Friday, the 13th- may the geniuses be revealed

Friday, the 13th was an awesome day in my classes. We had the first official Genius Hour in all four of my classes. A lot of the students were able to identify a Genius Hour Project they would like to pursue and presented their proposals to the class. A few were rejected and need a little refinement, but most students have a fairly good idea of what they want to do with this. Some ideas that will be explored are Hispanic art- drawing a famous Hispanic basketball player (I have no idea who that is), creating original canvases inspired by Hispanic art that will be displayed on my classroom walls; fashion- designing a dress based on Spanish fashion trends; designing a pullout table and offering it on a bilingual website; exploring the idea of making the ocean floors habitable with a bilingual report; opening a coffee shop that serves Hispanic coffees and treats; expanding an existing Mexican business to include tamales and buñuelos; watching telenovelas and creating a pilot episode for a new one; creating a game that includes a Mayan village; creating a furniture line that is based on Hispanic themes; researching what it would take for a small Cuban child to make it to the baseball leagues in the US; creating an action plan to be able to play soccer for Barcelona; creating a mission trip to a Hispanic country; creating a travel plan/package to visit a Hispanic country; creating a website that offers boat tours in Puerto Rico; creating a green screen photography studio that would allow one to take pictures on location in Hispanic countries; creating a life-size sculpture of a mythical creature that is famous in the Hispanic culture; and more that I do not recall off the top of my head. Some of the students' presentation topics gave me goosebumps, I was so impressed. One student in Spanish III class said she would love it if we had Genius Hour in all of the classes on a rotating basis so you would have one every single day. I just loved that comment. Well, we have a three day weekend due to MLK, which made is easier to get the lesson plans in already on Friday for next week. On another note, we will be participating in the Roane State Academic Festival after all. It is being held during Spring Break, but they have a creative video category so I was told by the teacher who organized the trip last year that we will be participating with videos. The theme is social media. We will see what can be done with that.