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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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The Chocolate Project

First grade students learned about rainforests, ecosystems, agriculture, history, the economics of trade, and cooking by studying the history of chocolate.

Economics Illustrated

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

Kinetic Coasters

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

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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Does My Vote Matter?

Does My Vote Matter introduces students to the wide array of voting systems that exist and to various measures of fairness in those systems.

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.

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.

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, ...

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.

Ampersand: The Student Journal of School & Work

Students came together after working at their internships to create a yearbook of their experiences, so they could be shared with their peers.
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