This post is connected to our trip to California. If you want some more information about our trip, check it out here!

Viva California!

If you want to know more about High Tech High and what we did there, this is just the post for you…

Let’s start off with the basics, shall we? High Tech High, or HTH for short, is a charter school in San Diego, California. For those who don’t know, a charter school is essentially a school that receives funding from the government to operate in its own unique ways, while still following a basic structure that allows them to operate. In terms of “unique ways,” High Tech High is a Project Based Learning school which means that instead of lots of small assignments and frequent testing which a normal school might do, all of the students’ work and learning are applied through projects.

Hm, that sounds awfully familiar… Oh that’s right! We’re in a Project Based Learning program too! Anyways, when we found out before our trip that we would be visiting a whole school that does lots of the same things we do in PLP, we were all pretty excited to see the school and meet the people who go there as it’s not too often that we get to meet people from other PBL programs. To assure our American friends that we aren’t aliens living in “that cold place up north,” we posted Who Am I videos to YouTube so that they could get a better idea of what we’re all like. If you don’t know me too well, you should check out this video and if you do know me well, you should check out this video!

So, our videos were sent to the students at HTH and groups were made. I ended up being paired up with Hali and Gavin but later on, Niko (a student) and Calum tagged along with the group.

We started off our day with a tour around the campus, because what better way to get acquainted with the school than to see all of it? As we got to see, High Tech High consists of more than one school which are HTH Media Arts, HTH International, and the HTH elementary, middle school, and high school. We spent the most time at HTH Media Arts as that’s where our group members all attend to so we got to see a lot more of the Media Arts building than anything else and believe me when I say it, it’s nothing like a conventional high school. For starters, we did this thing called Media Mondays where students could bring up a topic and a source of media with it and the rest of the class could discuss the topic. Debates weren’t discouraged as at one point in one of our discussions, there was a pretty interesting argument about gun laws in America. Although the discussions can get somewhat edgy, I think it would be a good thing to add to normal school systems as it really encourages critical logic and reasoning within the students. After that, we went to their math class where, even at a school, we got schooled…

We were pretty hungry after using so much brain power on an equation about lockers so we went to the Five Guys which is ON THEIR CAMPUS. Either way, it was a pretty sweet deal…

Afterwards, we went to their humanities class which all in all, didn’t feel too different from our humanities classes back at home, which allowed all of us to effectively work with each other during the class. Once we had finished the humanities class, it was time to go work… by sitting on grass, of course!

So before we met our partners, we had to prepare questions for our partners at High Tech High as we would be doing a podcast with them at school. We were told that we could be somewhat liberal with our podcasts and talk about things with our partners which interested us, as long as it was school appropriate but there was no problem there for any of us. Anyways, Calum and I sat down on the grade and talked to our partners about the social aspect of High Tech High and some of the big differences between the social structure in High Tech High and the social structures in other high schools. Check it out!

Once we finished recording our podcasts, it was actually time to pack up our stuff for the day as school was close to ending already so we gave our temporary farewells to our partners and went back to our hotels…

Feeling fresh and ready to take on the new day, we returned to HTH! As it was still early enough in the morning for our brains to not be working at full capacity yet, we started off our day with some art and we got to make our own “zines” which were essentially really short magazines about us and our time at High Tech High. After that was done, we got to experience X Blocks in which students could pick something that they want to do and they would be given school time to pursue the things they want to do, although there was only a finite amount of options you could choose from.

After that, we returned to their humanities class where we picked up from where we left off the last class. To keep it short and sweet, we were listening to the story of this really talented girl who lived in a really poor area with a really bad school system. She and her class got to visit a school not too far away from them, except this school was a very elite and expensive school. When she got there, she couldn’t handle how much she missing out on and she vanished from a lot of people’s lives. As we listened to her story, we discussed fairness among the school system in America and how certain people don’t get the same opportunities as others. This turned into one of my favourite parts of the class as we ended up choosing sides and opinions during our discussion and we were all able to argue our reasoning which ended up turning into a very fun debate. When I say “fun,” I mean that it was super interesting to listen to and to participate in. Eventually though, all good things must come to an end and we ended up leaving High Tech High for the last time.

We said our final goodbyes with our friends from High Tech High and with that, we left the school campus to go fly out to San Jose and continue on our trip of California.

I really enjoyed our time at High Tech High as it was super cool to meet people who are doing the same things we do. It was definitely fresh to get a different perspective on what other PBL programs look like around the world and what the people look like who go to them. I’ll never forget our time at HTH or the people and I’m definitely going to hold on to these experiences for a long time.