Over Labor Day weekend, chess players Saanvi Bhargava, grade 5, Kyle Chang, grade 7, Mihir Kotbagi, grade 4, and third graders Lucas Lum and Ayden Grover, competed in the 2017 Labor Day Kids Championship in Santa Clara. Their combined victories resulted in Harker taking second place overall as a team, with Bhargava and Chang each winning four of the five games they played. Great work!
On Sept. 5 middle school students participated in what division head Cindy Ellis called an “empathy developing experience” inspired by recent Hurricane Harvey-related events in Texas. Students were each given a card representing a group of people affected by the disaster. Students given red cards played the role of evacuees, while those with blue cards represented those who stayed in their homes and could not leave due to flooding. Students with green cards represented people who were not in immediate danger but were concerned for their loved ones and wanted to help.
Facilitators led discussions with each group based on detailed scenarios that contained questions for the students. Red card holders posing as evacuees, for instance, imagined that their family had been forced to move temporarily to a much smaller living space than what they had grown accustomed to. As their scenario played out, they were asked questions about what they would leave behind, knowing that belongings left at home could be destroyed, and what a 12-hour drive to Austin might be like in a packed vehicle with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Later in the week, middle school advisories discussed what they had learned during the exercise. These discussions will be used to formulate ideas on how to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey. “We are trying to make this as student-driven as we can with this age group,” Ellis said.
Arusha Patil and Alexander Kumar, both grade 9, were recently honored in the 2017 Promising Young Writers Program, organized by the National Council of Teachers of English. Patil was awarded a certificate of recognition and Kumar received a certificate of participation. Each year, the Promising Young Writers Program recognizes grade 8 students nominated by their schools for their writing abilities; Patil and Kumar were eighth graders when they were nominated by middle school English teacher Patricia Burrows. Of the 163 students nominated in this year’s program, 67 received certificates of recognition. The remaining 96 were awarded certifications of participation.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Judge John Byron Owens MS ’85 earned his first paycheck, for $180, from Harker in 1985. He rode his bike from Cupertino to campus every day that summer to work as a camp counselor. It was the beginning of a journey distinguished by hard work, intellect and honor.
“No one at Harker is surprised by John’s success,” said Pat Walsh, Owens’ fifth grade teacher. “It’s not just that he’s brilliant, which he is, but that he’s filled with integrity.”
Owens, who attended Harker from grades 3-8, has remained in touch with Walsh. In 2014, Owens even invited Walsh to his swearing-in ceremony as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Before being nominated by President Barack Obama, Owens had a successful career as an attorney, served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and graduated first in his class at Stanford Law School. All these successes came with a lot of hard work, one of Owens’ core values, along with honesty and kindness.
“There is no substitute for hard work, especially when you are in high school and college. Hard work now makes the rest of your life much easier,” is advice he has shared with Harker students in the past and regularly shares with his two daughters.
And Owens definitely walks the talk. Last season he coached his eldest daughter’s club basketball team, which made the playoffs. He stressed to the team to work hard at practice but also at home on shooting and dribbling. He realized that a coach cannot ask his players to work hard if he also isn’t willing to put in the time, so he spent hours reviewing game films and statistics, and designed a new offense for the team. They won both playoff games by nearly 20 points.
“So it may seem crazy – a federal judge is spending hours watching youth basketball games – but it was an important lesson for our players and especially my oldest daughter to understand that success only happens through hard work,” said Owens. “It is not fair to have hard-working players led by an unprepared coach.”
Owens has always loved sports and even worked as a marketing assistant for the Golden State Warriors when he was an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. But his love of the law prevailed. His law career includes serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for both the central and southern districts of California, as well as a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
Owens, a big science fiction fan, was lauded by “Above the Law” for “nerding out.” The legal website referenced Lone Star Security & Video v. City of Los Angeles, where he incorporated “a Monopoly analogy and a reference to ‘The Twilight Zone’ to urge the Supreme Court to reconsider its holdings.” Other opinions have referenced “Game of Thrones,” “Star Trek” and the horror movie “The Thing.”
His lighter, nerdier side often peeks through when he returns to Harker, from sharing his experience as a judge with third graders to discussing honors and ethics with upper school students. He earned the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007 and serves on Harker’s Board of Trustees.
“He is well-respected regardless of his role on campus,” said Sarah Leonard, Owens’ third grade teacher and now primary division head. “He has a wonderful way with the third grade students, really driving home his message about hard work, determination, setting goals and perseverance, but he does so in a manner that captures the children’s attention and holds them almost spellbound.“
Owens and his family live in San Diego. In their free time, they enjoy going to the boxing gym on Saturday mornings, where they hit the bags while the youngest takes karate. A perfect day would include a 5-mile run for Owens, followed by a relaxing afternoon and watching the Warriors play in the evening (he’s still a big fan).
Owens values time with his family and, when asked what his proudest accomplishment was, he replied, “That’s easy – my two girls. They both learned at an early age from my wife and me that success in life – academics, sports, the arts – requires hard work.”
Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.
Over a two-week period in late July and early August, 16 middle school students traveled to Costa Rica for the annual summer Spanish immersion trip. After arriving in the Costa Rican capital city of San José, the students visited Nuevo Milenio, a private school, where they enjoyed dance performances and student poetry recitals. Over the next several days, they learned how to make local cuisine in Grecia, volunteered at a school located in the neighborhood of La Carpio (made up primarily of poor Nicaraguan refugees), gazed at the country’s native flora and fauna, went ziplining over the lush forestry and participated in a day-long scavenger hunt through downtown Grecia. The memorable journey was capped off with a hearty dinner at a local eatery, where the travelers were entertained by local musicians and costumed dancers, known as máscaradas.
Over a two-week period in late July and early August, 16 middle school students traveled to Costa Rica for the annual summer Spanish immersion trip. After arriving in the Costa Rican capital city of San José, the students visited Nuevo Milenio, a private school, where they enjoyed dance performances and student poetry recitals. Over the next several days, they learned how to make local cuisine in Grecia, volunteered at a school located in the neighborhood of La Carpio (made up primarily of poor Nicaraguan refugees), gazed at the country’s native flora and fauna, went ziplining over the lush forestry and participated in a day-long scavenger hunt through downtown Grecia. The memorable journey was capped off with a hearty dinner at a local eatery, where the travelers were entertained by local musicians and costumed dancers, known as máscaradas.
Over a two-week period in late July and early August, 16 middle school students traveled to Costa Rica for the annual summer Spanish immersion trip. After arriving in the Costa Rican capital city of San José, the students visited Nuevo Milenio, a private school, where they enjoyed dance performances and student poetry recitals. Over the next several days, they learned how to make local cuisine in Grecia, volunteered at a school located in the neighborhood of La Carpio (made up primarily of poor Nicaraguan refugees), gazed at the country’s native flora and fauna, went ziplining over the lush forestry and participated in a day-long scavenger hunt through downtown Grecia. The memorable journey was capped off with a hearty dinner at a local eatery, where the travelers were entertained by local musicians and costumed dancers, known as máscaradas.
Harker middle school students performed extremely well in California Mathematics League contests during the 2016-17 school year, according to a report published by the organization. Harker was the third highest-placing school in the league and placed first in the region at the grade 6 level, with Riya Gupta, Ashley Hu, Connie Jiang, Sally Zhu and Tiffany Chang all placing among the top 35 sixth grade competitors.
At the grade 7 level, Harker was the top-placing school in the league and the region, with students Alexander Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy, Akhilesh Chegu, Kevin Wang and William Zhao named among the top 49 performers.
Harker tied with Saratoga’s Redwood Middle School for second place in the grade 8 category. Among the top 34 students were Utkarsh Priyam, Eric Zhu, Vivian Jin and Sidra Xu.
More than 30 middle school students posted medal-winning scores in this year’s National Myth Exam, which took place during the spring semester. The annual exam, taken by all middle school Latin students, includes questions on Greek and Roman myths.
Silver medals, awarded to students who scored between 95 and 99 percent, were awarded to rising seventh graders Hita Thota, Jeremy Ko, Alan Jiang, Jasmine Li, Andrew Fu and Andrew Pluzhnikov; rising eighth graders Nicole Tian, Anoushka Khatri, Arnav Jain, Brandon Park, Jacqueline Hu, Angela Jia, Aaron Lo and Alex Zhang; and rising ninth graders Betsy Tian, Angela Cai and Akshay Manglik.
Bronze medal winners, who scored between 90 and 94 percent, were rising seventh graders Atri Banerjee, Anthony Tong, Linette Hoffman, Nicholas Wei and Isaac Yang; rising eighth graders Ishaan Parate, Aaron Tran, Prakrit Jain, Thresia Vazhaeparambil, Ysabel Chen and Akhilesh Chegu; and rising ninth graders Sidra Xu, Jason Lin, Anna Vazhaeparambil, Shalini Rohra and Maria Vazhaeparambil.
These students were presented with their medals and certificates in May at the California Junior Classical League’s state convention.
Both the upper and middle school speech and debate teams did incredibly well recently at one of the three major national speech and debate tournaments. The National Speech & Debate Association Tournament was held in Birmingham, Ala., June 18-23. Thousands of students compete at the massive event.
Four upper school students qualified to attend the tournament, and each had impressive results. Aditya Dhar ’17 took home top honors in congressional debate with the senate leadership bowl and a second-place-finish overall. The leadership bowl award is voted on by the debaters, and congressional debate coach Marjorie Hazeltine noted that the whole team was thrilled for Dhar, especially because he has been an incredible team leader and role model throughout his time at the upper school.
Jenny Achten, Harker’s speech and debate department chair, noted Dhar “was seen as a great competitor and also a fair and encouraging presence in the community. It really speaks to how highly he was held as a role model in the Congressional Debate community and within our team.”
Nikhil Dharmaraj, rising junior, made it to the quarterfinals of original oratory with his speech on the importance of quality over quantity. Dharmaraj also made it to the top 20 in impromptu speaking. Avi Gulati, rising sophomore, was close to making it to elimination rounds in oratory and also placed in the top third in impromptu. Rounding out the upper school contingent was Jason Huang, rising junior, who earned a winning record in the relatively new event of world schools debate.
The middle school team also did extremely well in its division, with 157 middle schools from 33 states represented. Harker won the School of Excellence Debate Award, given to the school with the strongest overall record in the debate events across the entire field. Coach Chris Thiele was honored to accept the award on behalf of the whole team.
The duo of Andy Lee and Jason Lin, both rising freshmen, won first place in policy debate on a 5-0 decision, as they successfully argued that the United States ought to increase its diplomatic engagement with the People’s Republic of China, particularly in the area of joint space exploration. Deven Shah, rising eighth grader, and Akshay Manglik, rising freshman, made it to the semifinals of policy debate. In Lincoln-Douglas debate, Rishi Jain, rising eighth grader, was in the semifinals and Akhilesh Chegu, also a rising eighth grader, was in the octofinals.
Harker’s grade 7 public forum teams also had impressive finishes, debating humanitarian assistance and antiterrorism efforts in East Africa. Anshul Reddy and Ayan Nath were semifinalists, Alina Yuan and Amiee Wang made it to octofinals, and Arnav Jain and Harsh Deep, along with Yejin Song and Alysa Su, were double octofinalists. All are rising eighth graders.
Arusha Patil, rising freshman, was a semifinalist in both original oratory and storytelling. Rhea Nanavati, rising fresman, was a quarterfinalist in dramatic interpretation of literature.
The coaches are very proud of all of the students’ accomplishments and send a special thanks to Class of 2017 graduates Sana Aladin, Molly Wancewicz and Anika Jain for joining the coaching staff for this exciting event.