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.

Rotational Volumes

Students learned about rotational volumes by cutting shapes into books and rotating the pages around the axis of the book spine to create a three dimensional shape.

Projectile Motion

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.

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VersUS

Students went on a three-day, 23-mile journey on foot from the Mexican border to the Cabrillo National Monument, capturing the details of the journey through photography and journaling, later to be synthesized into a book focused on dichotomies that students chose to highlight.

Voices and Visions

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.

Media Saves the Beach

Students decided to test the quality of San Diego’s coastal waters and produce media in multiple formats to inform the public about what they discovered.