Middle school students became regional champions at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Middle School Science Bowl, held Feb. 22 at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Coached by middle school math chair Vandana Kadam, the team of eighth graders Gautam Bhooma, Justin Chen, Ethan Liu and Arnav Swaroop and seventh grader Jonathan Xue went undefeated in the opening round robin portion of the event. In the elimination round, Harker fell to Miller Middle School’s Team 1 before meeting them again in the finals, where Harker won with a score of 92-64. The team will now move on to the finals of the national competition, which takes place April 30-May 4 in Washington, D.C. With the upper school Science Bowl team’s win earlier this month, this marks only the second time in Harker history that both the middle and upper school Science Bowl teams have been regional champions at the same time.
In addition to Kadam’s guidance, the team was coached by upper school students Kyle Li and Emily Liu, both grade 12, junior Russell Yang, sophomores David Dai, Harsh Deep and Rishab Parthasarathy, and freshman Rohan Bhowmik, who organized weekly training sessions with practice questions and coaching on how to remain calm and build teamwork.
Harker middle school students performed admirably at a recent chapter-level MathCounts competition, held Feb. 15 at the upper school. A team comprising grade 8 students Ethan Liu, Aniketh Tummala, Olivia Xu and William Zhang, coached by middle school math chair Vandana Kadam, took first place, making Harker the winning team in the Santa Clara chapter for the third consecutive year. The team will move on to the state competition, to be held March 21 at Stanford University.
Harker also had several stand-out individual performers, including Tummala, who took second place with 45 out of 46 points scored. Angela Liu, grade 7, placed fifth with a score of 44 and qualified for the state competition. Xu also scored 44 to finish in seventh place. Ethan Liu and William Zhang each scored 42 points and placed 10th and 12th, respectively. Eighth graders Emma Gao and Michelle Wei took 13th and 14th, respectively, with both students scoring 42 points. Eighth grader Joe Li placed 17th with a score of 41, Jonathan Xue, grade 7, finished in 19th with a score of 39 and Angelina Hu, grade 8, scored 37 to place 24th. Although several students scored the same number of points, tiebreakers were awarded to students who solved more difficult problems.
In addition to the main competitions, students also participated in the countdown round, in which students were given problems and a time limit of 45 seconds to solve each one. Xu emerged the winner, while Tummala took third and Zhang took fourth.
A total of 91 students from 11 schools competed at the event, which is considered to be one of the toughest chapter-level MathCounts competitions in the country.
This story was submitted by Harker speech and debate department chair Jenny Achten.
Harker placed first out of 191 schools for overall team performance at a tournament held by the University of California, Berkeley, Feb. 15-17. The tournament hosted 2,458 students from 22 states, as well as teams from Taiwan. It is an honor to do so well at such a large and prestigious event.
Contributing to the award were the elimination round performances by many students across the events. In varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate, awards were won by seniors Sachin Shah and Maddie Huynh, juniors Andy Lee and Akshay Manglik, sophomores Rohan Thakur and Deven Shah, and grade 8 students Krish Mysoor and Ansh Sheth. Senior Avi Gulati and freshman Michelle Jin were in elimination rounds in impromptu speaking. In congressional debate, seniors Annie Ma, David Feng, Nakul Bajaj and Tiffany Zhao, as well as juniors Jason Lin, Nathan Ohana, Helen Li and Andrew Sun, won trophies. In junior varsity Lincoln-Douglas, freshman Annmaria Antony and grade 7 debaters Stefan Maxim and Aarush Vailaya were award winners. In original oratory, Gulati and freshmen Austina Xu and Dyllan Han took home honors. In program oral interpretation, senior Nikki Solanki won a top award. In public forum debate, seniors Amanda Cheung and Ellen Guo placed in elimination rounds. Finally, Gulati and Jin placed in extemporaneous speaking. The coaches had a great time celebrating with the whole team!
Over Presidents Day weekend, Harker eighth graders Ashwin Kuppahally, Adrian Liu, Vivek Nayyar, Kabir Ramzan and Om Tandon became the first Bay Area middle school team to qualify for the VEX IQ Robotics World Championships. The students, known collectively as the Dream Team, won the Excellence Award at the Silicon Valley Signature Robotics Tournament, held Feb. 14-16 in Santa Clara. This award is presented to a team that displays overall excellence in creating a high quality VEX robotics program and performs well in multiple categories, including robot driving skills, autonomous robot programming, teamwork challenges, robot design engineering process and a separate robotics-oriented STEM research project. Winning the Excellence Award guaranteed the Dream Team a spot at the world championships without having to qualify at the state level. The Silicon Valley Signature tournament included top Bay Area teams as well as teams from southern California, Arizona and Washington state, most of which had already qualified for their respective state championships.
The VEX IQ Robotics World Championships, which will take place in Louisville, Ky., from April 26-28, attracts more than 600 teams from around the world, including the top teams from each state. The Dream Team has had a string of successes, winning the Excellence Award, Robot Design Award, STEM Award, Robot Performance Award and Teamwork Champion Award at previous tournaments during the regular season.
Last month, Harker hosted a Common Sense Media panel comprising nine grade 8 students, who spoke to parents about how they spend their time online, particularly with social media. The panel – which included Harker students Om Tandon, Sarah Westgate and Callie Yuan, as well as three students from Hillbrook School and three from Fischer Middle School – gave the visiting parents more insight into students’ digital lives.
Common Sense Media is an organization that provides educational resources on safe technology use for children. Harker is recognized as a Common Sense premier school, and the organization’s curriculum has been adapted by a number of Harker teachers.
Last month, two Harker students were recognized in a New Year’s greeting card contest held by the Japan Information and Cultural Center at the office of the Consulate-General of Japan in San Francisco. Third grader Momo Matsui-Disini received the Judges’ Award in the elementary division and sixth grader Jaden Chyan earned the Creative Award in the middle and high school division. These and the other New Year’s cards (“nengajo”) submitted for the contest – more than 540 in all – will be viewable through Feb. 20 at the Japan Information and Cultural Center at 275 Battery St., Suite 2100, in San Francisco.
Three Harker students were recently selected to be members of 2020 California All-State ensembles that will perform at the California All-State Music Education Conference in Fresno on Feb. 21. Varun Fuloria, grade 8, was selected to be the drummer for the Junior High School Jazz Band. Violinist April Zhang, grade 10, successfully auditioned for the High School Symphony Orchestra, and freshman violinist Sawyer Lai will join the High School String Orchestra. All students went through a rigorous audition process, which involved submitting recordings to judges for evaluation.
Middle and upper school musicians delighted audiences last week at a pair of concerts. The talents of grade 6 were showcased at WinterFest on Jan. 16, which featured the Grade 6 Jazz Band and Orchestra, directed by music teacher Naoki Taniguchi. The Jazz Band kicked off the show with performances of “Freddie Freeloader” by Miles Davis and “Killer Joe” by Benny Golson. The Grade 6 Orchestra entertained the crowd with renditions of the themes from the “Star Wars” and “James Bond” film series. The grade 6 choir Dynamics then made a special appearance before the finale, which featured a huge assemblage of all sixth grade music students
At the following evening’s Winter Instrumental Concert, the upper school’s Lab Band, Jazz Band and Orchestra performed at the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. Led by Taniguchi, the Lab Band performed a series of jazz works by Duke Ellington, Fred Sturm, Mark Filsinger and Sonny Rollins. Music teacher Dave Hart directed the Jazz Band, which performed works by Eddie Harris and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as a jazzed-up rendition of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” The Orchestra, also directed by Hart, finished the evening with works by George Gershwin, Pablo de Sarasate, Schubert and Camille Saint-Saens.
Last Friday, middle school students made special pouches for Australian wildlife orphaned in the bushfires that have been ravaging the country. Students used cut-out patterns to sew the pouches, which were sent to the Oakland Zoo to be delivered to Australia. “The middle school’s Student Leadership Council did a presentation on the Australian fires at a school meeting, and [Assistant Head of School] Patricia Lai Burrows asked me to talk as I had just returned from Australia,” said math teacher Margaret Huntley, who is originally from Australia. “We were brainstorming about what we could do in response and I had seen this in the news.”
Fabric for the pouches was donated by the faculty, and some students have continued cutting fabric for more pouches, which Huntley hopes to send very soon.
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
Stacie Wallace spends her days as middle school English department chair and grade 8 English teacher. But what shines through most about her is her thoughtfulness and introspection, and her pride in her three alumnae daughters, Rachel ’05, Molly ’07 and Sophi ’09, each of whom has provided a grandchild to dote on! She reflects that, after a “tumultuous and unstable childhood … I’m grateful for the life I was able to create for myself,” and her conversation with Harker Magazine reveals the ways she lives for balance and gratitude each day.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand? Distances between family members. I would wave my wand and POOF!, everyone’s over for dinner at my house.
What one piece of advice you would offer anyone who asks? Don’t apologize for taking up space on the planet. If you need to apologize for something real, that’s fine, but don’t feel you have to apologize for everything.
What are you obsessed with? Right now, I’m obsessed with NYT Cooking, a Facebook group that shares recipes (from the New York Times and all kinds of others) and supports one another in our efforts to try new things.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? Advice/caution really: “This too shall pass.” It’s meant to reassure, I think, as in, “It won’t always be this hard.” That was so helpful when I was raising three little ones. But as I’ve grown older, I see it’s also a gentle warning to appreciate things in my life, because they won’t always be there, or be the same.
Where in the world are you the happiest? In my sister’s kitchen having a cup of coffee and talking and laughing. I never laugh as much as I do when we’re together.
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Ha! I would wake up ready to write that novel and get going full bore on it.