Project Overview

This professional-quality field guide was created by 40 high school students from the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High, working with an interdisciplinary team of teachers. It met a genuine market need, as there was no existing field guide to the bay. 

Students engaged in the work of research and production for this field guide over the course of 18 months, working with teachers, scientists and community members. Students were in charge of vision, content, editing and layout. Student research went beyond listing and classifying species; they were involved in multiple research projects, including census collection of macro-invertebrates as indicators of the health of water in the bay and boat channels. The book contains professional quality photographs and maps created by students. Perspectives of San Diego Bay also has reflective, arts-based content, including poetry, which as the students say in the “Intent of Study” section, the “guide also embraces the beauty of thought, nature, and reflection in order to join the sciences and the arts in harmony.”

This project set a new standard in the genre of student products known as field guides. The quality of Perspectives of San Diego Bay is astounding, demonstrating the power of interdisciplinary field work and the capacity of high school students to accomplish professional-quality work. The data collected and analyzed are of high quality – it was carefully supervised by scientists and students demonstrated a high level of care in their work, and the production quality of the work is indistinguishable from commercially produced guides. This work also shows a wonderful example of collaboration across academic disciplines, truly integrating science, math and language arts.

This field guide is now part of a series of impressive guides created at High Tech High, available for purchase on the school’s website. One of those guides – San Diego Bay, A Story of Exploitation and Restoration – is an historical guide to the bay, and is catalogued in this archive as project #321.

This book, and others like it, may be purchased from the school.