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.

Raptors for Rodents

Students created owl boxes for predatory birds to live in near a new building on the HTHCV campus, to learn about the local environment and help deal with the school's rodent problem.

The Chocolate Project

First grade students learned about rainforests, ecosystems, agriculture, history, the economics of trade, and cooking by studying the history of chocolate.

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

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.

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.

Media Saves the Beach

Students decided to test the quality of San Diego’s coastal waters and produce media in multiple formats to inform the public about what they discovered.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

View All

Nature or Nurture

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

Model United Nations Trade War

Students played a game called MUN Trade War, where they used math to model economic and military avenues of international engagement.

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
  • About
  • Projects
  • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Definitions
  • Contact

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