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.

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Planting Community

Students read about and researched issues related to agriculture and biology before working in groups to create large mobile planters for kindergarteners to learn from.

In My Shoes

Students learned about shoe design before creating their own in order to explore them as a point for a study of identity and diversity.

Staircase to Nowhere

Students created art pieces and accompanying posters inspired by the quote “If a staircase goes somewhere, it is craft; if it goes nowhere, it’s art.”

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.

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Stars in the Parks

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.

Chemistry & Conflict

Students conducted research and interviews about a specific molecule and its role in history. The information they gathered was used to create art pieces for a book on the different compounds.

Operation Story Cushion

Students interviewed younger children and parents in a school next to military housing in order to create a “story cushion” -- a pillow with voice recorded chips so children could listen to their parent’s voice whenever they wanted.