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.

Calculicious was a cross-curricular project at High Tech High, where seniors were engaged in using calculus to make and describe art.
First grade students learned about rainforests, ecosystems, agriculture, history, the economics of trade, and cooking by studying the history of chocolate.
6th grade students set out to explore the questions surrounding disability, using video gaming as both a point of common interest and a real-world engineering and technological challenge.

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.
This project helped students to learn to think critically about all aspects of food. Throughout this year-long project, students used the subject of food to talk about community, family traditions, sustainability, and health.
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 learned about properties of light and the effect it has on certain materials via experiments before writing shadow puppet plays.
Students worked to created a mural in memory of a student that passed away, Sean Fuchs.
Through interviews with family members, scientists, and medical professionals, students homed in answers to the question, "What am I most likely to die of?"