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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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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.”

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.

Kinetic Coasters

Students melded art, physics, math, and elements of design and engineering to build a rolling ball structure called Kinetic Coasters.

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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The Truth About Food

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.

Storytellers of the Land

In Storytellers of the Land, fifth graders read and wrote origin stories about animals and nature and teamed up with local conservation organizations to analyze thousands of trail camera photos of local wildlife.

Voices of Justice

Students ran a political campaign simulation and conducted extensive interviews with people from the community about societal issues so students could learn about these topics both on a macro-level and through personal experiences.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

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Toga Night

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.

Light of Kindness

Students learned about properties of light and the effect it has on certain materials via experiments before writing shadow puppet plays.

The Syrian Refugee Simulation

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.