Hannah Emmanuele
High Tech High In San Diego is nationally recognized as the high school of the future. It offers a student-centered, inquiry based learning environment where student engagement is remarkable.
This San Diego charter school exists to prepare students to be savvy, creative, quick-thinking adults and professionals in a modern world. It has scrapped a lot of what’s arbitrary and outdated about traditional schooling — classroom design, divisions between subjects, independence (read: isolation) from the community, and assessments that only one teacher ever sees…..As the school’s name implies, technology enables many of the projects students create. And teachers routinely craft lessons that blend subjects, reflecting how interwoven they truly are.
“We are teaching students to think deeply about content and then do something with their knowledge, not just race through a textbook,” says High Tech High director Ben Daley. Strong student-teacher relationships and a highly engaged, collaborative learning culture are hallmarks of each school. Students are the central focus of decision making teachers are supported through a strong professional learning community and are encouraged to teach through their own interests and passions. The school uses e-portfolios to showcase the evolution of teacher and student work.
Since 2000, the charter public school has evolved into a growing integrated network of:
- Twelve schools (five high schools, four middle schools, and three elementary schools)
- 5,000 students
- 500+ employees
- 98 percent of graduates have gone on to college, 75% to four-year institutions
- $57 million in real estate holdings
- $30 million budget
- Graduate School of Education (GSE), the nation’s first graduate school embedded within a K-12 learning community
- Hosts over 2,000 visitors a year.
