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Setting Description

The City

High Tech High Chula Vista resides in the South Bay region of San Diego. The South Bay is
bordered by greater San Diego in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the west, the US-Mexico
border in the south, and coastal mountains in the east. Due to its vicinity to the border,
South Bay has a relatively large immigrant population and is home to about a quarter of
San Diegos Latino population. Chula Vista is the largest community within the South Bay
region. It has a wide variety of socioeconomic groups, but suffers from an unfortunate
other side of the tracks situation. Neighborhoods west of the I-805 freeway tend to be
poorer and heavily Hispanic. Neighborhoods east of the I-805, such as Eastlake and Otay
Ranch, tend to be more affluent and inundated with new developments and model homes.
The school itself is located in Otay Ranch in a currently developing community. Table 1
shows the demographics of our school compared to the nearest public high school. The
numbers are significantly different with respect to the Latino population,
socioeconomically disadvantaged and English learner students. This demonstrates how
HTHCV represents the less affluent South Bay community more than the local Eastlake
community.

Table 1. School vs. local demographics
HTHCV Nearest Public High School
Black or African American 7% 6%
American Indian or Alaska Native 1% 1%
Asian 3% 4%
Filipino 9% 20%
Hispanic or Latino 66% 57%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0% 1%
White 12% 12%
Two or More Races 0% 0%
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged 40% 14%
English Learner 30% 15%
Students with Disabilities 9% 9%


The School

High Tech High Chula Vista (HTHCV) is one of two schools created under the California
Statewide Benefit Charter, the other being High Tech High North County. The school
welcomed its first class of freshman in the fall of 2007. At the time, the school had yet to be
constructed, so classes were held at the nearby Mater Dei High School. The now completed
school is broken into four wings, one for each grade level, with outdoor spaces integrated
into all but the senior wing. In 2011, a High Tech K-8 was built next door, completing the El
Pueblo campus. The El Pueblo buildings are highly regarded as a model of sustainability
and green design, reflecting the environmental focus of the schools. Other than the school
design, there is little else at the school to build upon the environmental focus. The
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environmental sciences class has recently been taken away and there is little pressure to
integrate environmental issues into the classroom. I wonder if we can call ourselves an
environmentally focused school anymore. Within my own class there is definitely room to
explore environmental topics, but I have done little to pursue it. I personally do not see the
loss of an environmental focus as too detrimental to the school identity since we are
defined by so many other qualities.


Figure 1. HTHCV campus exterior


Figure 2. HTHCV campus layout
HTHCV teachers focus on project based learning (PBL) with their students. It is through
utilizing the content to create a product that students make meaningful connections to the
material. Within these projects, students tackle real-world problems, make connections to
the community and professionals, develop skills that apply to all realms of life, and, most
importantly, develop a lifelong passion for learning. HTHCV shares the design principles of
its parent school High Tech High. These principles aim to prepare all students at the school
to succeed in postsecondary education as well as their future in the real world. These
principles are:

Personalization - We aim to have every student be known at the school. Class sizes
are kept small, teachers are encouraged to connect with their students, and each
student has a faculty advisor that they keep for all four years at the school.
Adult World Connections - Projects allow students to work with content relevant
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to the outside world and to interact with experts in the fields they are exploring. All
students also go on an internship at the end of their junior year to fully experience
what it is like to be in the workplace.
Common Intellectual Mission - There is no tracking at our school. Every student
has the same opportunities and is in classes with a diverse population. By the time
they graduate, every student has the credits required to enter a UC school and
applying to college is a graduation requirement. HTH also strives to find common
intellectual attributes that span all disciplines. This is where my research connects
to the culture of our school. The eight Core Growth Areas are habits and skills that
will hopefully benefit my students wherever they go in life.
Teacher as Designer - Our school turns to the teachers to create curriculum and
design meaningful experiences for the students. It is this freedom and focus on
teacher development that has made me fall in love with the school.


The Structure

I came to the school with the inauguration of the first senior class in the fall of 2010. At the
time of my action research, the senior team was broken into three teams of 2 teachers.
Struggles with staffing had forced us to be creative with how the senior team was grouped.
My core team consisted of myself (Engineering and Statistics) and an English/Creative
Writing teacher. Our prep relief was provided by a set of senior electives, for which I taught
one (Physics). We shared forty-eight students, whom we broke into two pods of twenty-
four students. I saw each pod for two hours a day. My teaching partner and I kept the
students all year and they switched electives at the semester. The other senior teams
shared math and engineering teachers. In order to facilitate our common intellectual
mission, those teams switched students at the semester so that each student received the
same credits.


The Classroom

My classes lean heavily on social learning and cooperation among peers. The classroom is
designed to reflect this structure (see figure 3). Students are grouped into tables of 4-6 with
students facing each other. Class activities often require students to share, support, and
cooperate. The tables are spaced to allow for ease of movement through them since the
ability to work with individual students is critical to how I teach. The tables are also on
casters which allows for easy rearranging of the room. I enjoy experimenting with
classroom layout; therefore, I thoroughly appreciate this feature. There are three
whiteboards in the room: one visible in the image below, one built into cabinets, and a third
which is a collapsible wall. This wall can be folded to combine the two adjoining classrooms
into a single larger room. The adjacent classroom belongs to my core team partner, so we
have the option to open up the space for whole team activities and lessons.

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Figure 3. Classroom layout
The classroom I teach in has some limitations, especially since I teach engineering. First, I
have limited space and the floor plan is quite restrictive. This makes it difficult to have the
table setup that I desire and limits my ability to move around the class. Second, as an
engineering teacher I need access to many tools and I store them in my room along with a
moveable workbench that can fit through the classroom door. The tools and benches take
up significant space and further limit the space in my room. I am still attempting to find the
best layout to accommodate my teaching style while also being space efficient. In an effort
to meet this goal, I created a mini project where my students used the engineering design
process to create a classroom layout for me. It was fun giving my students voice into how
the classroom was arranged, and their unique perspective spawned some creative options.


The Students

HTHCV uses a random lottery when selecting students for the school, and students
represent all areas of San Diegos South Bay. I have found that taking the action to enter the
lottery signals that our parents already have a heightened interest in their childs
education. As a result, students at our school tend to have more home support than
students at other schools with similar demographics. Table 1 shows that our school has a
higher percentage of English learners, meaning that teachers at HTHCV must be competent
in methods to aid students who struggle with English. I have found that it is difficult to
determine when a student is struggling due to a language barrier, since students
conversational English tends to be very good. It is reading and writing skills that I see the
most struggles with, and finding techniques to tackle these issues is a high priority of mine.

As mentioned above, the school is located in a relatively affluent neighborhood within
Chula Vista, but as made evident from the data in table 1, many of our students come from
outside the Otay Ranch area in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. A
consequence of this is that many students have to travel long distances to get to school.
Without the aid of a school bus, this can be a struggle for some students. I once had a
student who took two hours to get to school every day by public transportation. The
problem is compounded since the nearest bus stop is over a mile from the school. Many
students also have homes in Mexico and spend hours crossing the border to get to school.
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Some do not have computers, or at least internet access. This forces me to be flexible with
my expectations at times and to provide supports at school to allow all students to have the
tools necessary to complete assignments and to be successful.


The Teacher

I am so lucky to have had HTHCV be my first teaching position. As a new teacher, the
organization has allowed so much freedom to explore and define who I am and how I teach.
That being said, I have also found myself falling into the mold of a typical High Tech High
teacher without questioning or wondering why. My growth right now is focusing on
experimenting outside the High Tech High mold. Some questions I have are:

How can I differentiate myself from other High Tech High teachers?
What is that something special that I can become an expert on?
What is HTHCV not doing well that I can change?

There are a couple of areas that I have focused my wonderings on with respect to the above
questions. They are:

Female involvement in STEM fields.
Redefining the product in PBL.
Student exploration and curiosity.
Experimental assessment strategies.

Wanting to explore experimental assessment strategies is at the heart of my research.
HTHCV is a progressive school, yet we are still stuck using traditional grades as the main
mode of evaluation. Our school encourages qualitative assessments such as written
comments and end of year presentations, yet the day to day assessment strategies feel
traditional. In sharing my research with colleagues, there is an excitement around
removing grades from the classroom. I hope that my research into Core Growth Areas will
encourage other teachers to experiment with assessment in their own classrooms.