Last week, third graders held a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foundation’s Lemonade for Livy program, raising more than $2,000. The students had read the novel “The Lemonade War” by Jacqueline Davies in their summer classes, and lessons and activities also were designed with a lemonade theme. Fittingly, students also participated in a lemonade-themed service project, creating a virtual lemonade stand and promoting their effort by passing out lemonade.
Students also enjoyed interacting via Zoom with Olivia “Livy” Scheinman, for whom the program is named, and her family, and speaking to Maile Chung ’17, who was diagnosed with epilepsy during her freshman year. “It has been wonderful working with the summer school third graders on this,” said Kathy Ferretti, grade 3 English teacher. “They learned a lot and had fun doing it.”
During the spring semester, John Owens MS ‘85, circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, made special appearances at Harker classes via Zoom. In May, Owens gave a presentation of the Ninth Circuit’s history and geographic boundaries to lower school history teacher Eric Leonard’s grade 3 students. Much of the class time was set aside for the students to ask questions, but due to time constraints, Owens agreed to answer questions that students posted online.
In April, he visited Carol Green’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class to discuss his background, including his career in law, his duties as a circuit judge and memories of his time at Harker. He also answered questions from Harker students on topics such as memorable cases he has presided over and advice for soon-to-be-graduates.
In May, lower school science teacher Enni Chen’s kindergarten and grade 2 students submitted photos and videos of experiments they conducted at home. For a lesson in capillary action – the mechanism by which liquid flows through narrow spaces – students including kindergartner Nora Yan placed paper towels into cups of colored water, resulting in highly colorful creations.
While learning about electricity, second graders learned how to build their own circuits, and student Corinne Chou used her circuit to make a very clever alarm that makes a noise when tripped by an opening door. In another lesson, second graders learned how placing varying amounts of water in glasses causes them to vibrate at different frequencies. Students Sophie Cai, Megan Lin and Sophie Croswhite created videos of themselves playing tunes using arrangements of glasses filled with different amounts of water.
In April, lower school science teacher Shital Ashar made the most of the distance learning format by teaching from various spaces at her home via Zoom. For a lesson on seed anatomy, she had students dissect a bean seed to learn about its various parts. She then demonstrated how seeds could be used to make a delicious salad while students made their own. “Kids were super excited and prepared with ingredients that I had listed on the group space,” Ashar said.
Some days later, Ashar took advantage of the favorable weather to teach another unit on plants, this time dipping a stick of celery in colored water to show students how water moves through plant tissue. “We then learned about types of roots, with examples,” she said. “Students also illustrated roots and examples in their science lab notebook.”
Two Harker teams took home awards earlier this month at the Tech Challenge Showcase, hosted by the Tech Interactive in San Jose. Harker fifth graders Sylvia Chen, Nicholas Knauer, Ameera Ramzan and Adrian Roufas, known collectively as Team NASA, were one of two teams in the Grades 4-5 category to receive the Outstanding Overall award at the 2020 Tech Challenge Showcase, hosted by the Tech Museum of San Jose. In the video contest, Team RASA — whose acronym is derived from the first letter from the first name of each team member: fourth graders Riya Chaddha, Abby Heinlein, Sofe Jalil and Augusta Chen — took third place for their video chronicling the development of their project, competing against every team in every age group.
The showcase and awards ceremony, which attracted over 2,300 students representing more than 500 teams, moved to a virtual format this year because of shelter-in-place restrictions.
Teams this year were challenged to build a launcher that can propel separate devices through a 10-foot high hoop and land in a pre-defined area. The devices are then supposed to expand to larger size, with both the area and volume being key metrics for evaluating overall performance. While building three separate components (a launcher, area device and volume device) is challenging enough, teams this year had to work under the restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Team NASA rose to the challenge. Starting in March, during the critical home stretch, team members practiced social distancing by conducting virtual meetings over Zoom and found ways to divide work without getting together physically.
Over the last several months, fifth graders Rohan Goyal, Ayden Grover, Neel Kumar and Krishna Muddu, who compete in the VEX IQ robotics competition as Team 14791R, had many successes despite the season being cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. The students learned a great deal about programming, robot construction, robot operation and a host of other skills over the course of the shortened season, during which they won two robot design awards and qualified for both state and national level competitions. Other notable accomplishments included building two robots from the ground up and keeping a detailed engineering journal.
In response to reports that Michigan was experiencing a troubling surge in COVID-19 cases, fourth grader Brandon Du and his mother, Yimin Zimmerer, last week sent supplies to Beaumont Hospital in Michigan to help its workers deal with the spread.
Du and Zimmerer had been donating to local hospitals and became “concerned by the rapid development in Michigan,” Zimmerer said. “It breaks our heart to see all the brave people fighting on the front line with insufficient protection.” They reached out to lower school English teacher Ann Smitherman, who is originally from Michigan and whose brothers, both former mayors, still live there. They recommended contacting Beaumont Hospital, and soon Du and Zimmerer had arranged to send a shipment containing 500 masks, 130 gowns and 130 pairs of goggles.
Zimmerer reported that the hospital staff was very happy to receive the supplies.
In late March, a number of Harker families began making face shields to help local hospitals deal with a projected surge of COVID-19 patients. Having heard that 3D-printed face shields had become popular, Harker parent Mary Yang (Andrew Pangborn, grade 4) reached out to her friend, Jian Chen (Kevin, grade 5, and Julie, grade 4), who owns a 3D printer, and asked if he could produce some masks for her and her co-workers at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara. The family of Emma Lee, grade 5, and Anna Lee, grade 8, also joined the effort, and the group ended up printing and assembling 100 masks. “The doctors and nurses at Kaiser loved them,” reported Yang.
Harker parent Natalia Abrikosova (Alex and Hannah Micchelli, both grade 3), a doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, has been working to combat coronavirus by performing tests at the foundation’s urgent care center, often while people remain in their cars, which is safer if a person does not need to be hospitalized. “We also have a Respiratory Clinic from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. where we see and test patients who meet testing criteria for coronavirus in a parking lot on the first floor of our building,” said Abrikosova.
In March, Harker aided medical workers’ fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by donating 500 N95 masks to the foundation. The masks have been used by the staff to protect themselves while testing people for the virus. “It’s not a pleasant test and most people cough and/or sneeze during or after,” said Debra Nott, Harker’s director of health services. “It’s a dangerous job and I’m happy we are able to help them be safer as they do it.”
In the two weeks since Harker campuses closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lower school community has been finding many unique ways to make the most out of the remote learning experience.
Michelle Anderson’s kindergarten students celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by creating leprechaun traps, an annual activity usually held at school. “On St. Patrick’s Day we try and catch a leprechaun so they can lead us to their gold,” Anderson said. Undeterred by the closure, students sent in photos of their creations.
Teachers, meanwhile, also have been getting creative while working from home. Art teacher Gerry-louise Robinson cobbled together her setup using such available materials as a laundry basket. Ann Smitherman, grades 4 and 5 language arts teacher, had her sons Cole MS ‘16 and MC ‘16 as well has her husband record videos of themselves reading from picture books for her students. “They’ve figured anything different is good during this time when kids are at home!” said Ann.
Students are also making their work from home more interesting, such as fifth grader Adrian Roufas, who recorded a time-lapse video while creating his latest art piece.