I have been a High Tech High fanboy for years even though I have never personally made the pilgrimage to see their schools in action. Getting to speak with Diana Cornejo-Sanchez, CEO of High Tech High, during conversation #58 of #100DistrictConversations, was definitely the next best thing! There is an incredible vision and commitment to core values across her thriving organization:

"After 25 years, High Tech High (HTH) proudly stands by our core design principles for adult learning, equity, personalization, authentic work, and collaborative design.

A key to our sustainability is our commitment to leveraging internal talent, with 3 weekly meetings (whole school, team, and grade level) fostering diverse learning communities. This structure allows us to deliver most of our professional development internally. Our meeting frequency is driven by the need to design and refine projects collaboratively, ensuring broad input. We also dedicate time to discuss the needs of our neurodiverse students, conduct PD on vital topics like safety training and restorative practices, and engage in community-led communities of practice to co-design projects.

When funding permits, we prioritize ‘Leaving to Learn’ opportunities, sending educators to partner organizations for observation, collaborative learning, and immersion. This year, we sent educators to Reggio Emilia in Italy and a Montessori school in Spain to observe transitional kindergarten in action. Our leaders visited Costco Wholesale's optical department to gain insights into improvement science for our operations. A key takeaway from our visit was their emphasis on visual organization – everything has a place, visually marked, fostering a culture of ideas. New ideas are encouraged, prototyped, and piloted.

Continuous improvement resonates with our ‘way of being,’ which is why our partnership with HTH Graduate School of Education, now home to the National Continuous Improvement for Equity center, is a powerful resource and influence on our training.

Regarding AI, our board recently adopted a policy co-designed by a diverse stakeholder committee. The policy considers AI through lenses of equity, collaboration, and personalization. We are now identifying necessary training to ensure our systems effectively support this baseline. Our collaborative design ethos naturally leads us to constantly ask: 'What's working?' We have co-created a project design tool called Inkwire with a software developer and former HTH teacher Aatash Parikh, leveraging feedback from our directors, students, and grad school to continuously refine it. This platform allows teachers to quickly generate state-standard-aligned, timeline-specific projects or gain inspiration from existing ones – I created an entire project in just 10 minutes!

Ultimately, our students are demanding engagement. As enrollment declines nationwide, we are committed to designing brick-and-mortar schools where kids are excited to come, learn, iterate, and innovate."