Skip to content
Menu
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact
cover-mock5
Learn More

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.

View All

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.

Kinetic Coasters

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

AbleGamerz

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.

View All

The Voiceless

After learning that suicide was the second largest killer of young people, and the growing need for education about mental health, students partnered with families to discuss their loss of a loved one on camera for a student-run video and banner campaign.

XONR8

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.

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.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

View All

Imagine Mural

Students worked to created a mural in memory of a student that passed away, Sean Fuchs.

Ampersand: The Student Journal of School & Work

Students came together after working at their internships to create a yearbook of their experiences, so they could be shared with their peers.

In Sickness and in Health

Through interviews with family members, scientists, and medical professionals, students homed in answers to the question, "What am I most likely to die of?"
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact
Menu
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact

© HIGH TECH HIGH GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION 2008 - 2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.