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

Toy Story

Students created their own toy alongside local pre-schoolers and write a story about what that toy does when no one is around.

Spaceship Earth

Students built weather balloons and rockets in order to learn more about Astro-photography and Earth Science in an attempt to start their own HTH NASA.

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

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.

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.

View All

The Whole Meal

In this project, students chose a “food philosophy” and kept a journal of all they ate for the eight weeks of their study. They interviewed family members about favorite recipes and their history, tried them out, and wrote a cookbook containing the best of them.

Nature or Nurture

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

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

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