There was plenty of Halloween spirit in the air at the lower school gym on Oct. 31, where even a rainy afternoon couldn’t stop K-5 students from parading around in an array of clever costumes.
This year, the 17th annual Bucknall Halloween Parade was moved indoors, but the rain didn’t keep away the usual cast of characters, including superheroes, ghosts, goblins, witches and fairy princesses. To the delight of parents and other onlookers, each grade level had the opportunity to showcase their characters as a group.
The event was sponsored by Harker’s BEST staff. Students could opt to wear their costume to school or bring it with them to put on before the parade, but most wore their costumes all day.
“Rain didn’t keep us from having a Halloween parade. We were able to make this less-than-ideal parade weather a huge success!” recalled Kim Cali, director of the lower school’s BEST program.
Grade 1 students in teacher Rita Stone’s class had a great time celebrating Diwali, an important Hindu holiday. After enjoying their Diwali Party, the children had a better understanding of the annual Hindu festival. For example, they discovered that the word Diwali means “rows of lighted lamps.” Diwali is known as the Festival of Lights because houses, shops and public places are decorated with small earthenware oil lamps called diyas.
The first Eagle Buddies event of the year took place on Oct. 8, with the Class of 2015 and their grade 5 buddies meeting at Rosenthal Field at the upper school campus for pizza and conversation. Some seniors gave their lower school buddies a tour of the campus, while others made toys for animals at the Humane Society.
“I think it’s definitely really fun and it’s a great bonding experience with the elementary school kids,” said Agata Sorotokin, grade 12. “I was at the Harker elementary school too, so in a way I kind of go back in time, which is great.”
Sorotokin’s grade 5 buddy Esha Gohil enjoys seeing what upper school life is like. “I really enjoy listening to their stories about high school,” she said.
Meanwhile, students in grades 10 and 11 headed to the lower school to meet up with their buddies in grades 3 and 4, respectively.
Established during the 2010-11 school year, the purpose of the Eagle Buddies program is to help students at the lower and upper schools bond through letters and activities. The program starts when students in grades 3 and 10 are matched up. They maintain contact and meet periodically until the grade 10 students graduate and the third graders arrive at the middle school.
Master storyteller Jim Cogan has been a beloved guest speaker at the lower school for many years. He returned in early October to entertain students at the Bucknall campus with his heartwarming tales of quiet courage and compassion.
Cogan enthralled the audience of students and faculty with two stories. The first, a Nez Perce (Native American) fable called “One Day, One Night” offered a lesson in dealing with a bully by standing up for yourself, cooperating with friends and learning that inclusiveness gets everyone working together. The second fable, “Anansi and His Children,” about the well-known storybook character “Anansi the Spider,” focused on cooperation. Anansi is among the most important characters in West African and Caribbean folklore.
A former actor, teacher/administrator, journalist and author, Cogan used material from his new assembly programming, which encourages youngsters to stop bullying by uniting against it.
Excitement was in the air on Sept. 30 as kindergarten parents – representing Harker’s biggest community of new families – gathered for their first Back-to-School Night. The well-attended event got underway with teachers of special subjects and various support services hosting tables on the kindergarten patio. Parents enjoyed visiting the tables and mingling on the patio before moving to their child’s homeroom. Presentations from the language arts and math teachers rounded out the evening. Parents left the event armed with useful information about the exciting year ahead!
In mid-September the lower school library announced the exciting formation of a new “maker space” after-school drop-in program for students in grades 4 and 5. The program, inspired by the educational maker movement, is now up and running.
Throughout the country, parents, students and educators have eagerly embraced the growing maker movement, with its do-it-yourself (DIY) mantra evident at schools, clubs, museums and libraries Now, the lower school will have a maker space – a physical location where people come together to create – of its very own.
On Sept. 26, the Bucknall library welcomed 23 students to its inaugural maker space activity, where participants had a blast creating “Brush Bots.” The mechanical toys are powered by a simple circuit with a pager motor that vibrates and moves the bot across surfaces, such as tables and floors.
The students built and designed the tiny robots from toothbrush heads, batteries, wire and adhesive. They were provided the basic components and a pile of miscellaneous materials to enhance and modify their bot. Students also could design habitats; small boxes that contained their motorized brush bot. The result, recalled the lower school librarians, was a dynamic and open-ended exploration of the principles of motion and energy.
Fourth graders Matthew Chen and Brandon Wang took their brush bots to the next level by designing them to do battle in an arena. In the course of their experiment, the pair discovered they needed to expand their bots’ habitat and were overheard making plans to incorporate paper towel tubes and use a table rather than a box.
Fifth grade English teacher Ann Smitherman observed that the “flexibility that these kids are showing when they’re trying to decide what to do and why things work like this is really important.”
Look for expanded coverage of the lower school’s new maker space program in the upcoming winter issue of Harker Quarterly magazine!
Lower school student Arianna Weaver, grade 5, recently showcased two dresses she created in the BayArea Fashion Week (BAFW) Presents Fashionable Kids & Teens show. Prior to the event, Weaver had been involved with DezignKidz, a Mountain View-based organization that has trained more than 1,000 local students how to design and create clothing and accessories. DezignKidz students like Weaver were the youngest designers showcasing their work at the BAFW show, held on Sept. 23 at the Sheraton Four Points in downtown San Jose. Proceeds from the evening benefited Revive, an organization that provides relief for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.
Shortly after the school year began, parents, students, faculty and staff filled Harker’s lower school campus for two separate events intended to welcome families back to school.
At the first happening, the campus’ newest students – the kindergarteners – took to the playground for their own mouth-watering and fun-filled barbeque. That event was followed by a larger, combined barbeque for grades 1-5, held on Bucknall’s Rincon Field.
Attendees of both events enjoyed the warm summer air, casual atmosphere and opportunity to connect and reconnect with both new and returning students and families.
Grade 5 student Yash Narayan recently received the “Best Educational App” award from iOSDevCamp, where he created an innovative app called BullyWatch.
In an event dominated by adult, veteran developers, Narayan was one of only two youth to participate among 500 talented industry insiders from companies including Facebook, Twitter and Apple. The camp (http://www.iosdevcamp.org/) is an annual nonprofit gathering where participants develop applications for iOS (an operating system used for mobile devices manufactured by Apple Inc.) products.
This year’s camp was held at PayPal’s San Jose headquarters over a weekend in late August.
The unique BullyWatch app, which takes the form of a watch, is designed to help stop bullying at school. Oftentimes students cannot express their emotions to a bully and sometimes bullies themselves are unaware that they are, in fact, bullying. Using BullyWatch, when a student feels bullied, they press a button that turns orange, expressing emotions to the bully of feeling bullied. Usually bullies will then back off, but if not, the student can then press the watch for a few more seconds and it will turn red, sending a text message to school staff with the victimized student’s name and location, thus alerting teachers.
“Thousands of kids are bullied in school every day and feel like nobody. My mission in life is to eliminate bullying from schools. I want every kid to feel safe and important. I created BullyWatch to help kids express their emotions to bullies with a click of one single button and get help quickly,” said Narayan.
According to his mother, Ritu Narayan, the iOSDevCamp is the second largest hackathon (an event where programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming) for iPhone- and iPad-based applications. She said Yash had just finished a summer camp at Stanford for developing iPhone applications, and out of curiosity accompanied his father to the hackathon. While there, he decided to pitch his BullyWatch app and subsequently built a working end-to-end product over the course of two days, never expecting to win the prestigious “Best Education Application” award.
Hackathons like the one the Narayans attended provide a venue for self-expression and creativity through technology. People with technical backgrounds come together, form teams around a problem or idea and collaboratively code a unique solution from scratch; the solutions generally take shape in the form of websites, mobile apps and robots.
“Everyone at the competition was very impressed by the courage and persistence Yash showed, and were curious about the school that was nurturing him,” said Ritu Narayan.
Narayan’s app is especially relevant for students these days. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ anti-bullying website, Stopbullying.gov, the majority of bullying today takes place at school, with one in three U.S. students reporting that they have been bullied there.
“We are all so proud of Yash’s recent accomplishments and recognition. He is part of a growing tradition here at Harker in which our students and alumni are exploring the intersection between entrepreneurialism and service to the greater community,” said Chris Nikoloff, Harker’s head of school.
Harker’s Summer Camp+ is in full swing, with K-6 students enjoying a fun-filled afternoon circus theme called “Under the Big Top.” This summer, the increasingly popular program filled up at record speed, attracting 774 campers.
Held on the lower school campus, Camp+ provides morning learning experiences followed by age-appropriate afternoon electives, with the theme rotating annually.
Rising grade 5 Harker student and Camp+ enthusiast Jack Hayashi said his favorite thing about the program this summer has been playing ball hockey and going to the archery range. He also likes that there’s plenty of time for simply “clowning around.”
Meanwhile, first-time Camp+ participant Rhiannon Sikand, a rising grade 3 student at Harker, said she enjoys the camp’s climbing wall (located on the lower school field) and had a lot of fun going on a field trip to the Oakland Zoo. “I liked seeing all the animals … especially the turtles,” she noted.
Camp+ students in grades 1-6 have the option of enrolling in one of two academic morning programs: Core Focus or Learning Opportunities in Literature (LOL). Core Focus is a more traditional learning environment with language arts, math and academic electives for each grade level. LOL features academic courses designed around literary subject matter. This year LOL is focusing on the work of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss.
Both Core Focus and LOL feature the same afternoon options, including arts and crafts, dance, water play, wall climbing, archery and array of other field sports – and of course, plenty of circus arts this year!
Campers are grouped together for activities according to their ages: kindergartners attend KinderCamp, first and second graders are called Owls, third and fourth graders are Condors and fifth and sixth graders are Eagles.
The afternoon activity calendar for the first session of Camp+ (June 23-July 18) was broken up by weekly themes: Lions, Tigers & Bears – Oh, My; All-American Acrobat; High Divers & Sideshow; and Clowning Around. The second session (July 21-Aug. 8) features Favorite Animal Parade, Masquerade Party and Great Escape.
The Summer Camp+ program traditionally kicks off and ends with Color Clash, a fun event held in the lower school’s gymnasium. Groups of campers on yellow, red, green and blue teams participate in an array of silly games cheered on by captains (aka camp counselors) wearing color-coordinated outfits that run the gamut from superheroes to hula skirts and fun hats. This year’s Color Clash finals showcased a video highlighting happenings from previous events.
According to Joe Chung, program director of Summer Camp+ and Harker’s elementary computer science teacher, other on-site happenings often include a water carnival, sleepover for older campers, presentation for parents and a birthday celebration for the camp mascot, “Ray.” Campers also enjoy numerous field trips.
“I would recommend Camp+ to anyone!” said Hayashi.
The Harker School has offered extensive summer programs for more than 50 years. The Summer Camp+ program is accredited nationally by the American Camping Association.