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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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Calculicious

Calculicious was a cross-curricular project at High Tech High, where seniors were engaged in using calculus to make and describe art.

A Fight With Gravity

For this gravity science project, students documented their own physics experiments in order to fight gravity using kites, balloons, and other flying objects of their own creation.

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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Does My Vote Matter?

Does My Vote Matter introduces students to the wide array of voting systems that exist and to various measures of fairness in those systems.

Growing Beyond Earth

Students learned biology concepts and scientific methods through a real world challenge -- growing food with no natural light, no gravity, and hardly any space.

The Mad Props Podcast Project

Tenth grade students created podcasts related to California state ballot propositions.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

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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.

Light of Kindness

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

Dribble and Rebel

Fourth grade teachers designed a project for students to look at history through the lens of sports and to explore how sports build and shape communities.
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