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.

The core purpose of this project was for students to develop a connection to the natural world, and examine the role of pollinators, and re-plant a school garden.
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.
Students built weather balloons and rockets in order to learn more about Astro-photography and Earth Science in an attempt to start their own HTH NASA.

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 explored how people use parks to connect to themselves, each other, and to nature while also learning about the stars on trips to these parks.
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.

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.
Students worked to created a mural in memory of a student that passed away, Sean Fuchs.
Students read plays by three Greek writers before adapting them into an onstage version following themes of genocide, war, refugees, and the treatment of women.