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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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

Chapter 3: With each other

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

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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.

Imagine Mural

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

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.
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