Email: pestrada@hightechhigh.org

Projects

Shift
What will the Earth look like in 10,000 years? in Spring 2023, students will make their best guess and create topographic maps of locations on the planet as they look now, and as they might look in the year 12023
Ritual
During fall of 2022 students created icons representing habits from their life. They worked to understand the environmental impact of these habits, for better or worse.
​Colors and Shapes
In spring semester 2022, students designed and fabricated a sculpture based on one of 2 examples. These will be displayed in the commons of the school and community spaces throughout San Diego
Tensegrity
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In the fall of 2021, in collaboration with Philip, small teams built a tensegrity structure (a table, seat, stool, etc) using wood and steel. These were exhibited to the public at Brick in Point Loma and raffled off to visitors.
It Gets Funkier

The class learned about tessellation and patterns by making these mechanical tiles. Each is powered by a motor and gear train that is tuned to show as many interesting intersecting patterns as possible. This project was interrupted by school closures in March 2020
Making Space

In the Fall of 2018, the senior class looked around their school and identified spaces that they wanted to leave better for future students. Each group designed, proposed and fabricated a piece of furniture to make their common space as kick ass as possible.
Lakeview

​For this project, students made machines which generate a wave like motion. Everyone had to learn about motors, gear ratios, electricity, woodworking, tension and compression, and more. Each project uses the same motor at the same speed, but students modified the gear ratios of their projects to produce waves and different frequencies according to what they thought would be interesting.
Rotational Volumes

In collaboration with their math teacher the students designed three dimensional shapes which were used to study calculus. In the shop we presented and displayed these shapes in as creative a way as we could. 
Changed by Chairs

In collaboration with a humanities teacher students designed a chair which paid homage to an under celebrated figure from history. Each group created a piece to celebrate their chosen subject and I helped them make sure it didn't fall apart.
Physics of Climate Change

For my first semester long project I chose to have students represent climate change concepts as mechanical sculptures. There were varying levels of success and I would do this really differently now. It's interesting to look back and learn from my early experience.
Pendulums

No grades, no assignments besides the project. After finishing a semester long project early students had the change to do something more creative and try out a crazy idea that I had. Everyone made a paint-dropping pendulum and created large scale paintings for fun and learning.
Microscopic Images

As an academic coach I led a short project with a physics class where everyone made their own microscope. Everyone took images of something they thought was interesting and we displayed the final images in the school.
Inspraytion

For a two week intensive project I helped students learn about spray painting with templates. We designed pieces to be painted directly on the ceiling tiles of our building that were representations of verbs from Richard Serra's verb list.
60 Word Stories

Trying new things as a teacher can be scary. I wanted to find a creative way to wrap up the semester with students and a friend suggested I try this miniature project. It was out of my comfort zone but I was rewarded with awesome student work.

Student Work of Mine

Foundations Podcast Episode

As a way to conclude my project this year I made a podcast episode. It's about how to help new teachers plan and facilitate high quality projects by the end of their first year.
​Inclusive Grouping Podcast

To learn about better grouping strategies I interviewed a few teachers from my school. I decided to try making the interviews into a podcast because at the time everybody wanted to make podcasts with their students. After doing it myself I chose not to make this into a full project