Earlier in the year, we featured a story about Amanda Walker’s Year 10 Social Studies class, who were trialling an approach to learning called the “Genius Hour”. This allowed students to devote an hour each week to a project they were passionate about. With the year drawing to a close, we checked back in with Ms Walker and her class to see how their projects went and what they had produced.

Students were guided through the research process, but they had complete freedom in what the nature of their project could be. You can read more about the "Genius Hour" approach in our earlier article here.

What has been the most satisfying thing for you about this process?

Ms Walker: Having the students say “Oh, Genius Hour!” with excitement when they walk into the class. 

It’s been such a treat to see the students enthusiastically working on their own passion projects each week. It’s helped me to get to know the class better and to find out their interests such as boat building, the ancient world or coding. It’s also opened my eyes to some of their concerns such as sustainability, animal welfare or bullying awareness issues. It’s been a pleasure to guide them on this process and they’ve provided valuable feedback on how we can improve Passion Projects for a junior module next year.

Any projects that surprised you in their outcome?

Ms Walker: I was surprised to hear about Lois’ “Chatterbox” podcast that she already had up and running beforehand. The Passion Project time gave her the opportunity to research sporting success and connect with the wider sporting community. I was so impressed she managed to reach out and organise an interview with Greta Clark, Captain of the NZ Underwater Hockey U-19 Women’s team. When we as teachers allow our students the opportunity, time and guidance to pursue their passions, it’s amazing what they can achieve.

Another example of this is Lani Kalapu’s ongoing “Whakapapa” project. He has put a phenomenal amount of research into his family ancestry and is always buzzing about the stories he’s unearthed. His finished book will be a taonga for his family to treasure for generations. 

Amy Wilson’s photographs comparing historical and contemporary Nelson were also surprising as they were to a professional standard. This project really showed the depths of her talent, and how motivated she was to combine her passions for history and photography.

I would never of expected Oliver, Jude and Kahu to pitch me the idea of their project being a “bike boat”, but was so fascinated by their research and progress in creating this innovation!

Each of the students projects are surprising in their own way, and it is difficult to pick highlights. The pleasure for me has been in seeing the diversity of their choices and interests and learning alongside these students as they followed their passions.  

We got some of the students from Ms Walker's class to report back on how their projects turned out and what they got out of the experience.

Amy Wilson

My passion project was taking old photos of Nelson and merging them with photos of what the location looks like now. I have enjoyed learning about the history of places such as the Church Steps and Trafalgar Street. 

When I first started I was focused more on the architecture, but over the course of the project, I became more interested in how the people changed. Photos like the young girls walking down Trafalgar Street, laughing and talking together, show that people are still people. I feel I learnt valuable research skills that will help me with level one History and Sociology in NCEA Level 1.  

Lani Kalapu

I am really passionate about my family history and I wanted to record everything I know so that it was easy to access and read. I wrote a book containing biographies, as well as shipping records and photographs of my ancestors. Throughout working on this Passion Project I have learned more skills in writing and editing as well as more useful research skills. As of this moment, my book isn’t finished, but I will keep on working on it. I hope this book helps give people more understanding and appreciation of  all of our ancestors' lives. 

Lois Breukel

I decided to record a podcast episode revolving around one of my passions. I'd been wanting to start up a podcast for a while, so I took this as the perfect opportunity. An elite sport themed episode appealed to me because it's interesting to listen to an athlete's journey if they are an Olympic athlete.

I wanted to find out more about New Zealand's sporting history and how these athletes are shaping the future for New Zealand Sport. I figured many people, including myself, are interested in hearing about their views on sporting peaks and what drives them to be an elite athlete, as elite athletes are truly motivational and we can all take from what they have to say.

I enjoyed the passion project idea as it allowed us to have some freedom in regards to our learning and learn how to independently research and identify sources ourselves. 

Links to Lois' podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/chatter-box/id1516203959

https://open.spotify.com/show/5eNcZNtvOlCa7NUhFzCl2o

Oliver Patel, Kahu Sanson-Burnett and Jude Atkins

Our passion project was building a functioning bike-boat for us to travel over water on. For us, "functioning" meant it would float, be steerable and movable. We enjoyed going to the dump and picking out our bike base and tires. We made the bike-boat at Kahu's house and documented our progress so we could make a video. We learnt a lot about how to check if sources are reliable using the CRAAP test and the surprisingly high number of commercial bike/boats already available. This was an enjoyable project as we got to express some of our creativity and make an epic bike/boat.