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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.

Economics Illustrated

Students created an illustrated book that accessibly explained different economic concepts.

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.

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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The Mad Props Podcast Project

Tenth grade students created podcasts related to California state ballot propositions.

Voices of Justice

Students ran a political campaign simulation and conducted extensive interviews with people from the community about societal issues so students could learn about these topics both on a macro-level and through personal experiences.

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.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

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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.

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?"
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