What if you had a party and nobody came?
That was the deep-seated fear that my partner Jeff Vlk and I had when we launched the BGenius Lab last August. Our mission, on the face of it, seemed simple enough: to create a space for teachers to observe and model best practice that would also support our schoolwide literacy initiative.
Our motto? Keep the doors open--literally and figuratively. We hoped to promote an openness to new ideas, and we also intended to keep the doors to our glass-walled room open at all times, allowing any staff member to observe and learn from colleagues. 
As for Jeff and me, we’d help design lessons, co-teach or simply be a guide-on-the-side to support our staff. With the full-throated support of our Principal Jeff Wardle, API Jill Maraldo, and the rest of the leadership team, we introduced the concept to the staff at our first institute day and then hoped that since we had built it, well, they would come.
What happened in that first week, and has continued to happen every week since then, has been nothing short of stunning. On our opening day of school, our first customers were an Honors Geometry Class coming down to study vocabulary. By the end of the first quarter, over 200 classes had visited the lab, and we’d worked with nearly 100 members of our staff. By the end of the semester, we’d served over 400 classes and nearly every student at BG multiple times.
We’ve seen kids on their hands and knees equipped with spoons and puffballs to learn about natural selection. We’ve watched the art students sketch while the AP Psych students discuss hypnosis. We’ve brought in student tutors to help our kids learn our shared reading annotation strategies in nearly every subject.
And unexpected things have happened too: our French teacher and our auto teacher collaborated on a project; we conducted mock interviews with our Business students to prepare them for the world of work. And one of our favorite lessons was when the AP Spanish students engaged in a speed-dating activity where they dressed as famous Spanish thinkers and introduced themselves to each other in a quick rotation (all in Spanish, of course!)
One draw to the BGenius Lab is the large size of our room, and the mobile furniture that allows staff to experiment with groupings and activities in new ways; our multiple screens allow students to share their work with others.
Charlotte Danielson reminds us that for learning to take place, there needs to be a culture that supports it. What BG teachers have shown over and over this semester is that that culture very much exists. We have been amazed at what our colleagues have taught us--how they manage transitions during lessons, how they scaffold reading and writing instruction, and how they bring joy to their work every day. We can’t wait to see what 2017 brings!
