During my experience in MSU’s MAET program, I had the opportunity to participate in countless mind blowing, thought provoking and astoundingly creative activities. One of my absolute favorites was a simple task of personifying various features of our building with little mouths, noses and eyes we drew. This simple activity was based on the idea that one of the practices of geniuses is to look at things from multiple perspectives and angles. This came from the book we read in Year 3, Sparks of Genius, and I loved watching our classroom spring to life as my classmates added faces to everything in walking distance. Today I got to experience it again.

As we dive into our Genius Hour project, I try to talk with my students about the word “genius” and its many applications. Today, I decided to share with them this idea of multiple perspectives, and to let them take a few moments at the beginning of class to look at their learning environment in a different way. It was amazing watching students slowly move around the room and flex their unrestricted creativity. Similarly to our Genius Hour, some students seemed intimidated by the lack of rules, but by the end I was amazed with what they created. I have shared as many as I could capture below.