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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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Kinetic Coasters

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

Bubbles in Space

50 high school juniors collaborated with a local musician and film director to create a music video for the song, “Bubbles In Space” by Mike Andrews.

In My Shoes

Students learned about shoe design before creating their own in order to explore them as a point for a study of identity and diversity.

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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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.

Operation Story Cushion

Students interviewed younger children and parents in a school next to military housing in order to create a “story cushion” -- a pillow with voice recorded chips so children could listen to their parent’s voice whenever they wanted.

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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Toga Night

Students read plays by three Greek writers before adapting them into an onstage version following themes of genocide, war, refugees, and the treatment of women.

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?"

Nature or Nurture

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