Learning vs. Schooling and Promoting Student Engagement
Educator George Courous hosted AJ Juliani on The Innovator’s Mindset podcast to talk about working with students to develop their own unique passions through greater engagement and empowerment in their learning.
AJ spoke about his brother Gabe who passed away in his 30s after a long battle with cancer and various health complications. He shared the story of how Gabe organized a fundraiser and walkathon during his senior year of high school. AJ described how school was not always Gabe’s thing, but when he was able to share his passion, work towards an end goal, and give back to others, it really helped to propel him forward while teaching him about community organizing and philanthropy. He loved seeing his teachers, peers, and the entire community come together while raising funding and awareness for an important cause. This tangible outcome meant a lot to him, and it helped to develop his passions which eventually led to his work in founding the nonprofit Gabriel’s Gladiators.
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AJ connected this example to the idea of Genius Hour, which stems from the offices at Google, where Googlers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on passion projects. Some ideas that have come from Genius Hour include Gmail, Google News, and Google Glass. AJ and George spoke about how we need to do a better job implementing this idea in schools for our students and educators. We need to shift the curriculum to one that is more about meaning-making, where people can feel empowered to learn through experiences while discovering their passions. This ties back to the idea of intrinsic motivation which author Dan Pink writes about in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink examines what it takes to drive intrinsic motivation while digging into the important combination of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Increased intrinsic motivation, he concludes, correlates to greater school and workplace satisfaction while leading to higher performance. AJ and George spoke about how schools can do a better job of doing this by moving from a culture of compliance to one filled with greater empowerment and engagement. In an era when people quite literally have access to almost any piece of information at their fingertips, schools need to tap into intrinsic motivation to focus less on “schooling” and more on “learning” as this is what will truly prepare students for life.
So knowing all that we do, how can we create and promote more opportunities for students to explore their interests while developing their strengths and honing in on their passions? It is certainly possible, but it will take buy-in from various constituencies, from admin to parents to community partners. However, we have no time to lose. Living with COVID-19 in our communal memory from just a short time ago, and especially in light of the mental health crisis in our country coupled with educator burnout and teacher shortages on the rise, we have no time to lose. I am with George and AJ in that schools need to work on implementing Genius Hour and more project-based learning (PBL) into the day-to-day. Students are dynamic and multi-faceted individuals who cannot and should not be chalked up to just grades or menial measurements. Learning is about so much more than that! We need to build up students’ self-esteem and passion for being lifelong learners, for school and graduation is no longer just something to “check off” on one’s to-do list… life is about constantly exploring, being challenged, and learning how to cope and be flexible when required to adapt to changes in one’s environment.
During my time working at the now, unfortunately, closed Purnell School (an all-girls boarding school for LD students in New Jersey, which shuttered its doors in the Summer of 2021), I am proud to say that we really promoted Genius Hour types of endeavors for our students. Each year, the entire community would look forward to a special 3-week mini term on the calendar completely focused on experiential activities, field trips, and project-based learning (PBL). The term would conclude with a Spring Showcase where the entire school community and families were invited to campus to view the students’ work while learning and growing together. It was a wonderful tradition that in some ways was very ahead of its time, as it began with the founding of the school in the 1960s. I hope for more schools to implement these types of student-driven endeavors, which also cater to more hands-on, kinesthetic learners. It would also increase student voice and choice, which educator Katie Martin refers to as the “power of sharing the product and the process” in Evolving Education: Shifting to a Learner-Centered Paradigm (Martin, 2021, p. 92). As Martin further explains, when students have greater agency and variety in the types of assessments that are used, this acts as “a more accurate gauge of what they can do and how they can recall and use knowledge and skills in more authentic contexts as opposed to how well they perform on a test” (p. 93). Educators and students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities absolutely deserve the opportunity to have greater autonomy in their learning thanks to ideas like Genius Hour in order to discover and develop their passions. I hope we can continue to involve stakeholders in this conversation and see a greater emphasis on “more learning vs. schooling” for the students of today and tomorrow.
