a service dog.

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Meg MillSpecial to The Canton Repository

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Jackson graduate bringing the dogs with her to Kentucky commencement

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Abby Sheeler is graduating from the University of Kentucky, but not before bringing her passion to train service dogs to the stage. LEXINGTON, Ky. When Abby Sheeler walks across the stage at the University of Kentucky's commencement later this month, she won't be alone. In fact, she'll have several four-legged friends with her.

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Commentary

"At this school, they go all out around the student's emotions," Jameisha, a 12th grader, told us. "They ask, they listen. I don't wake up and think, 'Oh I hope this don't happen.' I think, 'I'm OK. I'm fine. I'm ready to learn.'"

At Jameisha's South Side Chicago high school, a full-on commitment to social and emotional learning, or SEL, has transformed the environment from a nightmare of urban violence to a place where students dream of college. And although the circumstances and challenges may differ at other public secondary schools, around the nation we are seeing a new recognition that social and emotional factors markedly affect academic engagement, achievement, and educational attainment in the adolescent years.

What would it take to weave social and emotional learning into the daily fabric of our nation's high schools? What distinct practices, programs, and structures help schools embed SEL into ongoing teaching and learning? How does this effort vary from school to school, in response to the conditions that make a school unique and shape its climate?

From 2013 through early 2014, we asked these and other questions as part of an in-depth investigation of social-emotional learning in five diverse high schools located in communities across the United States. Most SEL efforts take place in the elementary grades, and most of the research to date has focused on discrete programs within schools. We know far less about secondary schools that make social-emotional learning central to their mission, linking it inextricably to academic development.

-Chris Whetzel for Education Week

Still, the dichotomy between "noncognitive" and "cognitive" factors in learning is clearly giving way to a more capacious view that appreciates the complex interplay between the two. (Witness recent back-to-back Commentaries by David Conley and Mike Rose on this topic.) Angela Duckworth's talk of "grit" lends muscle to the "soft" qualities traditionally attributed to character skills. And long-overdue attention to the deleterious effects of zero-tolerance policies has recently elevated another strand of SEL: replacing punitive discipline with restorative practices that heal rather than harm.

The schools in our study were working on all of these fronts. With four of them, academic and social-emotional learning had entwined in their DNA from the start, although their designs and the students they served were decidedly distinct. All four reported academic results that stood out compared with those of schools with similar demographics: strong attendance and low dropout rates, good proficiency results on state assessments, a high percentage of students going on to college. The fifth school, Chicago's Fenger Academy High School, embraced SEL as a strategy for turning around years of poor performance and unremitting school violence. There, restorative practices took center stage.

We presented five case studies on the different high schools and SEL in a report released earlier this year, "Learning by Heart: The Power of Social-Emotional Learning in Secondary Schools." We received support for our work from the NoVo Foundation. (NoVo also helps support Education Week's coverage of school climate and student behavior and engagement.)

Regardless of the design or approach, we identified a handful of key elements that all our study schools shared.

Although none enrolled more than 600 students, in each school a web of structural supports ensured that adults could know students well and support their development. These supports included advisory periods that gave every student a home base; prioritization of strong and purposeful teacher-student relationships; design and structural choices that kept class sizes small; formal assessment systems that focused on support, not censure; and grade-level and subject-area meetings that created a professional-learning community among faculty members.

These schools intentionally cultivated a sense of community through shared norms, values, and language. Transition programs welcomed incoming students; rituals and assemblies brought students and faculty together for recognition and problem-solving. A focus on acceptance of differences, inclusive practices, and the habit of reflection seemed to develop a sense of belonging and agency among students in each school. Students had ample opportunities to learn and practice core social skills (e.g., apologies, decisionmaking, self-regulation). Everywhere we observed protocols for thoughtful classroom discussion, an emphasis on participation, and zero tolerance for exclusion.

We saw our study schools forging constructive alternatives to destructive disciplinary policies, including peer mediation or juries and peace circles. Yet they also demonstrated other powerful restorative practices that did not bear that name-by meeting students' basic needs for food, shelter, health, and safety.

Student motivation and academic standardization often stand off like rivals, yet our study schools found ways to link serious scholarship to what students cared about. Among the many practices we observed were project-based learning, student choice, reading across the curriculum that connected to life's lessons, students as teachers, and service learning. Each of our study schools also trained its sights on students' developing the beliefs and habits that result in satisfying and productive lives and learning-beyond school.

What are the policy implications of what these schools have shown us?

To start, we need new language that ends the "versus" between cognitive and noncognitive factors in our discussions of learning and mastery. Academic, social, and emotional learning are deeply mutual. In turn, we need learning standards that treat SEL as integral to the curriculum; Illinois, for example, includes standards for SEL development in its state learning standards. And the complex business of taking stock of student gains in SEL offers one more argument for performance-based assessments.

Our investigation underscores the critical role that supporting structures and practices play in secondary schools: advisory groups, student choice, norms of mutual respect among youths and adults, intentional and inclusive community-building, and more. Evidence-based SEL programs participate in that ecology, we acknowledge, but their potential increases when schools integrate them into daily instruction in a systemic approach.

The convergence of academic, social, and emotional learning serves all students well, we found. It misses the point to embrace SEL largely as a behavior-management or character-development tool for at-risk students in urban schools, though certainly such programs play a part in closing the achievement gap. Our five study schools demonstrate the power of SEL to enrich student learning, aspiration, and engagement across the entire spectrum of students.

We applaud the rising interest in restorative-justice programs as an alternative to harmful zero-tolerance policies. Yet the students affected by them often need much more than the chance to right their wrongs and stay in school, however critical these outcomes are. They usually need help managing the chronic stressors that underlie their defiance-worries linked to family, health (mental and physical), safety, and sometimes food and shelter, too. Though cognizant of the limits of what schools can do, we also know the exorbitant costs of the consequences of neglect and school failure.

Finally (though perhaps first of all), teacher-preparation programs must equip new teachers with the core competencies necessary to foster social and emotional learning. They need guidance in creating the safe, respectful, motivating, and engaging classrooms in which young minds and characters can develop. It goes without saying that embedding those same characteristics in their professional education would lay a strong foundation for their success.

The vision of weaving social and emotional learning into the daily fabric of our nation's high schools seems understandably daunting. We offer five proof points that it can actually happen.

Published in Print: May 21, 2014, as Putting Heart Into High School Embracing Social-Emotional Learning

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Integrating Social-Emotional Learning Into High School

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Commentary "At this school, they go all out around the student's emotions," Jameisha, a 12th grader, told us. "They ask, they listen. I don't wake up and think, 'Oh I hope this don't happen.' I think, 'I'm OK. I'm fine.

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Copy of  PLCC Station Learning  May 8, 2019

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7th Grade Texas History

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