Our mission is to empower the next generation of American and world leaders with the knowledge, practice, and tools to radically change the world for the better.
We the People High School is a public charter school located in Long Beach, California, opening in August of 2019. Click below to learn more, get involved, and join our movement.
Our Vision
We the People High School leverages our diversity and our city to apprentice students in global citizenship. At We the People, local, national and global issues become the substance of learning. Students are apprenticed by expert teachers and community members to solve some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Our educational model enables students to explore and solve local, national and global challenges that speak to students’ interests and passions. We the People High School is a democracy-building school, where students engage in deliberation, argument, and individual expression in every class every day. Using the United Nation’s 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development as our roadmap within and across subject areas, We the People High School will teach students to use core subject matter knowledge to investigate big questions. Through projects with and apprenticeships in the non-profit, government, and business sectors, students will graduate from high school having proposed solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time. We the People High School will open in the fall of 2019 with our first 9th grade class, growing to serve 400 students in grades 9-12 at capacity.
All students are enrolled in courses that meet college entrance A-G California requirements
Small class sizes where students are known and are supported to develop and flourish as individuals
Students participate in 3 Democracy In Action immersion courses per year, graduating with a portfolio of projects that show their impact on their community, their city, their world
The We the People High School program of study will take up the charge of positioning students to engage, investigate, and act through a thematic approach to each grade level and grade band. We the People High School aims to engage students at the start of high school in coursework that is relevant, that enables them to make sense of the world around them, and that is meaningfully cross-disciplinary. We the People will prepare you for college, and for a career and life of active citizenship. Students who graduate from We the People will enter careers in government, politics, advocacy, public policy, environmental science, law, international relations, the arts, and education. All of these professions are key to advancing our democracy, and to forging a future for ourselves where more people can thrive.
We offer classes that you would expect in a good high school - math, English, history, science, spanish, art, and electives. What makes our instructional program unique is that all courses are project-based, meaning that students learn content and skills in a course, and then apply what they learned to a project that has real-world relevance. We the People also uses curricular materials that aren’t typically integrated into traditional school curricula, such as the United Nation’s 17 Global Goals for sustainability, and curricula on community organizing and environmentalism.
Throughout their four years, students will participate in advisory once or twice per week. Advisory is a place for students to develop meaningful relationships with each other and with a caring adult, providing a safe space for the development of empathy, understanding, and emotional maturity. Advisory will be communications-based, developing students’ capacity to speak and advocate for themselves and to practice deliberation and debate. Advisory provides an additional vehicle for personalization, enabling students to explore content and topics that are of interest to them.
Three times a year, students get to step out of their regular class schedule for an immersion course. These courses run for a week in the fall and spring, and for 3 weeks in January. During these times, students can take courses in topics that interest them, such as Activism 101, or Poetics for Social Change, or Water Politics in Southern California. These immersion courses will be developed with student interests in mind and take place within and outside of school in partnership with business, non-profit, environmental and local government. In their junior and senior year, students will have opportunities to do meaningful internships in local organizations.
Twice a year at the end of each semester, We the People High School becomes a place where the community comes to learn from students about their work, their projects, and the work of active citizenship. Exhibitions of learning enable students to tie together all that they’ve learned in ways that teach, communicate, and amplify their voices. Teachers and partner organizations will work with students to curate this culmination of learning. Exhibitions will happen outside of regular school hours so that families and community members can attend.
To find out more about We the People High School, attend a Family Information Session by clicking on “Sign Up” below. To pre-enroll or to volunteer, please click the buttons below.
We the People will be offering a variety of student and parent workshops beginning in January. Click on the button below to attend.
Complete the We the People High School application!
Our Parent Organizing Committee meets monthly and works on critical components of our school from student enrollment to weighing in on school policies
President Emanuel Macron of France, Goalkeepers Convening, New York, NY
