Alec talks to fifth grade teacher Jeff Govoni about a project he and his fifth grade colleagues did last year, in which students designed and built dog houses and cat condos for animals seeking adoption.
It was the week before the exhibition at High Tech Middle Chula Vista. My eighth-grade class had spent the last eight weeks exploring the question “What makes us resilient?”
There are two questions I hear a lot from visitors to High Tech High that are TOTALLY different, but both based on the same misconception about Project-based Learning.
Lots of teachers come to High Tech High, see how collaborative the teachers are, and get inspired to make their first project a massive interdisciplinary collaboration between, say, English, Spanish, Biology, and Algebra.
This is almost always a bad idea.
Alec and Nuvia talk to artist Scarlett Baily about her life, her art, and in particular the process of collaborating with 200 elementary school students
Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.
This collection is called “true project stories” because it’s all about teachers (and students) telling the stories of the projects they’ve done, from the heights of achievement to the depths of despair.
Q: It seems restrictive to tell every kid to make the same kind of product when we’re doing a project. How should I decide what parts of the project to be flexible on and which are non-negotiable?
Alec talks to High School teacher about John Santos about how he and his students explored AI together, and how it became a tool for building curiosity
How can assessment practices be designed to best support student learning? In school, the term “assessment” is often shorthand for “grades”—or, perhaps, tests, quizzes, rubrics, and similar evaluative tools. However, thinking of “assessment” as interchangeable with “test” or “grade” limits the potential for assessment practices to lead to meaningful and deeper learning.
High Tech High Interim CEO Kaleb Rashad and co-founder Rob Riordan sit down to talk about what they were doing BEFORE High Tech High, and how it shaped their philosophy of education
To address the youth mental health crisis, 11th grade Humanities teacher Andres Perez and his students at High Tech High Chula Vista sewed tote bags for patients at Rady Children’s Hospital Psychiatric Outward. Along the way they learned about the systematic issues in society that could lead to troubling mental health issues, and how to take action toward them. They also learned the importance of iterating a product and a process, and giving grace to oneself through it all.
A project launch is an engaging, active experience with multiple entry points for diverse learners that invites multiple perspectives and fosters diverse, innovative thinking.
