Tuesday, June 30, 2015 • Herlong High graduates present Genius Hour

Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, June 30, 2015 edition of the Lassen County Times.

This year, Herlong High School did something different.

Instead of doing the usual senior project, students decided to have a Genius Hour where all students did individual projects that further a passion they have.

The idea was inspired by Google’s Genius Hour where each employee gets a chance to work on a project that they want for an hour during work.

While students did their projects, they had to answer three questions; One, what was your driving question? Two, what did you do to answer that question? Three, what did you learn?

Senior Alexandra Kiel’s driving question was, “how do you make costumes out of readily available foams?”

She said, “I chose this as my project because my most favorite hobby is costume-making, but I want to further my hobby by using different materials like foam and plastic instead of just using fabric.”

To answer the question Kiel took a costume making class at the Nevada Museum of Art where she learned there is a wide variety of readily available foams everywhere, half of which most people see as garbage.

She said she also learned how to manipulate foam, attach it to either other foams or a base like a hat, and how to paint the foam efficiently.

Kiel said, “I also learned that it may sound easy to make costumes out of foam, but in all reality its defiantly a lot harder than sewing a costume together. In the end I was somewhat successful in making a plague doctors mask and hat, unfortunately the hat is a bit small, but that just helps me learn from my mistakes.”

She said she enjoyed Genius Hour because it helped her further her own passion and it was a lot of fun learning new things that relate to something she enjoys.

Herlong High isn’t the only school doing Genius Hour there are many other schools across the county doing Genius Hour, which are to be successful and informative.