In mid-November, three Harker eighth graders were honored in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Contest’s junior division. This year’s contest, held by Bow Seat Ocean Programs, received 4,000 entries from around the world and aimed to inspire youth to learn about and take action on climate change. Students researched and wrote about climate issues in their grade 7 expository writing classes, and their essays were entered into the contest as part of the curriculum.
Additionally, middle school English teacher Marjorie Hazeltine received an Educator’s Award along with $750 to put toward education on climate change. “I submitted a summary of the way I used the contest in my classroom at Harker,” Hazeltine said. “The theme last year created the perfect opportunity to teach satire, persuasion, rhetoric and humor.”
Upper school debate teacher Greg Achten was recently elected to the executive board of the National Debate Coaches Association. All members of the organization are eligible to vote for the nine-member board. It is a national organization dedicated to supporting best practices in the debate community. The organization hosts one of the national championships and supports new programs with debate curriculum and research support. Achten’s years of community service, especially his expertise in running tournaments, were contributors to his election success. Additional details can be found at the NDCA website.
Rory Hu, grade 7, was today announced as a top award winner in the 2022 Broadcom MASTERS competition, taking home the $10,000 Department of Defense STEM Talent Award. Her project for the competition studied how tea polyphenols and caffeine may help honeybees improve their learning and memory capabilities, as well as mitigate the harm from pesticides. More about Hu and her project can be found on her project page at the Society for Science website.
As one of the 30 finalists, Hu will receive a $500 prize and is eligible to win one of several top prizes, totaling more than $100,000. The finals are scheduled for this fall.
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Sept. 8, 2022
Yesterday, eight Harker students were named top 300 scholars in the 2022 Broadcom MASTERS competition, one of the country’s top middle school science competitions. The students were chosen from more than 1,800 applicants, and were among the top 10 percent at science fairs affiliated with the Society for Science.
Ninth graders Ava Bhowmik, Gupta Disha, Sofia Shah, Tanvi Sivakumar, Jonathan Szeto and Kallie Wang; eighth grader Jayden Liu; and seventh grader Rory Hu each will receive a $125 prize and are eligible to become top 30 finalists, who will be announced Sept. 21. Finalists will then be chosen for a variety of awards, totaling more than $100,000 in prizes.
This story was contributed by Lisa Masoni, middle school Latin teacher, and Scott Paterson, upper school Latin teacher.
The California Junior Classical League celebrated its return to in-person events with an epic Ludi Octobres (October Games) hosted by Saint Ignatius High School in San Francisco on Oct. 22. Twenty-three Latin students from the middle and upper schools participated in assemblies and workshops, academic testing, face-painting, Kahoots, naumachia (staged ship battles), a service project and Certamen (a Latin-themed quiz bowl). The best parts of the day included a return to in-person traditions, such as spirit cheers and the chance to interact with more than 600 students from 21 northern California schools.
Harker students brought home the following individual awards:
Middle School 1 (Grade 6)
Ryo Sugaya: Third in Roman Daily Life
Ethan Weyn: First in Derivatives, first in Mythology
Middle School 2 (Grade 7)
Jacob Chung: First in Latin Grammar 1, second in Derivatives
Shreyas Karnam: First in Reading Comprehension Novice, third in Latin Grammar 1, member of the first-place Open Certamen Novice team
Zahra Syed: First in Derivatives
Middle School 3 (Grade 8)
Shamik Khowala: First in Derivatives, first in Reading Comprehension Intermediate
Ameera Ramzan: Second in Latin Vocabulary, second in Reading Comprehension Intermediate
Demi Zheng: First in Latin Vocabulary, second in Derivatives
Upper School, Level 3
Rahul Sundaresan: Second in Derivatives, second in Mythology
Upper School, Advanced Level
Ainslie Chen: First in Vocabulary, second in Reading Comprehension Advanced, member of third-place team in Open Certamen
Felix Chen: Third in Daily Life
Trisha Iyer: First in Daily Life, first in Reading Comprehension Advanced, member of first-place team in Open Certamen
Hannah Levanon: Member of first-place team in Open Certamen, second in Daily Life
Kabir Ramzan: First in Derivatives, second in Vocabulary
This past summer, K-5 visual arts chair Gerry-louise Robinson and middle school art teacher Sofie Siegmann traveled to Thailand to learn more about the country’s art, culture and history, and how they can be integrated into Harker’s visual arts programs. The trip was part of the Raju and Bala Vegesna Teacher Excellence Program, which supports teachers seeking exciting professional development opportunities.
“Thailand is a rich melting pot of art and culture that has embraced traits from all the countries that border it,” said Robinson. “There are so many visible connections with India and East Asia, cultures that are part of our Harker community.”
The excursion began with a three-day stint at the University of Fine Arts in Bangkok, where Robinson and Siegmann gave a presentation and participated in a project with the university’s teachers and students. “We got to explore the many disciplines that the college has to offer and chatted with many professors who are practicing artists in their own right,” said Robinson.
“It was the most rewarding experience, because it brought everybody together,” said Siegmann “The students worked at home, and in the end we all created a wall with over 500 pieces!”
They then visited temples in the northern and southern regions of the country, admiring and analyzing the many different techniques that made each of the temples unique. The trek also included stops at places where locals were creating ceramics in a variety of styles, as well as visits to art studios to meet with and learn from local artists. During the several workshops they attended, Robinson and Siegmann took part in soap carving, paper making and mask painting.
Robinson said she hopes to use the striking scenes she experienced in Thailand’s floating markets into her instruction, in addition to paper making projects and works involving elephants, which are icons of Thai culture. Siegmann said she planned to integrate at least two pieces inspired by what she learned in Thailand into each of her classes, including paper making, soap carving and printmaking.
The teachers thanked global education director Jennifer Walrod for organizing the trip. “Jennifer Walrod did an outstanding job in putting this trip to Thailand together,” said Siegmann. “It was such a smooth, adventuresome experience.” Sakchai Boon-Intr, a professor at the University of Fine Arts, was also instrumental in making the experience so worthwhile. “He did so much to enable us to be at the college and engage with the students and staff,” Robinson. Finally, they thanked the Vegesnas, whose endowment granted this unique opportunity.
“Thank you to the Vegesna family for making this possible,” Siegmann said. “What an opportunity!”
At the 2022 National Table Tennis Championship in July, table tennis enthusiast Sophie Shen, grade 6, took first place in the U1000 event and second place in the U1200 event. It was her first national tournament. Shen has been playing table tennis for about a year and a half and began competing earlier this year. Congratulations!
Last week, the middle school marked the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month by inviting East Palo Alto City Councilmember Antonio López to speak at a special morning assembly. A passionate and energetic speaker, López talked about his upbringing in the mostly Latinx city of East Palo Alto. “It’s a community mostly of immigrants, a community where English may not be the first language,” he said.
He also described it as a “city that nobody cared about,” recalling a story about a music class with 30 students but only six recorders, each of which had to be sanitized after every use. Quality groceries were also out of reach for many people, including López’s family. As a child, he walked 45 minutes each way with his mother to the grocery store.
A major believer in the importance of quality education, López thought of school as his “sanctuary” growing up. “For a lot of us growing up in East Palo Alto … education was a thing that changed my life and I’m sure your parents’ lives,” he said.
The son of Mexican immigrants, López talked about his familiarity with the pressures of having parents with high expectations due to the risks they took moving to another country. While attending Duke University, he informed his parents that he wanted to be a poet, which did not get a positive reaction. He nevertheless pursued and earned a Marshall Scholarship to attend the University of Cambridge and went on to win the 2019 Levis Prize from Four Way Books.
Upon returning home near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, López saw that East Palo Alto was still experiencing many of the same problems he had seen growing up, and decided to take action. With the help of his young cousin Adolfo, he organized a campaign for councilmember and began knocking on doors. “He didn’t have a passion for civic engagement, but he was open to learning about it,” López said of Adolfo, who set out learning about local issues, budgets and infrastructure. His platform of equal opportunities for youth won him the councilmember seat in December 2020.
“I want you all to have interests. I want you all to have passions. I want you all to guard those passions,” he said. “And I want you to be open to all the different ways that you can be inspired, that you can be pushed, that you can be encouraged.”
Golf enthusiast Julie Hu, grade 6, had a very active and successful summer, taking second place in the Girls 10 category in her first international event, the U.S. Kids Golf European Championship, held May 31-June 2 in Scotland. She also tied for eighth at the Future Champions Golf Callaway World Championship in Palm Springs in July and placed 21st out of nearly 100 competitors at the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship in North Carolina in August. Hu has been golfing competitively for just over two years and regularly competes at local tournaments on weekends.
In late July, eight Harker students joined the California delegation to the 2022 National Junior Classical League Convention, the first in-person JCL event since 2019. Several more attended remotely as long-distance delegates. The California delegates endured quite an odyssey — overcoming plane delays and cancellations, daily thunderstorms and an alligator swamp in the middle of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette campus — to enjoy a week of competitions, workshops and opportunities to bond with Latin students from the state and all over the country.
“A highlight for many was joining forces with [New Hampshire] and [New Jersey] for a spirit battle against the Texas behemoth,” said Lisa Masoni. “In the opinion of the national second VP, the consortium of small-state delegations was definitely more spirited! “
One of the most important events at the convention is the election of national officers to lead the organization for the 2022-23 school year. Senior Rupert Chen was elected first vice president. Harker’s last national officer, Maya Nandakumar ’15, held the same office in her senior year. Chen, fresh off a stint digging at the archaeological site of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, will be responsible for promoting membership and publicity during his term of office.
Below are the top 10 awards earned by Harker delegates:
Chess enthusiasts Vyom Vidyarthi, rising sophomore, and Omya Vidyarthi, rising seventh grader, each won gold medals at the Pan American Youth Chess Championship, held June 25-July 8 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Vyom, currently a FIDE International Master, played in the U18 open category and Omya competed in the U12 girls category. Their performances helped the USA take first overall, with a total of five gold medals. This win marked Omya’s fourth straight gold medal win in this event, having won in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the event in 2020 and 2021.