Skip to content
  • 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

Planting Community

Students read about and researched issues related to agriculture and biology before working in groups to create large mobile planters for kindergarteners to learn from.

ComplexCity

Teachers devised a project to stimulate students to think critically about their communities. They created conceptual maps of the city to communicate a message they cared about.

The Arcade Project

Students explored the simplicity and limitless uses of a cardboard box and then built arcade games out of cardboard and other recycled materials.

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

Beyond the Crossfire

Students ran and organized a Kickstarter campaign to write and film a documentary that covered the topic of gun violence and its effects in the United States.

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.

Voices and Visions

Students visited the Veteran’s Village of San Diego (VVSD) to interview veterans, write about their stories, and co-design a piece of art with them.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

View All

Reading Buddies: the Children’s Literature Project

11th graders were each partnered with an elementary student as a "reading buddy" to help them grow as a reader and write their own stories.

Nature or Nurture

“Do you know what symbiosis is?” reads the first line of the book Evolving Ecologists, ...

Free Your Mind: The Ultimate Escape Room

Students designed escape rooms that would challenge participants’ implicit bias by incorporating content related to attitudes about age, race, gender, sexuality, and mental health in each escape room puzzle.
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact

© HIGH TECH HIGH GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION 2008 - 2026. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.