GENIUS TIME or 20% TIME in 9T

 Every day at school I ask my students to work on and learn content that we as Year 9 teachers identify as important to their growth towards being a positively active and contributing global citizen. Keen to enable my students to spend time inquiring, building knowledge and sharing their findings, new skills and outcomes with an audience outside our classroom I began my own inquiry into a model that would support my goal. 

 I am following A. J. Juliani as inspiration for building our class inquiries.  Juliani states that - "Our job as leaders, teachers, and parents is not to prepare kids for something; our job is to help kids prepare themselves for anything."

On Fridays, I now dedicate two lesson times to time for working on their Genius Time or 20% Time inquiries. Being given time is one thing, able to select what you want to do is not so easy. The students have been putting good effort into this critical part of the process and many now are starting to outline:

1. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM

2. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPROVE, CREATE OR CHANGE?

3. WHAT ARE YOUR NEXT STEPS?

4. WHO CAN HELP US WITH THIS?

Students so far have selected inquiries that include:

• finding ways to raise funds for a hospital,
• raising funds for a golf club,
• learning sign language,
• researching information around hair and its cultural aspects,
• researching young people with Down Syndrome who help run their own business ventures with a goal to meet and speak with them,
• making the tools needed to catch kai from the Otaki River and then going fishing while also reporting back to be part of the Otaki Museum's exhibition in 2021,
• designing improvements for education at Otaki College
• creating a stop-go animation longer than 2 minutes, they are aiming for 10 -20 minutes of footage

As the students define their inquiries further, I will encourage them to update their thinking and progress on their Blog sites. A key goal I have is to find mentors who share the students' passion and who have the knowledge the students need to access, this will require the students to establish a learning and working relationship with people outside of the classroom.