It’s Another Big Event - #43!
"Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes": Celebrating 43 Years of The Big Event at TCPS
For 43 years at TCPS, The Big Event has been part of our foundation. Each year, on a Saturday morning in March, families, friends, and alumni walk through the doors of TCPS to discover what students have been quietly researching, designing, and building for months. It is one of our most cherished traditions at TCPS. The 2026 Big Event may have been one of the most ambitious yet!
This year's theme: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Technological Innovations Through Time.
A Tradition That Spans Generations
What makes The Big Event unlike anything else is the depth of community it has built over four decades. Alumni who experienced their own years creating for The Big Event as students remember it vividly — many can recite every theme from their years at TCPS. Each March, recent graduates return the evening before to help for the final set up, reconnecting with teachers and the school they grew up in, and passing the tradition forward to the students who are living it now. It is a thread that runs through the entire TCPS community, connecting generations of learners.
This year marked the 43rd Big Event, going back to the founding of TCPS in 1983 it has been an annual tradition. Each year The Big Event proves the point that founded TCPS - children, no matter their size, can do BIG things! That continuity is very important to the history of TCPS and the principles we follow each and every day. TCPS programs like The Big Event inform our current and prospective families that what they are seeing isn't just a temporary philosophy — it's a culture.
Inside the Rooms: A Tour of Innovation
Beginning in January, students were placed into six cross-age groups — each with children from kindergarten through 8th grade — and they spent two months learning about the larger theme of technological innovation through time, and then focused on six specific subthemes: aerospace, agriculture, AI, architecture, medical technology, and computers/internet/phones. Students learned, brainstormed, developed plans and designed exhibits they could create for the big day. When it came time to put the design plans into action, each group spent a day in each of the installation rooms imagining, designing, building, and creating to create exhibits exploring a different dimension of human technological progress through the ages. Everything was student planned and student created. By Students and for Students - and their families to enjoy!
Upstairs we started with I Want It That AI, in the Middle School History Classroom where visitors traced the evolution of artificial intelligence from ELIZA, the world's first chatbot, to modern self-driving technology. Students created original AI-generated videos and songs, built a robot gallery, and invited families to imagine what careers the next generation might hold in an AI-shaped world. Have you taken a ride in a Waymo? Our students created their own Waymo version in the AI room for visitors to take a pretend ride!
Call Me, Maybe? transformed the Middle School Language Arts Classroom into an Internet Café, an Internet Highway, and a hands-on Computer Lab. Visitors cracked binary code, created pixel art, solved emoji riddles, and learned how messages travel through undersea cables — a full sweep through the history of computers, phones, and the internet. Our younger students were mesmerized by some of the old style "(ancient?) phones like rotary phones!
In the Science Lab, Old MacDonald Had a Drone — E-I-E-I-O! explored thousands of years of agricultural transformation, from early textile production using animal wool to modern seaweed couture and drone-assisted farming. Students showcased a real drone, a scientifically detailed model cow, and interactive displays on the future of food and agriculture.
The 3rd Grade Classroom became OOPS!! We Built It Again! — an architectural journey from the Appian Way and ancient Roman aqueducts to the Crystal Palace and contemporary living walls. Students explored how materials like concrete, modular construction, and sustainable design have shaped civilization, and invited our exploring visitors to imagine designing their own structures.
Upstairs in the 5th Grade Classroom, Ah-Ah-Ah-Staying Alive! offered a thoughtful and detailed look at medical technology across time — beginning with a working doctor's office and moving through an imaging department, an operating room with a simulated artificial heart transplant, and a forward-looking exploration of how artificial intelligence is already beginning to reshape medicine.
In the Middle School Math Classroom innovations in Aerospace were explored. Defying Gravity: Up, Up, and Away! took visitors on a journey from the mythological wings of Icarus to the International Space Station. Using hot air balloons, airfoils, and interactive rocket tests exhibits created by the students brought the science and history of aerospace to life. They even created their own version of an eVTOL vehicle!
The Big Hall: Rockets, Robotics, and the Electronics Club
TCPS Electronics Club: Extending into The Big Hall brought an additional dimension to the event through the work of the TCPS Electronics Club, led by parent volunteer Bill von Novak. Students demonstrated months of after-school work: Morse code transmitted by laser, AI image recognition from a live video feed, aircraft instrumentation used in real-world navigation, smart home sensor systems, and a robotic arm demonstrating the future of agricultural harvesting. The Aerospace Room also stretched into The Big Hall bringing hand-made rocket launch tests! More than 100 student-built rockets were launched and tracked as students competed to see who’s could fly the furthest distance, and a hot air balloon experiment drew oohs-and-aahs throughout the morning from visiting families.
What The Big Event Represents
The Big Event is not a performance produced for students — it is entirely produced BY our students. Over the course of more than two months, cross-age groups researched together, debated ideas, solved problems, and brought their vision to life. Kindergarteners worked alongside eighth graders. Older students led with patience and purpose. Younger students rose to the challenge and discovered what they are capable of when given the opportunity to collaborate along with real responsibility.
This is what progressive, project-based education looks like in practice — collaborative, rigorous, joyful, and deeply connected to the community around them. And the learning extends beyond the event itself. Students return to each of the installation classrooms the following Monday, to explore and experience everything they created. The themes students learned during preparation for The Big Event continue to be woven into the curriculum to inform students throughout the rest of the current school year and are remembered by students to reflect on for several years after.
If you are exploring San Diego independent schools with a commitment to progressive education, small class sizes, and a school community with genuine depth and appreciation for the love of life-long learning, we invite you to schedule a parent tour and come visit TCPS to see us in action.
📅 SAVE THE DATE! The Big Event 2027 will be held on March 6, 2027. We hope to see you there!