Figure 1. High Tech High hallway.
Setting
About the School
The Gary and Jerri-Ann High Tech High charter school (HTH) was founded in 2000 and is currently one of five high schools in an integrated network of eleven schools across San Diego County spanning kindergarten through twelfth grade. Located within a central campus of six schools in Point Loma, San Diego, High Tech High’s 572 students in grades nine through 12 are accepted through a blind lottery system based on zip code to ensure a representative sample of ethnicities and economic status from around the county. High Tech High is a charter school under the San Diego Unified School System and as such, our students take all the required state standardized tests. However, we do not ‘teach to the test,’ and are instead encouraged to teach to our academic passions and interests.
The High Tech High system of schools was founded on four design principles: personalization, common intellectual mission, real world connections and teacher as designer. Personalization is achieved through small class sizes, group learning, advisories, and a high degree of student choice in project work. Ideally, projects focus on real world connections to bring relevance to the material taught in the classroom and professionals and experts are encouraged to participate in the learning environment. The High Tech High model is untracked and students of all abilities are fully integrated within the classroom setting. Project based learning allows students with diverse abilities to engage in the pursuit of a common intellectual mission while group members benefit from each other’s learning styles and reasoning. Promoting educators as the designers of curriculum ensures content is taught from genuine interests and passions, which hopefully translate into a higher degree of student and teacher engagement.
Transparency is a key component of the High Tech High model. The brick and mortar structures are built to promote collaboration, with open learning environments fostering discussion and communal support, and large classroom windows creating a sense of connection between students and visitors. Technology is also utilized to promote transparency, with students and educators sharing work publicly on the Internet, through videos, digital portfolios of work, or other media. Students have access to computers and a variety of software, including Geometer’s sketchpad, Microsoft Office Suite with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as the Adobe Suite of programs including Photoshop, Premiere, Sound Booth, Dreamweaver and Flash, to fulfill project requirements and showcase their work. Student created digital portfolios can be found at http://www.hightechhigh.org.
Students
Due to the blind lottery system of entry, the student body at High Tech High comes from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and prior academic experiences. The largest spread in abilities and common skill sets is usually seen in grades that serve as entry points into the system (sixth and ninth). All students in my class have spent one or more years in the HTH system. As such, they are accustomed to working in a project-based environment, understand expectations, and feel comfortable with school norms such as revision and multiple drafts to achieve beautiful work (Berger, 2003). In addition, thanks to a consistent emphasis on social-emotional development within the HTH system of schools, there is very little focus on differences between the students. Heterogeneous classes operate smoothly with little sign of segregation by obvious factors, such as status or race.
Students are not tracked in the High Tech High system and English learners, IEP students, and 504 students are fully integrated in the learning environment. Teams are purposefully organized to be diverse in abilities, gender, and ethnicities. Teachers design projects with multiple entry points and personalize instruction to meet the differentiation demands of their particular students, while academic coaches (instructional assistants) provide extra support within the classroom setting to promote equitable access to learning
Scientific skills, such as observation, questioning, and analysis are more evenly displayed throughout the team, with a few students exhibiting outstanding abilities, and the majority having only rudimentary skills in these areas, albeit, developmentally appropriate for tenth grade.
High Tech High student demographics are fairly consistent with San Diego Unified School District demographics. We have a slightly smaller Latino population and a correspondingly larger white population; however, these numbers have been trending closer to the district demographics each year. We also have a slightly lower socioeconomically disadvantaged population compared to the district. This may be influenced by the additional costs involved in transporting kids to schools outside of their respective neighborhoods.
Figure 2. High Tech High data from Executive Summary School Accountability Report Card, 2010–2011 for Gary and Jerri-Ann High Tech High School, and San Diego Unified data from http://www.sandi.net/page/21.
Home life differs greatly for students and given the wide range of geographic locales from which HTH students travel to get to school, their access to family and community resources varies widely. Occasionally students on my team have limited access to the Internet and must visit local libraries or use the computers at school to accomplish homework requiring Internet research. In light of this fact, I try to give ample time for students to use the team laptops to get computer assignments out of the way during class.
Social Development
The High Tech High system of schools is purposefully designed to promote student socialization and collaboration. The focus on group work, accountability, communication and creating a respectful working environment is reinforced throughout the network of schools. Classes are intentionally small to promote close relationships between students and teachers, and differences are celebrated and accepted as the norm. Student safety from violence has never been an issue in my five years at High Tech High and students are encouraged to work out problems in a calm and respectful manner.
Students come from a variety of backgrounds and problem solving strategies, however, the inverted structure of the K-12 schools located on the Point Loma campus (one elementary school, two middle schools and three high schools) allows each school to be seeded with students that have participated in the social-emotional curriculum practiced throughout the HTH system. In addition, the HTH staff works to create an environment where students feel appreciated, respected and valued, to optimize the learning environment.
Each adult participating in the administration or teaching at High Tech High has an advisory–a group of students selected from each grade that meet every Friday for forty minutes. Advisory plays an important part in student socialization by creating across grade relationships throughout the four years of high school. Advisory activities like the school wide Olympics, eleventh grade internship visits, and college day, promote school culture as well as forging respectful relationships and encouraging tolerance.
Coursework
Students in the High Tech High system study physics in ninth grade, chemistry in tenth grade, biology and engineering in eleventh grade, and environmental science and physics again in twelfth grade.
In the tenth grade students are organized into three teams of roughly fifty students and three educators representing math, chemistry, humanities or Spanish. The three cohorts of students rotate through two of three possible teaching teams, covering math, chemistry, humanities, and Spanish in the course of their tenth grade year. Due to the pairings of teachers this results in two cohorts that receive double humanities over the year and one cohort that receives double chemistry (see figure 3 below).
Social Development
The High Tech High system of schools is purposefully designed to promote student socialization and collaboration. The focus on group work, accountability, communication and creating a respectful working environment is reinforced throughout the network of schools. Classes are intentionally small to promote close relationships between students and teachers, and differences are celebrated and accepted as the norm. Student safety from violence has never been an issue in my five years at High Tech High and students are encouraged to work out problems in a calm and respectful manner.
Students come from a variety of backgrounds and problem solving strategies, however, the inverted structure of the K-12 schools located on the Point Loma campus (one elementary school, two middle schools and three high schools) allows each school to be seeded with students that have participated in the social-emotional curriculum practiced throughout the HTH system. In addition, the HTH staff works to create an environment where students feel appreciated, respected and valued, to optimize the learning environment.
Each adult participating in the administration or teaching at High Tech High has an advisory–a group of students selected from each grade that meet every Friday for forty minutes. Advisory plays an important part in student socialization by creating across grade relationships throughout the four years of high school. Advisory activities like the school wide Olympics, eleventh grade internship visits, and college day, promote school culture as well as forging respectful relationships and encouraging tolerance.
Coursework
Students in the High Tech High system study physics in ninth grade, chemistry in tenth grade, biology and engineering in eleventh grade, and environmental science and physics again in twelfth grade.
In the tenth grade students are organized into three teams of roughly fifty students and three educators representing math, chemistry, humanities or Spanish. The three cohorts of students rotate through two of three possible teaching teams, covering math, chemistry, humanities, and Spanish in the course of their tenth grade year. Due to the pairings of teachers this results in two cohorts that receive double humanities over the year and one cohort that receives double chemistry (see figure 3 below).
Figure 3: Rotating student cohorts.
Students do not have a choice in the cohorts they are assigned to and the assignment is random and based on providing balanced classes with regard to ability, race, and gender. The students are further split into two classes of roughly 24 students each that alternate between teachers to keep class sizes small. Collaboration is highly encouraged in curriculum design so students can make interdisciplinary connections and deepen understanding of content material.
The chemistry curriculum follows the science framework for California public schools: atomic structure, thermodynamics, compounds and reactions, gas laws, acids and bases, properties of solutions, oxidation-reduction reactions and nuclear chemistry. Students are also encouraged to explore experimental design and data collection, to write about scientific concepts and their applications in nature, and to think critically and deeply about how scientific discovery shapes society.
Major instructional resources include: Internet resources for student-derived projects, projects of my own design, experts, worksheets, games, current research, and ScienceBridge resources from the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
Internet resources such as online videos from the Khan Academy, video demonstrations and how-tos on YouTube or Instructables.com, procedures and background research for class work and student projects, have all been invaluable to both students and myself. Occasionally students have read original research papers to help with projects. During a recent green chemistry project one student pair read and followed a procedure they found in a scientific paper on how to extract chitin from shrimp shells to use as a biodegradable plastic alternative.
The ScienceBridge resources from UCSD provide training for labs that have real world relevance and examine issues that are currently being studied by scientists. For example, one lab examines ocean acidification as a byproduct of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation.
Three of the four design principles - specifically personalization, real world connection, and common intellectual mission, inform all of my project designs and an ideal project is rich in all three. Often, if a project is successful other teachers will use it with their students as well. This type of collaboration fosters a community of learning between staff members, which I use to inform my practice.
Two recent projects that my students have completed are the publication of Chemistry and Conflict, and Trash: the Science and Ethics of Consumption. Both were joint projects with Peter Jana, a 10th grade humanities teacher. In the Chemistry and Conflict project students analyzed an element or molecule in the context of an historical event (such as uranium and the cold war) and then linked the historical event to a current conflict (Iranian nuclear program) and described the chemistry involved. The book was illustrated by photographs of copper etchings of student selected images related to their chapter focus. The etchings were created through an oxidation reduction reaction. Copies of the book and a project description can be found on my digital portfolio here: http://dp.hightechhigh.org/~dsharrock/projects-10.html
In Trash: the Science and Ethics of Consumption students conducted green chemistry experiments related to consumption and documented their process on a student created website. The humanities component looked at consumption through different philosophical lenses. The website can be found here: http://dp.hightechhigh.org/~dsharrock/webdesign/pages/Navigation%20pages/index.html
In both of these projects student choice guided the topics explored. The cross disciplinary nature reinforced the common intellectual mission aspect of project design and both projects examined real world issues resulting in a public exhibition and a publicly available product, and whenever possible students contacted community experts for guidance further reinforcing the real world connection.
My Classroom
My chemistry classroom is situated at the southeast corner of the building with large windows that let in lots of natural light. Most days students sit in groups of four at six tables. Counters line both ends of the classroom with storage shelves housing craft supplies, chemicals and glassware. A fume hood occupies part of the counter space and my sink empties down a storm drain, not a proper sewage line, much to my chagrin. The room is also bereft of gas lines or other useful laboratory infrastructure. However, it is bright and cheery and the walls are covered in wonderful student work.
The chemistry curriculum follows the science framework for California public schools: atomic structure, thermodynamics, compounds and reactions, gas laws, acids and bases, properties of solutions, oxidation-reduction reactions and nuclear chemistry. Students are also encouraged to explore experimental design and data collection, to write about scientific concepts and their applications in nature, and to think critically and deeply about how scientific discovery shapes society.
Major instructional resources include: Internet resources for student-derived projects, projects of my own design, experts, worksheets, games, current research, and ScienceBridge resources from the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
Internet resources such as online videos from the Khan Academy, video demonstrations and how-tos on YouTube or Instructables.com, procedures and background research for class work and student projects, have all been invaluable to both students and myself. Occasionally students have read original research papers to help with projects. During a recent green chemistry project one student pair read and followed a procedure they found in a scientific paper on how to extract chitin from shrimp shells to use as a biodegradable plastic alternative.
The ScienceBridge resources from UCSD provide training for labs that have real world relevance and examine issues that are currently being studied by scientists. For example, one lab examines ocean acidification as a byproduct of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation.
Three of the four design principles - specifically personalization, real world connection, and common intellectual mission, inform all of my project designs and an ideal project is rich in all three. Often, if a project is successful other teachers will use it with their students as well. This type of collaboration fosters a community of learning between staff members, which I use to inform my practice.
Two recent projects that my students have completed are the publication of Chemistry and Conflict, and Trash: the Science and Ethics of Consumption. Both were joint projects with Peter Jana, a 10th grade humanities teacher. In the Chemistry and Conflict project students analyzed an element or molecule in the context of an historical event (such as uranium and the cold war) and then linked the historical event to a current conflict (Iranian nuclear program) and described the chemistry involved. The book was illustrated by photographs of copper etchings of student selected images related to their chapter focus. The etchings were created through an oxidation reduction reaction. Copies of the book and a project description can be found on my digital portfolio here: http://dp.hightechhigh.org/~dsharrock/projects-10.html
In Trash: the Science and Ethics of Consumption students conducted green chemistry experiments related to consumption and documented their process on a student created website. The humanities component looked at consumption through different philosophical lenses. The website can be found here: http://dp.hightechhigh.org/~dsharrock/webdesign/pages/Navigation%20pages/index.html
In both of these projects student choice guided the topics explored. The cross disciplinary nature reinforced the common intellectual mission aspect of project design and both projects examined real world issues resulting in a public exhibition and a publicly available product, and whenever possible students contacted community experts for guidance further reinforcing the real world connection.
My Classroom
My chemistry classroom is situated at the southeast corner of the building with large windows that let in lots of natural light. Most days students sit in groups of four at six tables. Counters line both ends of the classroom with storage shelves housing craft supplies, chemicals and glassware. A fume hood occupies part of the counter space and my sink empties down a storm drain, not a proper sewage line, much to my chagrin. The room is also bereft of gas lines or other useful laboratory infrastructure. However, it is bright and cheery and the walls are covered in wonderful student work.
Figure 4. My classroom.