As you know from a previous blog post, I went to California. While I was there with my class, we visited many different places, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. One of the main places we went to in San Diego was High Tech High. HTH was one of the components to our learning expierence while we were in California, as it is a school that is completely different from any other school that I have seen.
The first thing that we did while we were at HTH was got introduced to our HTH buddy, as they would be with us for the rest of our stay at HTH. We were paired up with a student from HTH becuase, it would help us better understand what people at HTH do on a daily basis. We first got a tour of HTH just to be able to see what the rest of the campus was like. It was very interesting as it was very noticeable that this school was very different from every other school. The first thing you notice is that there are projects all over the place. Yes, normally you would see projects in the hallways of most schools, but this was on a whole other level. For example there was a bridge in the middle of one fo the hallways. Not a small bridge, a bridge that was several feet of the ground and went from one side of the hallway to the other. I was just walking by when I saw it so I am not quite sure what the purpose of it was, but it was really cool as it was fully built by the students. Another big thing that you notice while you are at HTH is that there are not lockers what so ever, I’m not sure why but they just don’t have them. One of the most obvious things that you see while you are there is that each class room has large windows in them so you can see clearly into them of what they are doing. It gives a more open feeling and less compact. You are also probably wondering why High Tech High is actually called High Tech High. You probably think that it is some super high tech place with computers everywhere, but in reality it’s quite different from that. HTH is a school that approaches teaching the students at a completely different angle than most schools. They give the students more freedom of what they want to do. Most schools just end up making the students study a text book and then test them on how well they understand it. On the other hand HTH study’s something together in class than discusses it, and gives there opinion on it.
While we were with our buddies, we wet to each of there classes. The first class I went to was Humanities, which if you didn’t know is Social Studies and English mixed together. While we were in there classes we participated in each of their activities. One of them was writing about what makes a great school. Here is what I wrote:
If I was not in PLP I would not have the same friends, I would not have the same sense of pride that I do when I am in PLP, and I would probably struggle a little bit more as it is not the way I prefer to learn. A great school needs a lot of things to make it a great school. To start off one of the most important things is the teachers, as they are the role models of the school and set examples for the students. The teachers have to be good enough to know if certain students are falling behind or not quite understanding something, and if that happens they need to know how to take action and get that student back on track. The most important thing is the sense of community in a school as it makes the student feel more comfortable.
The next class I went is the class with probably the biggest reputation and probably the most hated class… Math. We ended up doing a math problem in groups that was actually very interesting, that in the end just made my brain hurt.
The next class that we went was very interesting as we talked about events that had happened very recently. For example one event that was brought up was about a Dodge Ram Commerical with Martin Luther King’s speech in the background. When we watched the video, the person who had brought the topic up explaiend how he felt about it and I completley agreed with him, as the way they used the speech in the commercial basically defeated the point of the commercial. This class was very interesting as it gave the students chance to give there opinion on something, which gives other students a chance either agree or voice there own opinion and argue.
While we were at HTH we had a project assigned to us, and that was to interview our HTH buddy. We were assigned to do it because, it would basically force us to get a better understanding of what life was like going to HTH. Sadly while I did my interview, there were other students playing dodgeball on the field making lots of noise. Here is the interview podcast that I made:
Going to High Tech High was one of the most memorable expeirnces I have ever had. I learned about how HTH is devoted to creating a school with students that are hard working and devoted. The way they accomplish that is by making it clear that being in HTH is a privelage and not everybody is able to have that privelage. HTH is a diverse community where everybody feeds off each other to create great results, and most of all to create HTH creates great students which leads to making great people.