HTHL Internship and College Advising Institute
HTH and HTHI Annual MANPOWER Academic Internship Showcase
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1. HTH Bayshore Begins Renovations
2. HTHL Hosts Teacher Residency
With Focus on HTH Exhibition
3. On Writing in PBL
4. HTH Network Site Updates
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HTH Bayshore Begins Renovations
HTH Bayshore (formerly San
Carlos High School) began renovation of its dynamic new facility
at 890 Broadway, in Redwood City, CA, during the last week of March,
2005. The 28,700 square
foot building, slated to open its doors for the start of the 2005-06
school year, was originally
built as a beer warehouse in 1962. The building was subsequently used
as a tire warehouse and
then as a photo processing facility until 1999. New owners began a major
remodel in 2000 to
ready the building for use as office space. By adding a floor to the
dramatic bowstring truss
structure, local developers created a lower parking level that can accommodate
75 cars, and an
upper "open office" level with high vaulted ceilings, large
expanses of window walls, and
exposed wooden trusses.
Timing is everything, however, and 890 Broadway, having missed the dot.com
boom of the late
90's, sat vacant for the past 5 years. HTH Learning real estate scouts
spotted the building early
on in 2004, while assisting with San Carlos High School's exhaustive
3 year search for a permanent
school site, but it had been under agreement several times and earmarked
for conversion to
a variety of uses. When the last deal fell through at the 12th hour,
HTH was ready to pounce
on the building with very little notice. Although it has a relatively
small floor plate, the open and
airy space seemed ideally suited to a HTH makeover! A design team that
includes the Redwood
City architectural firm of DES, as well as HTHL Design Director, David
Stephen, and HTHL
Regional Director, Linda Stevenin, set to work on developing architectural
plans for the renovation
this past fall. The local construction company of Rudolph & Sletten
has also been
involved in the design process from the start, participating in a myriad
of decisions that have
helped to keep renovation costs down.
Located 20 miles south of San Francisco and immediately adjacent to
San Carlos, where the
school has been located in temporary quarters during its first 2 years
of operation, Redwood
City is a residential and industrial area poised to become the next
High Tech and biotechnology
center for Silicon Valley. Because the city is currently focused on
redevelopment efforts to generate
rich opportunities for the local community and promote local business,
its planning department
has been eager to assist HTH Bayshore in its efforts to locate the school
there. This has
helped to streamline the processes of applying for and obtaining a "Use
Permit," which reviews
traffic, parking, and fire safety issues, among others, and is necessary
when a change of occupancy
or zoning occurs (in this case a change from an office occupancy to
an educational one).
Surrounded by cities with largely middle and high income residents,
Redwood City itself is a
middle income community with a significant population of underserved
families and a large
Hispanic community. HTH Bayshore currently enrolls 122 students, 20%
are Title 1, 19% special
needs, and 51% students of color. The school has a strong commitment
to maintaining
racial and socio-economic diversity.
HTH Bayshore held a fabulously successful Community
Open House on February 17th, at 890 Broadway.
Current and potential students and parents toured the
new building and viewed drawings that showed how the
building will be transformed during the next 4 months.
Students exhibited presentations of learning, walked visitors
through their digital portfolios, and acted out a scene
from the school's performance of Alice in Wonderland.
The open house provided an effective forum for HTH
Bayshore to introduce its program to residents of
Redwood City.
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HTHL Hosts Teacher Residency
With Focus on HTH Exhibition
Dinner theater with a silent auction,
a baseball diamond, habitats from around the world, a rock
climbing wall, film screenings, art galleries…even in a culturally
rich city like San Diego, one
might expect you'd have to make a few stops to see all of those things.
But during Exhibition
Night at High Tech High, High Tech Middle, and High Tech High International
on Thursday,
March 17, 2005, it was practically one-stop shopping. Teaching teams
at every grade level 6-12
pulled out all the stops as their students displayed projects, gave
tours, showed their films, and,
perhaps most importantly, shared what they learned with their parents,
teachers, fellow students,
and other friends of High Tech High schools.
In to the midst of all the excitement of Exhibition night, and by design,
HTH Learning hosted
the Spring Teacher Residency. Our network colleagues had a rare opportunity
to see the before,
during, and after phases of one of High Tech High's most anticipated
annual events. Students
from one of the network schools, Mirta Ramirez
Computer Science Charter School, jumped right in on
exhibition night and gave a video and PowerPoint presentation
on their recent project, which examined the social
implications of proposed changes to Chicago's public
transit schedules and routes.
As CEO Larry Rosenstock described the night, "this
place was floating six inches off the ground!" Imagine
what it will be like next year when there are five schools
on the HTH campus in San Diego…we may be visible
from outer space!
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On Writing in PBL
In a project-based environment, we all share the responsibility for
helping students develop as
writers. This is a cause for celebration, not despair. PBL offers an
ideal context for implementing
the most important elements of a process approach to writing, articulated
everywhere in
state and national standards: students should write daily in a variety
of forms, for a variety of
purposes and audiences.
Here are some reminders for those who would make
writing a vital component of their project-based
approach:
Write often. Students need to practice, and to see
purposeful writing as part of their daily routine. The
journal is a reasonable means to accomplish this goal.
In assigning journals, strive for a balance between
freedom and structure. Some students prefer to write
on their own with minimal direction; others ask,
"What am I supposed to write about?" Other routines
can be laid over the daily journal routine, such as biweekly
journal summaries, end-of-term reflections,
and the construction of indexes, tables of contents,
and lists of recurrent themes.
Write for a variety of purposes. We write to think, to remember, to
discover, to create and
communicate meaning, to persuade, to amuse-not merely to demonstrate
competence,
though becoming a better writer is a certain by-product of regular writing.
Every piece of
writing has a use-or multiple uses. Even brief free-writes serve as
a resource bank for larger
products: a project report, a presentation script, a newsletter, an
autobiography, a resume.
Write in many forms. Hands-on projects call for forms of writing rarely,
if ever, introduced
in schoolwork, including memos, inventories, orders, requests for information,
newsletter
articles, incident reports, and training manuals. The range extends
beyond these, to include
everything from free-writing exercises to scripts, autobiographies,
stories, and poems.
Write for a variety of audiences. One of the great advantages of project-based
learning is
that it calls for authentic audiences for student work: workplace colleagues,
mentors, clients,
expert panelists, and the general public.
Share the writing as part of an ongoing conversation. As students discover
each other's
responses to common situations, they see new possibilities for their
own writing. Such conversations
don't materialize out of thin air. They require training and practice,
with plenty of
explicit teacher modeling.
Teachers write and share their writing, too. Nothing demystifies writing
more quickly for
students than to watch their teachers struggle to put words on paper.
Nothing helps teachers
understand student writing more than to write in response to their own
assignments.
Start where the students are, and take a long-term, developmental perspective.
Good writers
develop over time. Students will develop as writers when they see the
results of regular writing
and attend to what their peers are writing. The key is to ask for thoughtful
products,
honor students' present work, and let complexity and propriety flow
from there, as students
become more practiced and fluent.
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Site Updates
Camino Nuevo High School, Los Angeles, CA
Written by Eric Escobar, 9th Grade Student
Recently I was involved in a program called Emaze. CNHS was one of thirty
high schools
selected to participate in this statewide project. To summarize it briefly,
we split up into groups
of three or four. Then we all picked a day to take a digital camera. We
took pictures in six categories:
My Community, Technology in Schools, Learning in the Classroom, Before
and After
School, Students Playing, and Thoughts about School. Picture taking went
on for a month, and
then we wrote about the pictures that we took. A statewide committee selected
the best pictures
and reflections.
I like to use photographs to create memories of fun times I have with
family members or
friends. Without photography, things can slip by your mind, and you forget
how beautiful the
tree by the English class is. Photographs can show how nice the sun looks
setting over that
apartment building in front of your house. Often we are too busy thinking
of things we have to
do tomorrow or later on, so we don't notice how beautiful thing look,
even if we think it is the
worst place to live. My participation in Emaze helped me to realize how
beautiful my community
is.
The students' pictures and writings will be on display at the Cerritos
Center for the Performing
Arts on May 14, 2005. The exhibit is called My So-Called Digital Life.
City High School, Tucson, AZ
by Samantha Smith, 10th grade student
As a benefit to our class and the school, the City Works
design crew flew to San Diego on March 15 to visit High
Tech High and observe their teachers and students at
work. The traveling City High School team included students
Samantha Smith, Andy Olander, and Sophie Jones
along with instructors Camellia Cosgray, Daniela
Diamente, and Ignacio Rivera de Rosales. We spent three
days visiting classes at High Tech High, talking with
teachers and students, and attending a special evening
event when students share their projects with parents and
community members.
The culture that High Tech High has built over the five
years since they started the school is amazing. One thing
we noticed was the trust and respect the students and
teachers had for each other. Another thing we observed was that teachers
use a project-based
learning system, where students do projects in their classes that help
them learn the material
while having fun.
Photo: Samantha Smith, Sophie Jones
and Andy Olander back at City High
School
All of the art in the hallways and the different teaching methods around
the school made High
Tech High feel, well, not so high tech at all. While we don¹t want
to be exactly like High Tech
High, we definitely would like to use the experience and ideas we gained
from visiting them here
at City High School to make our school a better place.
High Tech High Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
On Monday, March 14th CSPAN came to HTH-LA and taped two episodes of "Students
and
Leaders" at our school. The 10th graders had the opportunity to have
a question and answer
session with former mayor of Los Angeles and current California Secretary
of Education
Richard Riordan and the llth graders will have a question and answer session
with Albert
Carnesale, current Chancellor of UCLA. Both groups of students, under
the direction of their
History teacher Mat McClenahan, researched the person they were meeting
with and prepared
and conducted the Q and A. The program can be viewed at the c-span website
(c-span.org
under the "Students and Leaders" section).
High Tech High Los Angeles students have been busy applying to various
summer programs for
enrichment. Junior Cynthia Cruz was accepted to the highly selective summer
program at
CalTech (YESS) and freshman Emily Harake was admitted to The Junior Statesmen
Summer
School at Stanford. Other students have applied and are eagerly awaiting
letters from: The
California State Summer School for the Arts (at CalArts), Carnegie Mellon
Summer of
Exploration, California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science
(COSMOS), and the
Quest Scholars Program at Stanford.
Thirty-five students are currently enrolled in a school-sponsored Ivy
West SAT Preparation
course here on the High Tech High Los Angeles campus that meets twice
a week. Students will
be taking the SAT on May 7 and SAT Subject Exams in June. HTHLA families
will be going
together on a bus from HTHLA to the Greater Los Angeles College Fair in
Pasadena on April
20th. Students at all grade levels have been exploring and thinking about
their future college
plans. Most recently, HTHLA has hosted admissions officers visiting from
CalArts, CalTech,
Florida Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Purdue University
and Mills College.
Mirta Ramirez Computer Science Charter School, Chicago, IL
MR(cs)2 Dean of Students José Morales started full-time on April
1st. He has begun the
process of forming the first Student Council at the school. Already over
35 students have participated
in four meetings, one intensive seven-hour training and a field trip to
see a documentary.
The Student Council has been actively involved in evaluating the current
discipline code
and getting student input on the discipline code for next quarter. Additionally,
students are
starting to organize a trip to Venezuela in August, 2005, to the World
Youth and Students
Festival.
A small group of 18 students dedicated a week of normal
school sessions and their week off (Intercession week) to
writing a book called The Suicide of Silence. The project
was led and facilitated by Daniel Custodio, a student at
the Kellogg School of Management, with the help of
Humanities teacher Natasha Cavitt. The students learned
and reviewed basic poetry form and structure as well as
gained exposure to the writings of Sandra Cisneros and
Miguel Pinero. The result of their tireless effort is a collection
of poetry that reflects the issues, life, and struggles
of being a high-school teenager in this millennium.
The book is available for purchase at
www.travelingpoet.com. All are encouraged to read and
see a side of our students that educators and parents do
not normally see.
Additionally, students of Spanish teacher Angie Galvan-Rodriguez (who
just had a baby girl!)
worked on an impressive, challenging and fairly comprehensive Rain Forest
POL. Students
formed teams to study rain forest geography, plants, animals and people,
and then put together
Spanish-language reports in journalistic format, including graphics and
pictures to demonstrate
their new knowledge.
A team of eight MR(cs)2 students who recently visited High Tech High had
this to say about
their experiences:
High Tech High is one of the many outstanding schools.
We the students from Mirta Ramirez Computer Science
Charter School think that in the short amount of time we
spent there, we realized that your teacher-student bond was
extraordinary. We found that the connection between the
students and the teacher enables the students to want to
learn and improves their ability to actually learn. If there
was one thing we could bring back from High Tech High it
would be that, the student-teacher bond. At High Tech
High we found that to be the most astonishing thing that
we saw. The trust, the patience, and the bonds were awesome.
The way people treated us at High Tech High, the
way they acted as if we had been there forever. People there
were so kind to us. Overall, we had a blast at High Tech
High, and in the process of having fun, we learned a lot,
not just about ways to improve our school but also ways we
could help High Tech High out."
New Bedford Global Learning Charter School, New Bedford, MA
All 9th grade NBGLCS students recently participated in a day-long seminar
in which student
learned about presentation techniques in preparation for their 1st annual
exhibition. The Evening
of POL's will take place on May 5th. A featured Marine Science project
that evening will be From
Fan Boats to ROV's. Students have been working throughout the semester
to create fan boats and
remotely operated vehicles. Students have been involved in the conceptual
and design phases of
the project, and have worked with an engineer who has mentored them.
The school culture is thriving in New Bedford. Students recently attended
a fun overnight event
where they sang karaoke, danced, ate pizza, and watched movies. They had
a great time and hope
to host another before the end of the school year. The high school will
also be hosting a
Curriculum Night in May for current and new students and parents to attend.
The event will
include socializing, as well as the opportunity to leaf through curriculum,
share ideas for the next
year, and learn more about new elective offerings for the next school
year.
New Urban High School, Clackamas, OR
NUHS is planning for its move next year into a school facility that the
local school district has
made available for their use and renovation. NUHS plans to focus first
on upgrading the building's
life-safety and data systems, then live in it for a year before renovating
its spaces to better suit
the school's needs. A local bond levy will help to pay for building renovations.
The 38,000 sf., 70-
year-old masonry structure formerly housed a traditional high school and
has a variety of spaces
that lend themselves to large group gathering and community building,
such as a gymnasium, a
cafeteria, and a multi-purpose room with a stage at one end of it. Just
2 miles from their present
school site, the new facility will be located closer to where many NUHS
students presently live.
The school has many plans for how it will integrate itself into the new
community, including student
internships and the creation of a community garden.
Back at the school, a number of the school's "houses" or academic
teams recently held some terrific
Presentations of Learning. More POL's are coming up on June 9th, and will
showcase integrated
projects focused on the theme of Astronomy. At the same time, preparations
are underway
for the first ever NUHS graduation ceremony to be held on June 14th. A
group of18 Seniors will
receive their diplomas. All of these students have been accumulating college
credits by attending
classes at Clackamas Community College, through NUHS' middle college program.
This year's
valedictorian is graduating this year with over 70 transferable college
credits, and has been accepted
into the University of Portland. Next year's Senior class will have approximately
80 graduates.
High Tech High, San Diego, CA
High Tech High held its annual Exhibition on the evening
of March 17th. Parents, community members, and High
Tech High Village members were invited to view student
work. The school was transformed into a museum in which
each nook and cranny of the school became a display area.
Student projects included work on architecture, a climbing
wall, pool tables, the San Diego Boat Channel, Internships,
Senior Projects (including poetry readings), science fair
projects, a silent auction featuring a World War II war
memorial, and 9th grade documentary films.
HTH Director Ben Daley is also leading the new teacher
hiring process. High Tech High schools are looking to hire 20 new teachers
for next year to staff
up High Tech High Media Arts and High Tech Middle Media Arts. Prospective
teachers attend an
all-day interview where they observe a lesson being taught, teach a lesson,
and are interviewed by
students and staff. The interview is a two-way process.
Several students from High Tech High recently traveled to Paris to learn
about art and European
history. The trip was chaperoned by Jeff Robin (Art), Brett Peterson (11th
Grade Humanities),
and Stacey Praizner (Director of Internships). All Juniors attended a
college fair to learn more
about college opportunities. Several seniors have been traveling to their
prospective post-secondary
schools to learn more about student life and academic opportunities.
High Tech High Bayshore (formerly San Carlos High School), San Carlos,
CA
HTH Bayshore (formerly San Carlos High School) held a grand opening celebration
for their new
building at 890 Broadway in Redwood City. Students, parents, teachers,
and community members
were excited to have the opportunity to view the empty building before
construction began.
Demolition in the building has now been completed, and contractors are
presently framing out
walls for classrooms and offices. The renovated building will incorporate
signature HTH design
elements such as high ceilings, exposed systems, studio spaces, shared
teachers offices, teamed
classrooms, and a large multi-purpose commons area.
Prior to their spring break, teacher ambassadors Mark Aguirre (HTH Humanities)
and Blair Hatch
(HTH Multi-Media) visited HTH Bayshore and worked with teaching teams,
giving feedback and
helpful suggestions. The school also conducted its first teacher bonanza
last month, with HTH
Director Ben Daley donating his time to come up from San Diego and observe
the bonanza.
Humanities teacher, Bill Jeffers, had the exciting opportunity to take
his students to a stone carver
to learn how ancient cultures carved monolithic objects. The students
are working on their own
carvings using the same primitive hand tools. One of their objectives
is to carve out "High Tech
High Bayshore" on a piece of stone for the new building. He is also
planning to work with the
other 9th grade Humanities teacher to have students carve their names
into stone squares to be
laid in the entry way of the new school as well.
High Tech Middle, San Diego, CA
High Tech Middle held its first annual 8th Grade Retreat in April. The
program took place off
campus and lasted for four days. Focusing primarily on youth development
and leadership issues,
the retreat aimed to assist students in making the transition from middle
to high school. Through
a series of group oriented activities and challenges, students posed and
answered questions about
what it will take to be an empowered HTH student. Topics discussed at
the retreat included: staying
organized, making good academic choices, navigating groups and cliques,
developing school
spirit, and maintaining a high level of service to the school.
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After the success of their April "Hiring Bonanza," in which
25 teacher candidates spent a day at the school, HTM is
excited to have established a culture in which bringing in
new staff involves all teachers and many students. It was
especially refreshing to see poised middle school students
asking teacher candidates thoughtful questions about their
approaches to academics, project-based instruction, and
class discipline. Student input into the selection process
was most often right on target! HTM has hired 8 new
teachers for next year.
Meanwhile, a recent visit to the school by nationally
renowned education reformer Debbie Meier, has sparked
much reflection on the part of both teachers and students about curriculum,
student work, and
school climate. In advisory groups and staff meetings, students and teachers
alike are grappling
with questions about what they would like to maintain, and what they would
like to let go of for
the next school year. Finally, HTM was recently chosen as an "Outstanding
Middle School" by the
California League of Middle Schools. As such, it has hosted many visiting
teachers and administrators
from schools throughout California.
High Tech High International, San Diego, CA
High Tech High International was buzzing as students returned from their
first Immersion Week
experience in April. Immersion week was created to allow students to travel
to various parts of
the country and world, and become immersed in different environments and
experiences. Trips
varied from doing home stays with students from CETYS high school in Tijuana,
to traveling to
Costa Rica and studying ecotourism and sustainable development. One of
the biggest highlights
from doing this as a school is the sense of community and relationship
building that has taken
place. Students seem to feel more connected to their peers, teachers and
the school as a whole. It
has also been a very challenging program to pilot and we are looking into
ways to create a more
sustainable approach to executing trips. It was an exciting risk to take
in the first year and we look
forward to improving the program even more.
HTHI also brought on its new internship coordinator, Erin
Wyatt, to start working with 10th graders in preparation for
their internships next year. Erin was a humanities teacher at
High Tech High and will be a great asset to the program.
The program's goals are to focus on the development of
rich internship experiences and the student projects that
emanate from them. Erin also hopes to bring more writing
into the internship class, as well as teach an Exploratory on
service learning. On a recent visit to the International
Studies Academy in San Antonio, HTHI learned about a
project that all freshmen complete called "Make a
Difference". Small groups of students focus on a community
issue and create a project that gives back to the community.
It is exciting to start work on creating these types
of experiences for our students.
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