Last week, grade 4 students made their annual trek to Coloma, gaining insight into the lives of Gold Rush-era miners as they “made cornbread, did some old-fashioned laundry, made shelters and bartered at the general store,” reported Kristin Giammona, elementary division head. Naturally, the students also learned how to pan for gold, and some even managed to turn up gold flakes. Students finished the bulk of their first day activities in time to find cover from the rain and enjoy a brief hoedown and campfire chat. Coloma’s abundance of wonderful scenery was a real treat for the students, who hiked the Monroe Ridge and learned about the history of the area and how mining affected its environment and native population.
Last weekend, a team of Harker students won the K-12 Championship at the CalChess State Scholastic Championship at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The team – senior Vignesh Panchanatham, junior Michael Wang, sophomore Michael Tang, fifth grader Vyom Vidyarthi, and fourth graders Anika Rajaram and Mihir Kotbagi – scored a total of 16 points to secure victory. In the K-6 Beginner team competition, fifth grader Anderson Chung, fourth graders James Lai and Alejandro Cheline, third grader Ian Cheline and second graders Jacob Chung and Jeffery Xu took first place.
In individual events, Panchanatham won first in the K-12 Championship, where Wang and Tang both placed in the top 10 and Vidyarthi among the top 15 in a 66-person event. Other standout performances were seen from Nathan Yan, grade 1, who finished in the top five in the K-6 Junior Varsity category, K-3 Championship competitors Rohan Rajaram, grade 1, and Omya Vidyarthi, grade 2, who both placed in the top 15, and third grader Lucas Lum, who reached the top 10 in K-3 Junior Varsity.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2016 Harker Quarterly.
Thanks to several innovative buddies programs, Harker Preschool STEM students are becoming increasingly connected to the larger school community. The various programs bring “big kids” from the lower, middle and upper school campuses together with preschoolers for shared learning.
Math Buddies, a partnership with grade 5 math students, and Eco Buddies, an ecological program with grade 8 students, are both new this year. Meanwhile, STEM Buddies, a collaboration with the upper school’s WiSTEM club, has been happening for a number of years, serving as a role model for the new student mentoring programs.
On March 14, as math enthusiasts around the world celebrated Pi Day, students at Harker united in a math-based celebration of their own called Math Buddies. Math Buddies is a new partnership between Harker’s preschool and grade 5 students. The group’s inaugural effort, a math fair, was held in the afternoon at the preschool’s STEM lab.
The lower school big buddies presented hands-on math activities at various stations they had designed for Harker’s 4-year-old preschoolers and transitional kindergarten students.
“Pi Day was made especially memorable for students at the preschool,” said Robyn Stone, the preschool’s STEM specialist. “Lower school students brought their passion and enthusiasm for math to introduce pi and other mathematics concepts to our young learners.”
In math circles, March 14 (3.14) is known as Pi Day in honor of the number representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. “So, it was a natural date for us to select,” Stone added. Working in small groups under the guidance of Eileen Schick, lower school math lab teacher, 20 fifth graders developed hands on, developmentally appropriate math games and activities for their younger pals.
They also committed six lunch periods to creating posters and working on a script for how to engage with preschoolers. They then brought math activities (incorporating math concepts such as algebra, geometry, measurement, number/ operation and data analysis) to the preschool through themed stations including height kites, pattern block design, beading bracelets, number bean bag toss, Lego towers, fraction circles, color chip coding and match the shape.
At the end of the program, each child received a “Math Buddies” sticker and a goody-bag filled with math prizes. Transitional kindergarten student Julia Ho recalled that her favorite activity was “making a pattern bead bracelet.”
Meanwhile, 4-year-old Zayd Ahmed said he “liked the bean bag game.” Other preschool students cited making a height kite, playing with Legos and dice, and making pattern b ck flowers as their favorite Math Buddies activities.
Their big buddies, meanwhile, said they enjoyed traveling to the Union campus and spending time with the young mathematicians.
“I think this is very fun and educational for young kids and I also think it would befun to continue next year,” said Keesha Gondipalli, grade 5.
“This was an amazing experience. It made math social and super fun!” agreed fifth grader Sara Bhowmick. Schick said she was especially proud of the effort the fifth graders made to connect with their math buddies. “All their hard work, creativity, initiative and dedication created a truly enriching, educational event. However, I was most impressed by how engaged the buddies were with the preschoolers. They addressed each preschooler by name, got down to eye-level with them, and invited them to participate. In other words, I could not ask for a better result!” said Schick.
On Earth Day, April 22, the entire Harker community celebrated by wearing green and engaging in environmental activities across all four campuses. At Harker Preschool, students used the occasion to launch a fun and educational new preschool/middle school program called Eco Buddies.
The largest buddies event yet, Eco Buddies was open to the entire preschool and united more than 50 eighth graders with 120 preschoolers. The event also marked the first time the preschool’s 3-year-olds had the opportunity to meet with students from another Harker campus.
“Eco Buddies is unique because it is a program for all of our preschoolers, even the youngest ones,” said Robyn Stone.
During the event, a collaborative effort between Stone and grade 8 biology teacher Kristen Morgensen ’93, the eighth graders presented hands-on ecology activities to their younger preschool pals. “This whole experience meant so much on all levels – as a teacher getting to share the magic of our preschool with her own students, as a parent getting to watch her own child learn from the big kids, and sharing the magic of our middle school students with the preschool community as a whole,” said Morgensen, who, in addition to being an alumna, is also a current preschool parent (3-year-old Teagan).
Both Morgensen and Stone thought Earth Day was a perfect day to launch the new Eco Buddies program, since events are held around the world to demonstrate support for environmental protection. “As a Green Committee member, I knew Harker was aiming for a school wide Earth Day celebration. Since Kristen and I are both science teachers, it seemed natural for us to collaborate on an Earth Day program,” said Stone.
“I wasn’t sure how many grade 8 students would make the commitment. They amazed me with how many volunteered and how excited they have been to participate!” recalled Morgensen. The big buddies worked hard to create posters and activities for the different hands-on stations, which were grouped by ecological themes such as animal care, solar energy use, composting, wind energy, plant germination and water conservation.
“It was really fun!” said Henry Wiese, grade 8. “It was really cool to see the preschoolers make connections between how real cars and solar toy cars move.”
Classmate Vedanth Sundaram agreed, noting, “It was really fun to watch the kids learn from the worm sock puppet about what goes in the green (wet) and blue (dry) [recycling] bins.”
Reflecting back on the day, transitional kindergartner Danya Arun said, “I liked making the bird house.”
“I liked filtering the dirty water and making it clean,” added classmate Hannah Micchelli. Meanwhile, 4-year-old Aria Mehra reported enjoying “sprouting radish seeds.”
STEM Buddies days at Harker Preschool are always special, with students proudly donning buddy badges and taking turns filing excitedly into the science lab. There they have the unique opportunity to visit and interact with their upper school pals, who visit to share their love of all things STEM.
Passing along the joy of science, technology, engineering and mathematics is the goal behind Harker’s innovative STEM Buddies program, which teams the school’s littlest learners with upper school students from the WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) club for fun, interactive learning through a series of themed workshops.
At their first visit in 2013, club members presented each preschool student with a special button to wear during their time together. Anita Chetty, upper school science department chair, and Robyn Stone came up with the win-win idea to pair members of WiSTEM with the preschoolers for hands-on STEM exploration.
Since then, the STEM Buddies workshops, held several times throughout the year for the 4- and 5-year-olds, have been a huge hit. Each activity is focused around a particular topic or strand of STEM. The younger students are excited to have their big buddies visit, while the teens are gaining confidence about sharing and teaching complicated knowledge in ways that are simple to understand. “This collaborative opportunity is aligned with WiSTEM’s mission to spread the love of STEM,” reported Chetty.
According to Stone, the workshops have proven to be the perfect fit for the preschool’s STEM specialty class, offering a balance between child-directed exploratory learning and WiSTEM-directed activities. WiSTEM’s mission is to foster female students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to provide role models and mentors in those fields, and to educate the community about gender issues in the sciences.
The club, which Chetty advises, sponsors guest lecturers, holds technical workshops for the Harker community led by female scientists, and creates a network of female mentors – including Harker alumnae – working in STEM fields.
Last year, Harker Quarterly observed seven members of WiSTEM (current seniors Grace Cao, Alyssa Crawford, Shreya Mathur and Chandini Thakur and 2015 graduates Allison Kiang, Daniela Lee and Nitya Mani) as they traveled to the preschool campus to work with students on a series of STEM activities related to life science and the human body.
At one station on the skeletal system, the youngsters met an artificial skeleton named “Mr. Skelly” and participated in a “bone dance.” Another station featured the muscular system, allowing the students to use a sensor to squeeze a muscle and determine how much force it exerted, as well as examine the muscles of a chicken wing. Yet another station, on the cardiovascular system, allowed the children to use a stethoscope to hear how their heart sounds before and after jumping; they were also able to view a dissected pig heart.
Wearing a white WiSTEM T-shirt, club member Cao was working in the muscle station, measuring and graphing her younger buddies’ grip strength. She said she found the STEM Buddies event to be very enjoyable and the children to be outgoing and active participants. “I feel that the program is going really well. Teaching and interacting with preschoolers is a fun experience!” she added.
Other STEM Buddies events have revolved around chemistry, environmental science, space science, explorations in light/dark, human physiology, anatomy and mathematics. The WiSTEM Club also put on a short musical for the preschool students about composting using worms (to reduce waste on the preschool campus).
This article originally appeared in the summer 2016 Harker Quarterly.
Thanks to several innovative buddies programs, Harker Preschool STEM students are becoming increasingly connected to the larger school community. The various programs bring “big kids” from the lower, middle and upper school campuses together with preschoolers for shared learning.
Math Buddies, a partnership with grade 5 math students, and Eco Buddies, an ecological program with grade 8 students, are both new this year. Meanwhile, STEM Buddies, a collaboration with the upper school’s WiSTEM club, has been happening for a number of years, serving as a role model for the new student mentoring programs.
On March 14, as math enthusiasts around the world celebrated Pi Day, students at Harker united in a math-based celebration of their own called Math Buddies. Math Buddies is a new partnership between Harker’s preschool and grade 5 students. The group’s inaugural effort, a math fair, was held in the afternoon at the preschool’s STEM lab.
The lower school big buddies presented hands-on math activities at various stations they had designed for Harker’s 4-year-old preschoolers and transitional kindergarten students.
“Pi Day was made especially memorable for students at the preschool,” said Robyn Stone, the preschool’s STEM specialist. “Lower school students brought their passion and enthusiasm for math to introduce pi and other mathematics concepts to our young learners.”
In math circles, March 14 (3.14) is known as Pi Day in honor of the number representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. “So, it was a natural date for us to select,” Stone added. Working in small groups under the guidance of Eileen Schick, lower school math lab teacher, 20 fifth graders developed hands on, developmentally appropriate math games and activities for their younger pals.
They also committed six lunch periods to creating posters and working on a script for how to engage with preschoolers. They then brought math activities (incorporating math concepts such as algebra, geometry, measurement, number/ operation and data analysis) to the preschool through themed stations including height kites, pattern block design, beading bracelets, number bean bag toss, Lego towers, fraction circles, color chip coding and match the shape.
At the end of the program, each child received a “Math Buddies” sticker and a goody-bag filled with math prizes. Transitional kindergarten student Julia Ho recalled that her favorite activity was “making a pattern bead bracelet.”
Meanwhile, 4-year-old Zayd Ahmed said he “liked the bean bag game.” Other preschool students cited making a height kite, playing with Legos and dice, and making pattern b ck flowers as their favorite Math Buddies activities.
Their big buddies, meanwhile, said they enjoyed traveling to the Union campus and spending time with the young mathematicians.
“I think this is very fun and educational for young kids and I also think it would befun to continue next year,” said Keesha Gondipalli, grade 5.
“This was an amazing experience. It made math social and super fun!” agreed fifth grader Sara Bhowmick. Schick said she was especially proud of the effort the fifth graders made to connect with their math buddies. “All their hard work, creativity, initiative and dedication created a truly enriching, educational event. However, I was most impressed by how engaged the buddies were with the preschoolers. They addressed each preschooler by name, got down to eye-level with them, and invited them to participate. In other words, I could not ask for a better result!” said Schick.
On Earth Day, April 22, the entire Harker community celebrated by wearing green and engaging in environmental activities across all four campuses. At Harker Preschool, students used the occasion to launch a fun and educational new preschool/middle school program called Eco Buddies.
The largest buddies event yet, Eco Buddies was open to the entire preschool and united more than 50 eighth graders with 120 preschoolers. The event also marked the first time the preschool’s 3-year-olds had the opportunity to meet with students from another Harker campus.
“Eco Buddies is unique because it is a program for all of our preschoolers, even the youngest ones,” said Robyn Stone.
During the event, a collaborative effort between Stone and grade 8 biology teacher Kristen Morgensen ’93, the eighth graders presented hands-on ecology activities to their younger preschool pals. “This whole experience meant so much on all levels – as a teacher getting to share the magic of our preschool with her own students, as a parent getting to watch her own child learn from the big kids, and sharing the magic of our middle school students with the preschool community as a whole,” said Morgensen, who, in addition to being an alumna, is also a current preschool parent (3-year-old Teagan).
Both Morgensen and Stone thought Earth Day was a perfect day to launch the new Eco Buddies program, since events are held around the world to demonstrate support for environmental protection. “As a Green Committee member, I knew Harker was aiming for a school wide Earth Day celebration. Since Kristen and I are both science teachers, it seemed natural for us to collaborate on an Earth Day program,” said Stone.
“I wasn’t sure how many grade 8 students would make the commitment. They amazed me with how many volunteered and how excited they have been to participate!” recalled Morgensen. The big buddies worked hard to create posters and activities for the different hands-on stations, which were grouped by ecological themes such as animal care, solar energy use, composting, wind energy, plant germination and water conservation.
“It was really fun!” said Henry Wiese, grade 8. “It was really cool to see the preschoolers make connections between how real cars and solar toy cars move.”
Classmate Vedanth Sundaram agreed, noting, “It was really fun to watch the kids learn from the worm sock puppet about what goes in the green (wet) and blue (dry) [recycling] bins.”
Reflecting back on the day, transitional kindergartner Danya Arun said, “I liked making the bird house.”
“I liked filtering the dirty water and making it clean,” added classmate Hannah Micchelli. Meanwhile, 4-year-old Aria Mehra reported enjoying “sprouting radish seeds.”
STEM Buddies days at Harker Preschool are always special, with students proudly donning buddy badges and taking turns filing excitedly into the science lab. There they have the unique opportunity to visit and interact with their upper school pals, who visit to share their love of all things STEM.
Passing along the joy of science, technology, engineering and mathematics is the goal behind Harker’s innovative STEM Buddies program, which teams the school’s littlest learners with upper school students from the WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) club for fun, interactive learning through a series of themed workshops.
At their first visit in 2013, club members presented each preschool student with a special button to wear during their time together. Anita Chetty, upper school science department chair, and Robyn Stone came up with the win-win idea to pair members of WiSTEM with the preschoolers for hands-on STEM exploration.
Since then, the STEM Buddies workshops, held several times throughout the year for the 4- and 5-year-olds, have been a huge hit. Each activity is focused around a particular topic or strand of STEM. The younger students are excited to have their big buddies visit, while the teens are gaining confidence about sharing and teaching complicated knowledge in ways that are simple to understand. “This collaborative opportunity is aligned with WiSTEM’s mission to spread the love of STEM,” reported Chetty.
According to Stone, the workshops have proven to be the perfect fit for the preschool’s STEM specialty class, offering a balance between child-directed exploratory learning and WiSTEM-directed activities. WiSTEM’s mission is to foster female students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to provide role models and mentors in those fields, and to educate the community about gender issues in the sciences.
The club, which Chetty advises, sponsors guest lecturers, holds technical workshops for the Harker community led by female scientists, and creates a network of female mentors – including Harker alumnae – working in STEM fields.
Last year, Harker Quarterly observed seven members of WiSTEM (current seniors Grace Cao, Alyssa Crawford, Shreya Mathur and Chandini Thakur and 2015 graduates Allison Kiang, Daniela Lee and Nitya Mani) as they traveled to the preschool campus to work with students on a series of STEM activities related to life science and the human body.
At one station on the skeletal system, the youngsters met an artificial skeleton named “Mr. Skelly” and participated in a “bone dance.” Another station featured the muscular system, allowing the students to use a sensor to squeeze a muscle and determine how much force it exerted, as well as examine the muscles of a chicken wing. Yet another station, on the cardiovascular system, allowed the children to use a stethoscope to hear how their heart sounds before and after jumping; they were also able to view a dissected pig heart.
Wearing a white WiSTEM T-shirt, club member Cao was working in the muscle station, measuring and graphing her younger buddies’ grip strength. She said she found the STEM Buddies event to be very enjoyable and the children to be outgoing and active participants. “I feel that the program is going really well. Teaching and interacting with preschoolers is a fun experience!” she added.
Other STEM Buddies events have revolved around chemistry, environmental science, space science, explorations in light/dark, human physiology, anatomy and mathematics. The WiSTEM Club also put on a short musical for the preschool students about composting using worms (to reduce waste on the preschool campus).
This article originally appeared in the summer 2016 Harker Quarterly.
Thanks to several innovative buddies programs, Harker Preschool STEM students are becoming increasingly connected to the larger school community. The various programs bring “big kids” from the lower, middle and upper school campuses together with preschoolers for shared learning.
Math Buddies, a partnership with grade 5 math students, and Eco Buddies, an ecological program with grade 8 students, are both new this year. Meanwhile, STEM Buddies, a collaboration with the upper school’s WiSTEM club, has been happening for a number of years, serving as a role model for the new student mentoring programs.
On March 14, as math enthusiasts around the world celebrated Pi Day, students at Harker united in a math-based celebration of their own called Math Buddies. Math Buddies is a new partnership between Harker’s preschool and grade 5 students. The group’s inaugural effort, a math fair, was held in the afternoon at the preschool’s STEM lab.
The lower school big buddies presented hands-on math activities at various stations they had designed for Harker’s 4-year-old preschoolers and transitional kindergarten students.
“Pi Day was made especially memorable for students at the preschool,” said Robyn Stone, the preschool’s STEM specialist. “Lower school students brought their passion and enthusiasm for math to introduce pi and other mathematics concepts to our young learners.”
In math circles, March 14 (3.14) is known as Pi Day in honor of the number representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. “So, it was a natural date for us to select,” Stone added. Working in small groups under the guidance of Eileen Schick, lower school math lab teacher, 20 fifth graders developed hands on, developmentally appropriate math games and activities for their younger pals.
They also committed six lunch periods to creating posters and working on a script for how to engage with preschoolers. They then brought math activities (incorporating math concepts such as algebra, geometry, measurement, number/ operation and data analysis) to the preschool through themed stations including height kites, pattern block design, beading bracelets, number bean bag toss, Lego towers, fraction circles, color chip coding and match the shape.
At the end of the program, each child received a “Math Buddies” sticker and a goody-bag filled with math prizes. Transitional kindergarten student Julia Ho recalled that her favorite activity was “making a pattern bead bracelet.”
Meanwhile, 4-year-old Zayd Ahmed said he “liked the bean bag game.” Other preschool students cited making a height kite, playing with Legos and dice, and making pattern b ck flowers as their favorite Math Buddies activities.
Their big buddies, meanwhile, said they enjoyed traveling to the Union campus and spending time with the young mathematicians.
“I think this is very fun and educational for young kids and I also think it would befun to continue next year,” said Keesha Gondipalli, grade 5.
“This was an amazing experience. It made math social and super fun!” agreed fifth grader Sara Bhowmick. Schick said she was especially proud of the effort the fifth graders made to connect with their math buddies. “All their hard work, creativity, initiative and dedication created a truly enriching, educational event. However, I was most impressed by how engaged the buddies were with the preschoolers. They addressed each preschooler by name, got down to eye-level with them, and invited them to participate. In other words, I could not ask for a better result!” said Schick.
On Earth Day, April 22, the entire Harker community celebrated by wearing green and engaging in environmental activities across all four campuses. At Harker Preschool, students used the occasion to launch a fun and educational new preschool/middle school program called Eco Buddies.
The largest buddies event yet, Eco Buddies was open to the entire preschool and united more than 50 eighth graders with 120 preschoolers. The event also marked the first time the preschool’s 3-year-olds had the opportunity to meet with students from another Harker campus.
“Eco Buddies is unique because it is a program for all of our preschoolers, even the youngest ones,” said Robyn Stone.
During the event, a collaborative effort between Stone and grade 8 biology teacher Kristen Morgensen ’93, the eighth graders presented hands-on ecology activities to their younger preschool pals. “This whole experience meant so much on all levels – as a teacher getting to share the magic of our preschool with her own students, as a parent getting to watch her own child learn from the big kids, and sharing the magic of our middle school students with the preschool community as a whole,” said Morgensen, who, in addition to being an alumna, is also a current preschool parent (3-year-old Teagan).
Both Morgensen and Stone thought Earth Day was a perfect day to launch the new Eco Buddies program, since events are held around the world to demonstrate support for environmental protection. “As a Green Committee member, I knew Harker was aiming for a school wide Earth Day celebration. Since Kristen and I are both science teachers, it seemed natural for us to collaborate on an Earth Day program,” said Stone.
“I wasn’t sure how many grade 8 students would make the commitment. They amazed me with how many volunteered and how excited they have been to participate!” recalled Morgensen. The big buddies worked hard to create posters and activities for the different hands-on stations, which were grouped by ecological themes such as animal care, solar energy use, composting, wind energy, plant germination and water conservation.
“It was really fun!” said Henry Wiese, grade 8. “It was really cool to see the preschoolers make connections between how real cars and solar toy cars move.”
Classmate Vedanth Sundaram agreed, noting, “It was really fun to watch the kids learn from the worm sock puppet about what goes in the green (wet) and blue (dry) [recycling] bins.”
Reflecting back on the day, transitional kindergartner Danya Arun said, “I liked making the bird house.”
“I liked filtering the dirty water and making it clean,” added classmate Hannah Micchelli. Meanwhile, 4-year-old Aria Mehra reported enjoying “sprouting radish seeds.”
STEM Buddies days at Harker Preschool are always special, with students proudly donning buddy badges and taking turns filing excitedly into the science lab. There they have the unique opportunity to visit and interact with their upper school pals, who visit to share their love of all things STEM.
Passing along the joy of science, technology, engineering and mathematics is the goal behind Harker’s innovative STEM Buddies program, which teams the school’s littlest learners with upper school students from the WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) club for fun, interactive learning through a series of themed workshops.
At their first visit in 2013, club members presented each preschool student with a special button to wear during their time together. Anita Chetty, upper school science department chair, and Robyn Stone came up with the win-win idea to pair members of WiSTEM with the preschoolers for hands-on STEM exploration.
Since then, the STEM Buddies workshops, held several times throughout the year for the 4- and 5-year-olds, have been a huge hit. Each activity is focused around a particular topic or strand of STEM. The younger students are excited to have their big buddies visit, while the teens are gaining confidence about sharing and teaching complicated knowledge in ways that are simple to understand. “This collaborative opportunity is aligned with WiSTEM’s mission to spread the love of STEM,” reported Chetty.
According to Stone, the workshops have proven to be the perfect fit for the preschool’s STEM specialty class, offering a balance between child-directed exploratory learning and WiSTEM-directed activities. WiSTEM’s mission is to foster female students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to provide role models and mentors in those fields, and to educate the community about gender issues in the sciences.
The club, which Chetty advises, sponsors guest lecturers, holds technical workshops for the Harker community led by female scientists, and creates a network of female mentors – including Harker alumnae – working in STEM fields.
Last year, Harker Quarterly observed seven members of WiSTEM (current seniors Grace Cao, Alyssa Crawford, Shreya Mathur and Chandini Thakur and 2015 graduates Allison Kiang, Daniela Lee and Nitya Mani) as they traveled to the preschool campus to work with students on a series of STEM activities related to life science and the human body.
At one station on the skeletal system, the youngsters met an artificial skeleton named “Mr. Skelly” and participated in a “bone dance.” Another station featured the muscular system, allowing the students to use a sensor to squeeze a muscle and determine how much force it exerted, as well as examine the muscles of a chicken wing. Yet another station, on the cardiovascular system, allowed the children to use a stethoscope to hear how their heart sounds before and after jumping; they were also able to view a dissected pig heart.
Wearing a white WiSTEM T-shirt, club member Cao was working in the muscle station, measuring and graphing her younger buddies’ grip strength. She said she found the STEM Buddies event to be very enjoyable and the children to be outgoing and active participants. “I feel that the program is going really well. Teaching and interacting with preschoolers is a fun experience!” she added.
Other STEM Buddies events have revolved around chemistry, environmental science, space science, explorations in light/dark, human physiology, anatomy and mathematics. The WiSTEM Club also put on a short musical for the preschool students about composting using worms (to reduce waste on the preschool campus).
Last month’s Jump Rope for Heart effort raised more than $17,000 for the American Heart Association, the largest amount since 2002. This annual event brings students together to jump rope, shoot hoops and participate in other fun activities to raise funds and highlight healthy lifestyle habits that reduce the risk of heart disease and failure. Harker has raised nearly $200,000 through the event since it began in 2000.
The annual Ogre Awards, held yesterday at the Bucknall gym, saw 88 second graders in costume as literary archetypes from various cultures. In the months leading up to the show, students had been reading and discussing stories from many different countries, including Indonesia, Ecuador and Russia. Each year the Ogre Awards celebrate these stories by giving awards in a number of categories to the students’ favorite characters.
This year’s version of the long-running Harker tradition told the story of folktale characters leaping from the pages of an open book and discovering what it would be like to exist in other characters’ stories. The show also recognized longtime delivery driver Rick Samble for his nearly 20 years of service to the Harker libraries, and featured a guest appearance by Head of School Brian Yager, who played the part of Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System!
This past winter was amazing, with many league and tournament championships – and a whole lot of fun! We started off in early winter with boys basketball and girls soccer and finished in late winter with girls basketball and boys soccer.
Please see the accomplishments of all of our lower and middle school winter sports teams below:
EARLY WINTER
VA (Grades 7-8) Boys Basketball – The Varsity A team, coached by Ed LeGrand Sawyer, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-5 and went 4-5 overall. Team awards went to Matthew Chen, grade 7 (MVP), Alex Zhang, grade 8 (Eagle) and Ayan Nath, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 7-8) Boys Basketball – The Varsity B team, coached by Richard Amarillas, finished in first place (Tri-League Champs) in the WBAL with a 6-1 record and went 6-2 overall. Team awards went to Sasvath Ramachandran, grade 8 (MVP), Zeke Weng, grade 7 (Eagle) and Kaden Kapadia, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB2 (Grades 7-8) Boys Basketball – The Varsity B2 team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, finished in sixth place in the WBAL with a 2-5 record. Team awards went to Akhilesh Chegu, grade 8 (MVP), Michael Pflaging, grade 7 (Eagle) and Saurav Tewari, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Boys Basketball – The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Mike Delfino, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a 2-4 record and an overall record of 3-5. Team awards went to Om Tandon (MVP), Zachary Blue (Eagle) and Toju Maku (Coaches).
JVB6 (Grade 6) Boys Basketball – The Junior Varsity B6 team, coached by Matt Arensberg, finished in first place in the WBAL with a 6-1 record. Team awards went to Jack Shen and Kyle Leung (MVP), Jordan Labio (Eagle) and Ariav Misra (Coaches).
MS Intramural Boys Basketball – Team awards went to Zain Vakath, grade 7 (MVP), Ramit Goyal, grade 6 (Eagle) and Christopher Tonev, grade 7 (Coaches). The team was coached by Raul Rios and Adam Albers.
JVB1 (Grade 5) Boys Basketball – The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Kristian Tiopo, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 7-0 record and took first place in the WBAL tournament finishing with a 10-0 record overall. Team awards went to Gary Jin (MVP), Drew Diffenderfer (Eagle) and Advay Monga (Coaches).
JVB2 (Grade 5) Boys Basketball – The Junior Varsity B2 team, coached by Tim Hopkins, finished in eighth place in the WBAL with a 2-4-1 record. Team awards went to Rahul Yalla (MVP), Edward Hunter (Eagle) and Max Zhai (Coaches).
JVC (Grade 4) Boys Basketball – The Junior Varsity C team, coached by Karriem Stinson, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 7-0 record. Team awards went to Brennan Williams (MVP), and Topaz Lee and Rishaan Thoppay (Eagle).
LS Intramural Boys Basketball – Team awards went to Vedant Yadav, grade 5, and Jackson Powell, grade 4 (MVP), Keshav Kotamraju, grade 5, and Sriram Batchu, grade 4 (Eagle), and Anderson Chung, grade 5, and Veeraz Thakkar, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Tobias Wade.
VA (Grades 7-8) Girls Soccer – The Varsity A team, coached by Brighid Wood, Sara Pawloski and Hannah Grannis, grade 9, finished in eighth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-4-2. Team awards went to Kalyn Su, grade 8 (MVP), Alexandra Wong, grade 7 (Eagle) and Ashley Barth, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Girls Soccer – The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Brittney Moseley and Vanessa Rios, finished in sixth place in the WBAL with a record of 0-5-1. Team awards went to Kate Grannis (MVP), Anya Chauhan (Eagle), and Margaret Cartee and Claire Luo (Coaches).
JVB (Grades 4-5) Girls Soccer – The Junior Varsity B team, coached by Justin Sullivan, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 3-1-2. Team awards went to Claire Anderson (MVP), MacEnzie Blue, grade 4 (Eagle) and Kylie Anderson (Coaches).
LATE WINTER
VA (Grades 7-8) Girls Basketball – The Varsity A team, coached by Richard Amarillas, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 7-0 record and an overall record of 7-1. Team awards went to Maya Hernandez, grade 7, and Haley Hernandez, grade 7 (co-MVPs), Gigi Chan, grade 8 (Eagle), and Ashley Barth, grade 8, and Priya Rohra, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 7-8) Girls Basketball – The Varsity B team, coached by Tim Hopkins and Brittney Moseley, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 7-0 record and took first place in the WBAL tournament finishing 9-0 overall. Team awards went to Athena Wu, grade 7 (MVP), Angela Jia, grade 8 (Eagle) and Avery Olson, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Girls Basketball – The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich and Vanessa Rios, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a 5-3 record and went 5-5 overall. Team awards went to Anjali Yella (MVP), Kate Grannis (Eagle) and Margaret Cartee (Coaches).
MS Intramural girls basketball – Team awards went to Alice Tao, grade 6 (MVP), Serena Janny, grade 6 (Eagle) and Brindha Chandran, grade 6 (Coaches). The team was coached by Raul Rios and Adam Albers.
JVB (Grade 5) Girls Basketball – The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Karriem Stinson, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 7-0 record and took 1st place in the WBAL tournament finishing 10-0 overall. Team awards went to Isabella Lo (MVP), Claire Anderson (Eagle) and Kylie Anderson (Coaches).
JVC (Grade 4) Girls Basketball – The Junior Varsity C team, coached by Kristian Tiopo and Belle Carley, finished undefeated in first place in the WBAL with a 6-0 record. Team awards went to Minal Jalil (MVP), Elie Ahluwalia (Eagle) and Tanvi Sivakumar (Coaches).
LS Intramural Girls Basketball – Team awards went to Menaka Aron, grade 5, and Arushi Sahasi, grade 4 (Co-MVP) and Hannah Streeper, grade 5 (Coaches). The team was coached by Tobias Wade.
VA (Grade 8) Boys Soccer – The Varsity A team, coached by Brighid Wood, Adyant Kanakamedala and Deven Parikh, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 3-1-1, and an overall record of 6-1-1. Team awards went to Ishaan Mantripragada (MVP), Raj Patel (Eagle) and Sasvath Ramachandran (Coaches).
VB (Grade 7) Boys Soccer – The Varsity B team, coached by Brighid Wood, Adyant Kanakamedala, grade 12, and Deven Parikh, grade 9, finished in second place in the WBAL with a league record of 4-2-1. Team awards went to Ben Tian and Michael Pflaging (co-MVPs), Pranav Mullappalli (Eagle) and Rupert Chen (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Boys Soccer – The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Colleen Campbell, finished in third place in the WBAL with a record of 2-4 and an overall record of 2-5. Team awards went to Alexander Guo (MVP), Ryan Barth (Eagle) and Ramit Goyal (Coaches).
JVB (Grade 5) Boys Soccer – The Junior Varsity B team, coached by Matt Arensberg, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 3-2-1. Team awards went to Alec Zhang (MVP), Advay Monga (Eagle), and Veer Sahasi and Vyom Vidyarthi (Coaches).
LS Intramural Boys Soccer – Team awards went to Ryder Hewitt, grade 4 (MVP), Cyrus Ghane, grade 4 (Eagle) and Kaan Kurtoglu, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Walid Fahmy.
At the US National Junior Chess Congress in San Jose this past weekend, lower school chess competitors Vyom Vidyarthi, grade 5, and Omya Vidyarthi, grade 2, turned in impressive performances in their respective age groups. Though he qualified to compete in the “under 10” section, Vyom instead opted to compete in the “under 20” group, and took first place by winning all five games in the group, in addition to winning the blitz and tactics problem side events!
Meanwhile, Omya took first place in the “under 8” section, her second tournament win in as many weekends after her victory in the 5-7 age group at the Cal Chess Girls State Championship in Berkeley on March 3. Omya is currently the top-ranked player among girls her age group in the US Chess Federation, and is ranked third overall among players ages 7 and under.
The lower school celebrated the 2018 Chinese New Year on a brisk Friday morning, Feb. 23, as students enjoyed Chinese food served by Harker parents and learned how to make Chinese knots of various shapes. Classroom doors and other spots around the blacktop were decorated for the occasion. The event was a great way to welcome the Year of the Dog!