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.

50 high school juniors collaborated with a local musician and film director to create a music video for the song, “Bubbles In Space” by Mike Andrews.
Students melded art, physics, math, and elements of design and engineering to build a rolling ball structure called Kinetic Coasters.
Teachers devised a project to stimulate students to think critically about their communities. They created conceptual maps of the city to communicate a message they cared about.

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 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 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 wrote pieces of poetry and conducted interviews to be included in different field guides about the San Diego bay.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

Students worked to created a mural in memory of a student that passed away, Sean Fuchs.
Students played a game called MUN Trade War, where they used math to model economic and military avenues of international engagement.
Students designed escape rooms that would challenge participants’ implicit bias by incorporating content related to attitudes about age, race, gender, sexuality, and mental health in each escape room puzzle.