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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.

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.

Staircase to Nowhere

Students created art pieces and accompanying posters inspired by the quote “If a staircase goes somewhere, it is craft; if it goes nowhere, it’s art.”

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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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.

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.

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.

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Imagine Mural

Students worked to created a mural in memory of a student that passed away, Sean Fuchs.

Light of Kindness

Students learned about properties of light and the effect it has on certain materials via experiments before writing shadow puppet plays.

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.
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