1st Day @ High Tech High

I had a fabulous weekend hanging out with my mom and driving from San Antonio to San Diego. We spent Monday and Tuesday hanging out on the beach and touring San Diego. We went whale watching on Monday and it was incredible. We were fortunate enough to see south bound whales so we didn't have to spend as much time looking for them, but we were able to simply watch them. We also spent both evenings watching the sunset on the beach which is when I got this picture. Our time together went way too fast and I had to drop her off at the airport this morning before I went to school.
My mom and I had driven by the school on Monday which helped me today as I was a little more familiar with the area. There are 6 schools that make up the HTH village: High Tech High, High Tech High Media Arts, High Tech High International, High Tech High Middle, High Tech High Middle Media Arts, and Explorer Elementary. After I parked, I walked in to High Tech High with Brett, who is the director of High Tech High. We talked about my experience and where I had just come from and he commented on how different KIPP and HTH are. I attended a faculty meeting at 7:30 which was a great way to introduce myself and meet the staff. It was a little awkward at KIPP, not knowing who should introduce themselves first and then wondering if people knew who I was. During the meeting they discussed strategies to help ELL students as well as non ELL students with reading. The teachers discussed different ideas and then shared them with the group. The best idea I heard was to give students 10 vocabulary words at the start of the week, collect definitions and sentences of the vocabulary words on Wednesday, and then for a quiz on Friday have the students read a news article, then summarize the article and answer questions using the vocabulary words. At the end of the meeting Ben Daly, who I have been in contact with, walked in and asked me to stay so we could talk. Ben was the director of High Tech High last year and then became the overall director of academics for the whole HTH community. We talked about what I would be doing for the next few weeks, which I guess I get to decide. Its wonderful having the flexibility of deciding my experience but it is also a lot of pressure to plan my time and make sure I make the most out of it. I told him that I had taught a little at KIPP, but that at HTH I was interested in observing the high school and the middle school. He told me that if I wanted to observe for a little while that would be fine and then if I wanted to stay with a certain teacher to possibly team teach a subject I found interesting that would be totally fine as well. These next few weeks are going to be great. Both schools I have been to, have been extremely friendly, flexible, and welcoming. Ben took me around and introduced me to a few math teachers, two middle school teachers and one high school teacher. Then we walked over to HTH International to meet all the directors of the surrounding HTH directors. The HTH International building is even better than the High Tech High one. I hope to spend some time in this school as well. Ben had a meeting with the directors so he instructed me to drive to the San Diego Department of Education to have my finger prints taken. Even with the help of Karen it took me a little while to find it, but once I did it only took 15 minutes to start and finish the process. I returned to the school and observed Jade Moore teach the last part of a 9th grade math/science class. The class begins with time for warm-up where the students work at their own pace on their math packet. As I understand it now, the students work through packets and then take a quiz on the material until they earn a passing grade of 70 or better. The students teach themselves or ask a neighbor or the teacher to help them get through their problem. For third period I went into the art studio where amazing paintings were being created. The teacher is an extremely laid back guy who had jumped around the different San Diego districts fighting the system and trying to find a place where he fit. He jumped on board with HTH before in opened in 2000 and he has worked there ever since. Before lunch, I stopped by an 8th grade math classroom taught by Dan Thoene. He used some awesome gadgets on the computer to graph and plot point to help him teach slope. During lunch I walked the 75 yards to a small shopping center that has a market and a couple restaurants. After lunch, I returned to Jade's room to observe her class from start to finish. The students were learning about light and were presenting with a partner on a question of interest. Three groups presented today; one on rainbows, one on prisms, and one on how the eye works. The students seemed interested in their topics and the audience seemed truly engaged in the information being presented. I am so excited to be at this school to observe and learn about their way of educating.
Random Facts about HTH:
~1st year in session was 2000
~There are appox. 525 students at High Tech High (just the one high school)
~They wanted to keep the school sizes small, so they built more high schools and gave them slightly different names.
~There are two teachers on a team: a math/science teacher and a humanities or history/English teacher. Teacher A has 25 students for two periods to teach math and science while Teacher B has 25 students for two periods to teach history and English and then they switch. There are five periods in the day so the fifth period is for the two teachers to plan.
~The interior of the school is incredible, filled with glass. The idea behind it, being that learning is transparent and people should be able to see what's going on to jump if they would like. The walls are covered with students' projects. (I will have to take some pictures). There are computers in every single room, the water fountain is censored and the hand dryer is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
~To fill the slots after the middle school students have been placed in a HTH high school, they use a random lottery. Ben said they ask for the students name, address, and free-lunch status. They want their school to be diverse and since San Diego is a very segregated city, they can get their diversity by choosing zip codes. Right now they have about 25% of their students who qualify for free-reduced lunch, but they would like to be at about 40%