Dear High Tech High Families & Community,

We hope this message finds you doing well as we are fast into another exciting school year! Whether you’re new to our community or returning, we hope you, your students, and your families are settling into the routines and excitement this season brings.

While most of us were away summering, our facilities teams were pouring care and hard work into each of our campuses in preparation for the first days back! Our learning spaces do not look like typical “schools” on purpose and by design–and our facilities teams are just as exceptional in spirit and practice. When you see them around, please say hello to them for maintaining such creative, inspiring, and innovative spaces for our young people, staff members, and guests. 

For the 2023-24 school year, approximately 85% of our teachers returned to us, including nearly four (4) dozen HTH alumni (former students) working in our schools! I feel especially proud that two of my own former students are now teachers in our schools, one at High Tech Middle Mesa and the other at High Tech High North County!! ❤️❤️❤️

In the first days/weeks, students seemed thrilled to be back together with friends and with their teachers. While it is literally impossible to catch all of the magic, here are a few things we’ve noticed in the first month.

What We’ve Noticed

At the Mesa campus: 

• Groups of kinders competing in a cup stack challenge while establishing routines and expectations for learning with one another in Ms. Gonzales’ class. 
• Students participating in classroom Morning Meetings to build community, dialogue, and connection with Ms. Fenton. 
• Students in Briana Montue & Daniela Torres’ cohort engage in a deep dialogue about how they want to be with each other and why it matters before launching into their project.
• Launching early rocket prototypes with Ms. Melanie McKay’s 11th-grade class.
• Pre-Socratic Seminar Prep | High school students in Peter Jana’s explore the question “What makes for a good seminar?” after taking a mindful moment to set intentions before engaging with one another dialogically. 

At the North County (“NoCo!!”) campus: 

• 1st graders learned how to play 4 Square through the careful, patient, and persistent direction of Ms. Jamelle Jones
• 3rd graders, after getting clear on the norms (of how they want to interact with each other), participated in Reading Workshops in small groups, in pairs, or by themselves in Ms. Garcia’s class.
• Elementary engineering students crafting hats for each other out of simple prototyping materials like aluminum foil and rubber bands in Ms. Shelton’s class.
• Middle schoolers reflecting on their relationship to math by writing a Dear Math letter: “What emoji represents how you feel about math?” with Vanessa Medellin. 
• High schoolers playing soccer and/or basketball in the morning and volleyball in the afternoon.
• Seniors in Marissa Fernandez’s class start Drawing Bootcamp, beginning from simple to more complex object sketches.

At the Point Loma campus: 

• High Schoolers at the Original HTH & International walk into the buildings to find teachers welcoming them with standing ovations (aka the “Clap In”). 
• HTH PA & Foundation volunteers were out in force, providing coffee, pastries, and conversation to a teeming pool of parents. 
• 8th graders in Mr. Rod’s class, Investigate the Teacher with dialogical prompts for observation, evidence gathering, recording, analyzing, and summarizing findings. 
• The kinder team read The Gingerbread Man: Loose in the School to an excited group of youngsters, reinforcing healthy social behaviors in the classroom and around the school.

At the Pueblo, the Chula Vista campus: 

• 2nd graders were having a blast in Trevor’s dance class with zest, energy, and lots of enthusiasm!
• 8th graders had a Book Tasting with 40+ books, exploring different genres & styles in Ivan Munoz’s class, while Jennifer Mason’s 7th-grade class launched their project with their community partner, the Comic-Con Museum. 
•  High schoolers in Paul Van Straatum’s art class started with a student-centered dialogue about How do we want to treat one another as classmates? And, How would we like to be treated by our teacher? 

Outstanding Record in College Admissions

Learning through projects with each other, in the world, is our JAM. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the best-in-class work being fulfilled by our cadre of college advisors, led by network director, Chris White, in collaboration with our graduate school of education: The San Diego Union Tribune (2023) in a recent article entitled: “Which San Diego school districts send the most kids to college, and how well do they prepare them?” noted that HTH has the highest rate of college enrollment in San Diego county at 82%, with 96% of last year’s seniors graduating (most of whom are 1st generation), and 95% meeting the A-G requirements for college admission. When you see one of the HTH college advisors around campus, please say hello to them, too! 

Toward the Deepest Forms of Learning 

For us, learning through projects is just the tip of a much deeper iceberg: Desegregating subjects, desegregating people across differences, and desegregating “school” from the real world is a part of it, but not all of it. When we are at our best, when we are moving toward our highest aspirations, this work that we are called to do is in service of the deepest forms of community, as expressed by what MLK & later Thich Nhat Hahn called the Beloved Community. We believe the ultimate purpose of public education is to create a public, so the question that naturally emerges is, “What sort of public might we seek to create as people who value social justice?” A more Beloved Community represents the sort of public that demonstrates an ability to develop shared understandings together and the sort of public capable of making mutually beneficial decisions while honoring the principles and practices of nonviolence (in thought and in action), as MLK learned from his teacher Mohandas K. Gandhi. 

For us, it is not just about the project (or creativity or innovation) but something much deeper, something more sacred. King’s Six Principles of Non-Violence, as described in his first book Stride Toward Freedom, suggests a vibrant blueprint for thinking, speaking, acting, and engaging with love and justice in service of the Beloved Community: 

• Principle 1: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. 
• Principle 2: Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. 
• Principle 3: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. 
• Principle 4: Nonviolence holds that unearned suffering can transform people & society. 
• Principle 5: Nonviolence chooses love (in the Greek sense of agape) instead of hate. 
• Principle 6: Nonviolence believes that the Universe is on the side of justice. 

We have not arrived yet, as we have much to learn to realize Dr. King’s vision of a more Beloved Community. With real-world learning as context, every significant learning experience, K-12, carries with it the restless, persistent, continuing question: Who are we and who are we to each other? And how do we want to be with each other? It is against this backdrop that we want to say thank you for trusting us with your children and their development. 

We are still learning too. 

We look forward to seeing you at upcoming Student-Led Conferences, Field Experiences, and…EXHIBITION. In the meantime, please know that I will be on campus, in classrooms, and with our young people as a witness to their work and development. If you should ever need to connect with me, please reach out to Elizabeth Martinez (elmartinez@hightechhigh.org), who can help arrange a time to meet. 

With love and light, 

Dr. Kaleb Rashad
Interim CEO