Student voice and choice can be challenging. There are so many variables at work and it’s okay if it doesn’t work perfectly. In this week’s article, I share my big mistakes I made with Genius Hour and how I changed things through multiple iterations.

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My Genius Hour Disaster

Picture this. The year is 2006. I’m standing at the center of the classroom surrounded by a giant circle of students staring back at me. The room is silent, aside from the hum of the old desktops we just recently refurbished using Linux. There’s a buzz of excitement after we just completed a service learning project and documentary.

“What do you think we’ll do next?” I ask.

“A podcast?” a boy asks.

“A museum project where we design the exhibits?” a girl asked.

“You’re both right,” I answer. The students shake their heads in confusion. I can hear the waves of whispers spread around the room.

“Let me explain.” I ask the students to gather at the front, where I turn on the projector and press play. We watch a three minute video explaining Google’s concept of 20% time, where each employee has a single day per week to they pursue their own interests through a passion project.

This is essentially the notion of Genius Hour (which was actually first developed by 3M back in the 1960s). Here’s a little primer on Genius Hour. If you find the video helpful, you might want to subscribe to my channel.

I ask the students to return to their seats. “I want you to think big. What would you learn at school if you could learn anything? If you could pursue one topic on anything in our world, what would it be? If you could learn a new skill what would you learn? If you could make a new thing, what would you make? I want you to brainstorm a list of at least 5 things you would do for your Passion Project.”

I wander the room as students scribble out their ideas. I see topics ranging from skateboarding to fashion to learning ASL. One kid asks me, “Does it have to be something new? What if I’m already an expert but I want to spend more time learning about it?”

I nod. “Sounds perfect. It’s your own passion project.”

Students then do a stand-up, hand-up, pair-up where they share their ideas with one another. I then explain the basic parameters. Each student has to do research on their topic and then they can either learn a new skill or make a new product. At the end, they will share what they learned at a Community Celebration. Within seconds, students leap into action with a frenzy of sketched out sticky notes and chaotic conversations. They gush about their moonshot dreams of what they might create. The same process occurs with each new class. This is going to be epic. I have no idea that this will become an epic fail.

Fast forward a week and the excitement begins to wane.

“I forgot my topic,” a student tells me.

“I don’t know where to get started,” another student says.

“Can you tell me if I’m on the right track?” another asks.

I pull the class back together and remind them of the core idea. But instead of excitement, I notice a collective sense of dread.

“It’s okay if you make mistakes. Take risks. Be bold,” I implore them. It doesn’t help. Students seem overwhelmed.

The next week is worse. Students wander around sharing playground gossip and talking about Fantasy Football picks. They chat about their favorite songs and talk about tv shows. And while I’m sure they’re pursuing their interests, I’m unable to tell what exactly they’re actually learning. Three students pull out their math homework and treat the class period as a study hall.

I quietly abandon the experiment with no explanation. Only once does a student ask me, “Whatever happened to the Passion Projects?”

The short answer? The passion fizzled and I learned that passion alone cannot fuel an independent project. I wanted my students to go for moonshot ideas. But here’s the thing about a moonshot. It takes a ton of planning and intense focus if you want to reach the moon and I hadn’t taught my students how to plan. It was just one of the many reasons this project failed so miserably.

 

Learning from Our Mistakes

I love watching the shows like Chopped! on the Food Network. The intense competition. The time pressure. The creative constraint of using limited ingredients. For what it’s worth, I’d love a show called Chopped! Home Edition, where a contestant has limited time and resources but also has to make something that his three teenagers will love all while one asks a question about homework, another wants to debrief her day at school, and two Great Danes attempt to counter surf.

But there’s another show I love that’s a complete opposite of Chopped! On America’s Test Kitchen, they take a mediocre recipe and test it with multiple variables until they achieve greatness. They move methodically and collaboratively. They combined best practices with innovative strategies. While a mistake on Chopped! might send a contestant home, a mistake on America’s Test Kitchen is simply another experiment.

So, I’d like to take an America’s Test Kitchen approach to Genius Hour projects and share each of my mistakes and how I fixed them over time. Please keep in mind that just like America’s Test Kitchen, these changes evolved slowly with multiple iterations over a decade of teaching. Teaching is an iterative process and over time things improved. So, I thought I would share my screw-ups along with what I did to improve the process.

 

Issue #1: I didn’t provide enough structure.

Initially, I assumed that students would be self-directed and simply get to work on their own passion projects. Instead, they treated it like a study hall period, where the hardest working students finished homework from other classes while other students simply socialized. The classroom became chaotic and noisy and I ended up nagging students with empty phrases like “get to work” or “come on guys, you don’t want to lose this 20% time to do passion projects, do you?”

At first, I thought it was an issue of accountability. And, to a certain extent, it was. In future iterations, I would require students to turn in elements of their Genius Hour Projects for review. However, I noticed that students who were highly motivated were failing as to get started with their work. As I walked around the room, I noticed that students weren’t bored. They were overwhelmed. The main culprit was cognitive overload.

Imagine holding a ten-pound dumbbell above your head. For many people, that’s pretty easy. It’s what you do with a shoulder press or an overhead triceps extension. Now hold that weight for two minutes. It’s still possible but more challenging. Your arm might start shaking. Your muscles burn. Now hold it for fifteen minutes. An hour. Two hours. Over time, even a small amount of weight grows unbearable. Your muscles can only handle the weight for so long before needing a break for rest and recovery.

In a similar way, our brain can only handle a certain amount of information before we hit what John Sweller calls “cognitive overload.” Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) explains how the human brain processes and stores new information, with a focus on the limitations of “working memory.” Sweller proposed that working memory can only handle a limited amount of information at a time, so when too much is presented simultaneously (high cognitive load), learning becomes less effective.

Sweller identified three types of cognitive load:

1. Intrinsic Load: The inherent difficulty of the material, which varies depending on the complexity of the information itself.
2. Extraneous Load: Distractions or unnecessary information that doesn’t directly aid learning, such as irrelevant details or cluttered visuals.
3. Germane Load: The mental effort used to truly understand and process the material, essential for deep learning.

The following video explores the concept more in-depth:

Looking back on this, my students were experiencing far too much Extraneous Load and they never had a chance to engage in Germane Load needed to learn the new content.

How I Fixed This:

In my second iteration of Genius Hour, I began providing specific structures and protocols that would reduce the cognitive load. I incorporated design thinking into our first Genius Hour project of the year. This helped students break their projects into distinct phases with clear deadlines. It also had the added bonus of soft accountability, where I could track whether students were ahead or behind on their projects.

In later iterations, I provided project planning documents that served as a loose template to guide their work. I incorporated self-reflection surveys to improve metacognition and rehearsal. Eventually, I helped students engage in their own project-management process. I provided templates and tutorials to guide them along the way:

At first, I worried that this structure would inhibit creative thinking and students would take fewer creative risks. But as I pulled students aside for conferences, I noticed that they actually felt more empowered as a result of the structure.

 

Issue #2: I didn’t provide examples.

Imagine telling someone about football but never showing them an example of a game. “So, the center is at the line of scrimmage and he snaps the ball to the quarterback who may or may not be in the shotgun formation. If it’s a Wildcat or Read Option offense, there might be a halfback or fullback on either side.” It would be totally confusing if you had never seen the game. This is essentially what I did with these passion projects. I talked about Google and I shared the concept without ever making it visible for them. My students were confused and I assumed they were being lazy when they weren’t getting started.

How I Fixed This:

Initially, I over-corrected on this and gave them a restrictive, formulaic project handout. In the next iteration, I switched from a recipe or event a blueprint into a map where students could choose their own journey. I had options and deadlines with key guideposts but students ultimately had autonomy in where to go.

Later, I began modeling the Genius Hour concept by sharing my own journey. I would tell them what I was working on and what questions were driving my process. I would ask them what kinds of resources I might want to consider. Next, I would show examples from a broad range of topics and skill levels and remind them that these examples should serve as inspiration rather than rigid expectations. It sounds counterintuitive but students actually took greater creative risks after seeing the exemplars.

 

Issue #3:  I didn’t consider alternative grouping.

I remember the first time a group of students asked if they could work together. My response was, “I’d really rather you work independently.” In the process, I crushed the opportunity to work collaboratively and work interdependently. I was worried that other students would find it unfair or that individuals would use it as a chance to slack off. But as I watched students creating similar projects, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if they had worked collaboratively.

How I Fixed This:

This was a simple fix. I told students that they could work with other students. It might mean working permanently with a small group on a project but it might also mean joining another project briefly to add your own opinions, skills, and expertise. I was nervous as groups of friends began converging. But actually, the best projects were the ones where students worked with their closest friends. There’s power in the trust and vulnerability of friendships.

But I also found ways to vary the grouping within the project itself. So, if students worked collaboratively, I asked for moments of silence where students would work independently on their section of a project. If students worked on individual Genius Hour projects, they would share their insights using a think-pair-share, timed-pair-share, and other Kagan cooperative learning strategies we had used in more traditional lessons.

At key moments, I paired students up to do a 20-minute peer feedback protocol:

 

 

Issue #4: I didn’t set clear behavioral expectations

I remember hearing people talk about the virtues of noisy, messy environments and I figured that was simply how it had to be. But I thrive in spaces that feel safer and even quieter. I prefer a gentle hum to a loud cacophony. I actually get physically anxious when a class feels out of control. At the same time, I want students to feel the freedom to be themselves. For a deeper dive into this topic, check out this post I wrote about how to help introverts thrive in collaborative spaces.

How I Fixed This:

In future iterations, I began setting expectations on the procedures. For example, students could move from group to group but they couldn’t run (we had sharp objects). They could work standing up or sitting down but they had to be sitting down and listening in the rare moments of direct instruction. They could talk to other groups but they couldn’t shout across the room. They were welcome to listen to music on their headphones but they had to take the headphones out when they talked to their peers. We put this onto a chart that they could reference at any time.  The procedures were nuanced but clear.

It wasn’t always perfect. I had moments when the class would get loud and we would do a one-minute silent reset. I had times when I hushed groups that were simply laughing loudly and genuinely having fun with what they were learning. But overall it worked. The class felt alive and energetic but rarely chaotic or crazy.

 

Issue #5: I didn’t allow students to own the academic side of it.

Initially, I tracked the academic progress. I connected their Genius Hour project to the academic standards. I even wrote out individualized learning targets so that I could show my administrators that I hadn’t neglected that side of lesson planning. In the end, I graded their projects on a common rubric with broad topics like creativity and critical thinking. It was exhausting to design specific lesson plans for each student.

How I Fixed This:

My first major overhaul was to redesign Genius Hour projects to focus on key academic standards. These were often multi-disciplinary. Here are a few examples:

• Geek Out Blogs: Students pursue any topic they want but they have to do an expository, persuasive, how-to, and narrative style (even if it is non-fiction) blog post. Fortunately, all of our ELA standards were topic-neutral, so students could pick any topic they wanted. I later added other parameters related to social studies, including a timeline of the topic, an exploration of a primary source related to the topic, and how the topic relates to larger systems (social, political, geographic).
• Instructional Videos: Students learn a new skill and document what they are learning. In the end, they have to present what they learned with an instructional video and presentation.
• Entrepreneur Project: Students take their personal passions and turn that into a pitch for a business. They also create an artifact (often a prototype) connected to their passion project topic. Note that students mastered social studies standards related to economics while practicing ELA standards in research and writing.
• CuriosityCast: Students start with a topic they want to pursue (it could be more on the “how to” end or it could be a subject they geek out about) and every other week they share what they are learning about the topic in the form of a podcast.

I also incorporated front-loaded vocabulary, direct instruction, and academic tutorials to help students master the academic standards while pursuing their interests.

Over time, I gave students more ownership of the academic elements of Genius Hour. This began with one-on-one student conferences, where we would connect specific academic standards to the skills they would use. For example, students might select certain reading skills from the ELA standards where they still needed some intervention. We also had certain standards that were universal in all projects (from ELA, we had reading, research, presentation standards and we had tons of ISTE standards as well).

It went beyond progress monitoring, though. Students engaged in self-assessment and peer assessment. Sometimes this was a formal structure but often this was an informal part of the process. Here the students owned this assessment process.

 

Issue #6: I didn’t understand the danger of choice paralysis

Initially, when students said, “I don’t know where to start,” I assumed they were being too compliant. If I could get them to see that they truly had the permission to make their own decisions, they would thrive. I then wondered if it was an issue of fear. I pulled the entire class together and told them that I expected them to make “glorious mistakes. Try something big. I would rather see you strike out swinging than a called third strike. Remember, you have unlimited at bats.” Half of my students didn’t get the baseball reference. But even those who did seemed overwhelmed.

So, what was going on? Why would students reject voice and choice? If it wasn’t compliance or fear, what was at work? In classic behavioral economics book Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz describes how overwhelmed we become when we walk down a grocery store aisle and face a floor to ceiling display of toothpaste with each option offering slightly different flavors and features.

“There are twenty-five different brands of toothpaste. I stand in front of the display for a few moments, feeling a rising sense of panic. I know that if I choose the wrong one, my teeth will rot, my breath will smell bad, and my chances of winning friends and influencing people will be ruined. And if I pick the right one, I will have to live with the knowledge that I could have made a better choice.”

Schwartz is describing choice paralysis. My students were overwhelmed and they froze up because I had created a floor to ceiling tooth paste aisle of options. With choice paralysis the more options available, the harder it becomes to select one, out of a fear of making the wrong decision. This can lead to indecision, stress, and, in this case, avoidance.

Choice paralysis is closely related to the previously mentioned notion of cognitive load because both involve the mental effort required to make decisions. In one case, students don’t know what to do or where to start. In the other case, they know where to start but they simply can’t decide which route they can take. But in both cases, the brain has to process more information, increasing extraneous cognitive load. This heightened cognitive load can lead to difficulty in evaluating all the options, which contributes to choice paralysis.

How I Fixed This

The best independent projects use a combination of a “loose” and a “tight” element. The loose areas are the spaces of autonomy, where students have a greater sense of ownership in the learning process. They might get to choose the topics they will pursue or the skills they will learn. They might get to choose between an individual, partner, or small group project. In some cases, students might decide how they will share their learning (video, podcast, website) or who their audience will be. Here, students are moving from compliance and even engagement to a space of true empowerment.

At the same time, you might create some “tight” elements for the project. Students might do a Genius Hour but they need to produce a blog series or a podcast. They might be limited to learning a skill rather than exploring a conceptual topic. You might limit the scope to your subject area. Throughout the project, students might have predefined phases and use specific protocols you provide. These tighter elements can reduce the choice paralysis so that students can focus on a few key big decisions.

But there’s another benefit as well. When used effectively, these tight elements lead to creative constraint and students are forced to think divergently. In other words, they learn to think outside the box by rethinking the box:

Another solution is to take a Gradual Release of Responsibility approach to student choice. The first Genius Hour project might be a Geek Out blog with tight parameters, followed by a slightly looser CuriosityCast process with increased freedom, before eventually doing a fully open-ended passion project.

 

It’s a Journey

Ultimately, there’s no single way to run Genius Hour projects. Strategies that work for you might not work for a teacher down the hall. Something that worked for you last year might not work for your students this year. Sometimes it can help to think of each Genius Hour project as an experiment – both for you and for the students. And the key thing isn’t that the experiment yielded the perfect outcome. Rather, that you learned something new along the way.