Changing the Subject

Welcome

Of the thousands of projects High Tech High teachers and students have undertaken since the first school opened in 2000, the fifty documented in this book and website are a mere sampling; we hope they provide inspiration and a starting place for many more creative iterations.  We curated them by asking current and former teachers (now numbering in the hundreds) to nominate work that was both inspiring and replicable.

Our purpose is to share highlights from High Tech High’s first twenty years.  In doing so, we aim to describe, not prescribe.  “This isn’t how to do it, it’s how we did it.” 

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the relentless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, page 53)

Chapter 1: Invention and reinvention

In these projects students and teachers are creating something new in the physical world.

Students worked in groups to research and define an aspect of blood physiology, blood banking, or blood-related diseases before creating multimedia art pieces using what they had learned.
For this gravity science project, students documented their own physics experiments in order to fight gravity using kites, balloons, and other flying objects of their own creation.
Students created an art and music exhibition which explained the math concepts behind the trajectory of objects.

Chapter 2: In the world, with the world

In these projects, students are understanding the need for change in their world and making that change, through service or community action.

Students ran and organized a Kickstarter campaign to write and film a documentary that covered the topic of gun violence and its effects in the United States.
Students visited the Veteran’s Village of San Diego (VVSD) to interview veterans, write about their stories, and co-design a piece of art with them.
Students critically examined the criminal justice system in the US by working with the California Innocence Project (CIP) to analyze actual clients’ case files and recommend to CIP whether or not to take the case.

Chapter 3: With each other

In these projects, students are investigating their beliefs and relationships and changing them.

Students played a game called MUN Trade War, where they used math to model economic and military avenues of international engagement.
In this student-created and student-run simulation, participants took on the roles of Syrian citizens forced to leave and seek refuge in another country.
In this project, students chose a “food philosophy” and kept a journal of all they ate for the eight weeks of their study. They interviewed family members about favorite recipes and their history, tried them out, and wrote a cookbook containing the best of them.