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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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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.

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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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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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.

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.

The Syrian Refugee Simulation

In this student-created and student-run simulation, participants took on the roles of Syrian citizens forced to leave and seek refuge in another country.
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