I am totally sold on Genius Hour, Passion Projects, Clubhouse Classroom, 20% Time, or whatever you want to call it. So much so that I convinced our curriculum director and superintendent to go forward with scheduling it for, somewhat ironically, about 80% of the students in our middle school. I am pretty comfortable with setting up a more formal curriculum for the course, and I've even had a assistance with aligning with CCSS.
The question I need to answer for everyone is: "How do we code it for the state?" I need to give it a course code from the [Illinois Prior-to-Secondary Course Catalog] (http://www.isbe.state.il.us/iscs/pdf/prior_sec_course_catalog.pdf) before I can move forward with it being a course. To make it more complicated, I do not want to call it a LA or SS course, as I want students to be able to study whatever they want, and I need teachers who are highly-qualified in various subjects to teach it.
I love that you're doing this Jon! Although I don't know much about state code, I do agree that keeping it outside of a content code would be a good idea so teachers don't feel obligated to match students' passions to content standards. Genius Hour, whenever possible, should be an opportunity for students to learn and practice skills such as research, planning out steps in a process, creating a manageable timeline, gathering materials and resources, reflecting and self-evaluating, reporting out, etc... Students can do this just as easily with a topic of WWE wrestlers as they can with the War of 1812 (or perhaps more so).
Thanks for pioneering this aspect of Genius Hour Jon!!!