Genius Hour

I have heard of Genius Hour before this class and have always found the idea to be intriguing.  However, being a PE teacher, never found a proper place for it.  Considering that my job is to make sure kids are being physically active for a vast majority of the time, its tough.  I am assuming many traditional classroom teachers feel the same way about Genius hour.  How can they be expected to meet state standards, but yet give up 20% of their time in class to let kids discover anything they want.  I do feel that there should be a happy medium to allow this to occur.  I have given a topic to a class and told them they can create anything they want within the scope of the topic.  I think this allows a student a wide range of productivity and creativity.

I enjoy doing things on my own and when given the opportunity to investigate whatever I want, i do feel more empowered.  I am sure students would do the same (at least most would).  This type of project, in my opinion, would work in most classes, but not all.  Not ALL students would be motivated to do anything and actually find this to be a bigger pain, because they don't want to do it (especially in HS).  

I think a modified version of this would work really well for most, if not all classes.  giving a broad topic and allowing students to create anything under that umbrella.  I do this a couple times as an assignment in my sports medicine class.  Students can choose any type of athletic injury they want and then explore/research that injury.