High Tech High

While we were in California, we had the opportunity to go to High Tech High (HTH). HTH is a carter school located in San Diego. Charter schools are government funded and you don’t need to pay to get in.  Just like PLP, HTH is a project learning based school except instead of only a portion of the school involved in HTH, the whole school is project based. Before we visited the school, we did a bit of research about the school and we watched a video for an introduction. A quote I liked was, ‘the school on the outside looks like a box but on the inside it’s completely different, it doesn’t even look like a school’. This quote made me very excited to visit HTH, because in the video they described the school, different and unique so I was very interested to see what it was actually like.

We visited the school for two days and were assigned a buddy to work with. Our task was to interview our buddy to create a podcast. I think everyone was a little nervous when our teachers said we were going to be working with people we had never met before! So the teachers could pair us up, our class made introductory videos that we were going to send to HTH. Our introduction video had to represent us and show who we were. We were told to include hobbies, family members, goals/ambitions, nationally, etc.

Here is my introduction video, hope you enjoy!

We didn’t find out our partners until we were at the school, so the whole first few days of the trip everyone was wondering who we were going to be working with. At HTH we were told to wear a button up shirt and everyone looked very professional! When we arrived I remember walking up the stairs up to the front doors and seeing our buddies inside. Right away when we walked in the door, we were assigned our buddies.

My buddies name was Keana. Right away we both bonded and I was very happy to work with her. They chose all the buddies really well, everyone got along with theirs. After we were introduced to our buddy everyone went into the humanities class, Anna’s class. We were spilt up into groups to get a tour of their campus. On the campus there is a elementary school, HTH international and media arts and HTH (the school we were at). We headed straight to  media arts and Just from walking through the front doors I could already see so many differences between HTH and Seycove. First of all the hallways were filled with art work and students projects. I also noticed that most of the class rooms had glass walls. This is so the students can see what’s going on and see other art work inside the class rooms.

(All the art work was done by the students including the wooden bridge!)

On the two days we were at the school, we were going to be shadowing our buddy around. So I went to all of Keana’s classes and had lunch with her. On the first day I went to her math, English and multi media class. In math we did some problem solving and the teacher was talking about Canada. I was also introduced to some of Keana’s friends and they were all friendly. They were all interested about what Canada is like since non of them had ever visited Canada before. It was kind of funny because we definitely looked like Canadians because almost half the class wore a flannel (which is very Canadian). At lunch time we went to the food court. The school in conveniently right next to cafes and a food court so I got a tray of sushi from Trader Joes. Since we were in California, I got California rolls. On the campus there were so many places to sit an since San Diego is sunny, unlike Vancouver, we saypt out side.

 

The podcast:

In school our focus is storytelling and getting a good story out of someone, this involves formulating good questions. Throughout this year we have practiced interviewing and making them into podcasts. For the last class of the day we had English, and we interviewed our buddies. Before we came to HTH we were told to brainstorm questions. The criteria was pretty open. We could ask our buddy anything we wanted to know about them. It could be education, family, nationality etc.

I already had idea what I wanted to ask, because Keana was new to HTH this year, so I wanted to know how different HTH is compared to regular high schools. For the interview, we were put into groups of four. My group was, Keana, Anjoli, Jayden and I. We sat of the grassy field and we had a lot of fun recording. It was a very casual interview and my buddies asked me some questions about Vancouver. We mostly talked about the differences between HTH an regular schools. While we were recording there was a lot of planes flying over so it could be hard to hear some of the audio. Almost every 5mins a plane would fly over the school. In this podcast you will notice that the microphone glitches quite a bit. This was a microphone technical difficulty!

Here is my first draft:

When we came home we did in class feed back so we exchanged with a partner. The feedback I got was to make a stronger conclusion and try and fix some of the audio. I tried to cut our as much as the glitches as possible and I re did the conclusion for the revised draft.

Final draft:

For the last day I was pretty excited to go back to HTH.  The day was simular to day one however, in multi media, we made these mini books called Zeens. In them we had to tell a story of what we did in the past two days at HTH. In our interview groups we each made one and exchanged them at the end with our buddies. I’m definitely keeping mine that my buddy made for me, for good times!

The two days I spent at HTH went like a flash and will definitely be remembered. I met so many amazing people at the school. To keep in touch, we all exchanged Instagram (as you do)! As well as meeting new people it was also a learning experience. I learned a lot about what San Diego is like and what there is to do in the city. There was a lot of discussion about the differences between San Diego and Vancouver. The big differences was the weather and after school activities. For example, in Vancouver we have ice skating and skiing and in San Diego they do a lot of surfing. I also leaned a lot about the school it’s self and there way of learning by going into the classes. Something I want to bring back to Seycove is how they have art work all over the school. I don’t think I saw one blank wall. Saying good bye to Keana was pretty sad but hopefully we will stay in touch and I’m really hoping our buddies come and visit us in Vancouver and come to Seycove!

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