High Tech High

After wanting to get to High Tech High in San Diego for years, I have just participated in their annual summer institute.

Larry Rosenstock (CEO) kicked the institute off with a call for more experimentation in schools, noting that while national education conversations are about competition, international education conversations are about co-operation. He spoke about the building design and use of space at High Tech High and showed this clip on Changing the Subject.

For the next two days I attended interactive workshops led by High Tech High teachers. Tim McNamara explained their 20% time for teachers through the use of the Paseo protocol – just what I need to structure the team learning time we are creating at our school next year.

A Special Symposium session enabled us to spend 15 minutes with various High Tech High teachers to learn about their action research. I heard about research related to cultures of thinking, replacing grades, integrated teaching approaches in lower secondary school, and I picked up some great resources on creating a culture of growth mindset.

Tom Fehrenbacher then led a workshop on collegial coaching and helped me structure my thoughts about the peer coaching model I am planning on introducing next year.

At the end of the first day, one of the High Tech High students gave me a tour of the high school. It was fascinating to hear her perceptions and observe the school spaces and displays. There is a strong emphasis on relationships and happy students. There is even music playing in the toilets!

On day two, Daisy Sharrock showed me how to use crowd-funding like Kickstarter to create really authentic projects. Imagine getting funding to professionally animate a student video or to produce a textbook with global perspectives on history!

I then took part in a project Tuning. I found this a bit frustrating because the facilitator hurried though the protocol and kept on wanting to add his own ideas, but this was a reminder anyway of how difficult the effective facilitation of a protocol can be. One of the norms was described as KiSH, a nice way to refer to Ron Berger’s kind, specific, and helpful feedback.

I participated in Will Haase’s workshop on understanding motivation, engagement, and creativity. He spoke about the work of Tony Wagner, Carol Dweck, and Dan Pink, and provided a huge reading list.

The final day culminated with an Open Space unconference. I helped a group with a Tuning of their project idea for a Zombie-Apocalypse PBL unit. I’d heard of this cool idea before, but now I’m thinking about how I could use this in my own teaching.

I finished the institute talking to Laura McBain, the Director of External Relations. She spoke about the High Tech High outreach in Australia and she advocates that the fastest way to change a school’s pedagogy is to hold an Exhibition Open Day focusing on deeper learning, where all teachers display their student work. This fast-tracks dialogue about what is quality work.

What was particularly impressive was that everything High Tech High does is open-source and shared. All of their teacher portfolios are available on their website. I was also interested in their talk about student POLs (presentations of learning) and I need to find out more about this.

High Tech High walks the talk unlike any school I have ever seen. I would chalk this up as one of the best professional learning experiences I have participated in and I will be having more to do with High Tech High in the future.

6 thoughts on “High Tech High

  1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Cameron. High Tech High is a place I’d like to visit, maybe even teach at in the future! I’ll be following the links you’ve shared here with interest. Enjoy your time at ISTE over the next couple of days.

    Jenny 🙂

  2. Thanks heaps Jenny. How do you find the time to do everything you do? Amazing.

  3. Hi Cameron, this is Emily from the CFG training! I found your blog and was really excited to learn that you were at High Tech High in June. The school I taught at in Massachusetts was modeled, in many ways, after HTH! We also had Presentations of Learning (POLs). I’d love to learn more about how your visit to HTH is informing your work at your school. I hope we can stay in touch and connect again soon!

  4. Hey Emily, thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment. There are lots of synergies between High Tech High and the CFG training! Give me some time to get my feet back on the ground and we should connect. Let me know what works best for you.

    Best,

    Cameron

  5. Hi Cameron

    Sounds like an interesting experience. The link to the Paseo protocol doesn’t work for me. The website says some protocols are available via the old website, but I’m not sure how to get there. Can you help?

  6. Hi Edna,

    The National School Reform Faculty are right in the middle of updating all of their protocols. Their website might be down for a while, but they will be replacing all of their protocols with newer versions. I just suggest checking back in a few weeks. Thanks for dropping by!

    Cameron

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