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.

First grade students learned about rainforests, ecosystems, agriculture, history, the economics of trade, and cooking by studying the history of chocolate.
Students created an art and music exhibition which explained the math concepts behind the trajectory of objects.
Students created an illustrated book that accessibly explained different economic concepts.

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

Chapter 3: With each other

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

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.
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.
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.