Updated April 11, 2013 18:02
Final donations have been recieved and this year’s Harker’s Annual Cancer Walk raised $8,105.45, over twice the amount estimated! “This will give many young cancer patients a fantastic opportunity to go to camp!” said Cindy Ellis, middle school head. “I know they will also enjoy the many decorated Frisbees from the middle school students while at camp. Thank you all for your support—it was a glorious day—as always!”
April 11, 2013 9:08 Students, faculty and family members recently put on their walking shoes for the seventh annual Harker Cancer Walk. The successful schoolwide effort netted over $4,000 for Camp Okizu, with donations still flowing in after the event.
For more than 30 years Camp Okizu, located in the Berry Creek area in the Sierra Foothills, has provided peer support, respite, mentoring and recreational programs for families affected by childhood cancer.
Mirroring a residential camp experience, Okizu provides a safe place for young cancer patients to enjoy such regular childhood pastimes as swimming, boating, archery and a ropes course, in addition to social events. The name Okizu (oak-eye-zoo) comes from the Sioux language and means unity.
Uniting the entire Harker community together while raising cancer awareness, the symbolic stroll was held on the morning of March 29 on the Blackford campus field. Ribbons were worn by participants and music played for the duration of the walk. Supplementing direct donations were a large amount of T-shirts, water bottles, Jamba Juice, baked goodies, temporary tattoos and wrist bands which were sold by volunteers.
Cindy Ellis, middle school head, reported that advisories had been busy decorating the “biggest cancer walk poster ever” for this year’s event. The result of the collaborative efforts of the entire middle school, it hung on the amphitheater wall from March 25-29 and stood eight feet high. Advisories also made small, honorary flags for those who have survived or passed away from cancer, which were then placed on the ground along the walking path.
“It is sometimes hard to explain why the Cancer Walk is so meaningful. I personally feel it is because it blossomed from the heart. How rare and wonderful it is to have the opportunity to stop, walk, share with friends and help out others. The gift, ultimately, is for Okizu and all of us!” said Ellis who helped launch the event with Michael Schmidt.
Schmidt, who teaches middle school computer science, had the idea for the walk back in 2007 following the passing of his mother due to cancer the previous year. “The weather was beautiful and I saw so many smiling faces!” he said. “I am so happy to help the children who will now be able to attend Camp Okizu as a result of all of our collective efforts. This event really shows the wonderful heart and spirit of our entire community, including faculty, staff, parents and students. You are all amazing.” Schmidt said he could never have originally predicted how much the efforts of the Cancer Walk would resonate across all three of Harker’s campuses.
“There were all too many people with a connection, and they too wanted to join in the celebration, the commemoration for someone close to them. The Cancer Walk is truly an effort of the community that I have grown to cherish at Harker,” he added. “Thank you again for our SEVENTH amazing Cancer Walk.”
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s middle school recently played host to 19 students and four chaperones visiting from the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS) in Shanghai, China as part of Harker’s student exchange program with its Chinese sister school.
Come spring, a contingent of Harker students will head to China as part of the annual exchange program which is a highlight and culmination of the middle school experience for many grade 8 students.
During their stay from Jan. 22-25, the WFLMS students observed and attended several middle school classes and headed over to the lower school for a traditional Chinese paper cutting project with grades 4 and 5. In their free time, the visitors ventured out for some sightseeing activities.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
In late January, the San Francisco-based wind quintet Frequency 49 held several master classes for Harker students. Made up entirely of working professional musicians, the group visited a number of classes at the middle and upper school campuses, starting with the grade 7-8 orchestra, led by Dave Hart. The musicians showed the students the sounds and various attributes of each instrument and played a special selection of pieces in a variety of styles.
“Since many of the students in orchestra have had experience performing in chamber ensembles throughout the year, they were able to ask questions about the process of rehearsing and performing music in a chamber setting,” Hart said.
Later, the group stopped by Hart’s grade 6 wind ensemble’s rehearsal. For this session, Hart rented duplicate instruments played by Frequency 49 so that students could try them out following a brief lesson on how they were played. “They spent the rest of the class with each member trying out those particular instruments. It was a blast, and the kids were completely engaged!” Hart exclaimed.
Their final stop at the middle school was Hart’s grade 6 strings class. Students had been spending this semester separating into groups and learning a chamber music piece of their choosing. The students had the chance to play the pieces for Frequency 49, who later performed for them. “Hearing Frequency 49 provided the students an opportunity to see and hear a professional chamber music group perform the pieces the students have been working on the last two weeks,” Hart noted.
Lastly, the group visited the upper school for a workshop with Chris Florio’s class, demonstrating what could be done on their respective instruments. “For example, the flutist demonstrated how the flute can produce bird-like sounds,” said Victoria Ding, grade 9. Ding said communication was one of the important principles that the group taught the students. “Frequency 49 instructed us to sit in a certain arrangement such that each instrument’s sound carries well to the other players and the audience,” she said. “They also reminded us to maintain eye contact with each of the four other players and adjust to what we hear in order to maintain balance in the ensemble.”
“I found it to be really beneficial because I had just begun playing in a woodwind quintet this year and I wasn’t quite sure how to play so that each member could play together well as one ensemble,” said Aaron Lee, grade 11.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Dozens of musicians from Harker’s middle and upper schools gathered at the beautiful Mexican Heritage Theater in San Jose on Jan. 11 for this year’s Winter Concert. Musical groups from both campuses performed pieces both modern and classic in a wide variety of styles.
The concert was separated into two portions, allowing students from both campuses equal
time to shine. Middle school musicians, directed by Dave Hart, opened at 5 p.m. with Harker Winds performing “Bags Groove” by Milt Jackson and “Some Nights” by the pop group fun., both arranged by the performers in the group.
Harker Strings continued with an arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and the holiday favorite “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The Grade 6 Orchestra (made up of members from the winds and strings groups) then continued the performance with “Farandole” by Georges Bizet and the ever-popular theme from “Star Wars.”
Students Donna Boucher, Connie Xu, Arushee Bhoja and Catherine Wang, all grade 6, impressively performed the first of two chamber pieces showcased that evening, “Comptine d’un Autre Été: L’Après-Midi” by Yann Tiersen. The grade 8 duo of violinists Cuebeom Choi and May Gao then played a selection from “Duo Concertante for Two Violins” by Charles-Auguste de Bériot.
Jazz musicians from grades 7 and 8 took the stage for a set of songs from greats such as Charles Mingus (“Boogie Bop Shuffle”) and Charlie Parker (“My Little Suede Shoes”). Finishing the middle school portion of the show was the Grade 7-8 Orchestra, who performed “Amazing Grace” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Greensleeves” before bringing the set to a spectacular close with the first movement of Antonín Dvorák’s “New World Symphony.”
The second half of the show featured upper school musicians, starting with the Lab Band, the introductory jazz ensemble directed by Dave Hart, who performed Benny Golson’s “Blues March,” Joe Henderson’s “Recorda Me” (arranged by the band themselves) and “Big Dipper” by Thad Jones. The Harker School Jazz Band, directed by Chris Florio, continued with “Launching Pad” by Clark Terry and Duke Ellington and the popular 1930s British standard “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” before bringing the house down with the Brian Setzer Orchestra’s “Jumpin’ East of Java.”
Finally, Florio led the headlining upper school orchestra in an array of selections from famed composers such as Dvorák, Tchaikovsky and Holst, bringing the concert to an exciting close with a performance of Percy Grainger’s famous reel “Molly on the Shore.”
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
With the knowledge that there is nothing like a favorite “blankie” to comfort a suffering child, grade 7 middle school students in Karina Momary’s and Julie Pinzás’ advisories teamed up in early February to create blankets for donation to the South Bay chapter of Project Linus.
A volunteer-driven nonprofit organization giving blankets to children who are seriously ill or living in shelters, Project Linus works to provide a sense of security, warmth and comfort through the donation of handmade, washable blankets lovingly created by volunteer makers, or “blanketeers.”
The blanket creation for Project Linus was the middle school’s community service project for this year. Working in pairs, students produced 12 blankets for donation to the local branch of Project Linus.
To date, Project Linus has delivered more than 4,000,000 security blankets to children around the world and has nearly 400 chapters in the United States. Although the organization originally donated blankets to pediatric cancer patients, recipients now include any child who is seriously ill or traumatized in some way.
“What a great opportunity to be able to use our advisory time to make a collaborative impact on our community to help children in need of comfort,” said Pinzás.
After participating in the middle school’s second annual “Geo Bee,” Soham Khan, grade 8, has been selected to represent Harker at the state finals of the National Geographic Bee, slated to occur in Sacramento in early April. Khan also won the Harker Geo Bee last year and qualified to go to the State Bee.
Khan was one of 14 participants who took part in the Bee, held on the middle school campus. He emerged as the winner of the contest, which was intended to serve as a qualifying round for further competition against other schools at the state and national levels.
Each year thousands of schools across the country participate in the National Geographic Bee. Using materials prepared by the National Geographic Society, the highly competitive contest encourages teachers to include geography in their classrooms and spark students’ curiosity about the topic.
During the Harker Bee, fellow eighth grader Nikhil Manglik came in at a close second to Khan. According to Andrea Milius, grade 7 world studies teacher, both students answered all the championship-stage questions and had to go into extra rounds. “It was so sweet, when Soham won, Nikhil promptly wished him congratulations! All of the participants did a great job,” she said.
Following his win at the middle school, Khan successfully took a test in order to be able to go on to represent Harker at the next stage of the competition: the state level. For the final, national level, the Geography Bee only takes the top 100 qualifiers from each state.
The entire middle school wished Khan well during a recent school meeting. Marked by the Bee’s 25th anniversary and Alex Trebek’s final year as host, the much anticipated grand finale will take place in May at the historic National Theater in downtown Washington, D.C.
The 12th annual Diana Nichols Math Invitational on March 10 was a “super success,” according to middle school math teacher Vandana Kadam. More than 300 participants from 23 schools took part in the contest, with several Harker students earning high placings.
In the grade 6 individual category, Rose Guan took fourth. Jerry Chen and Jimmy Lin took second and fifth, respectively, in the grade 7 individual contest. In the grade 7 team competition, Harker’s team of Chen, Jimmy Lin, Michael Kwan, Edgar Lin, Jeffrey Ma, Alexander Wang and Randy Zhao took first place.
The event included generous help from more than 30 upper school volunteers who helped administer the tests and write problems, and performed other tasks to make sure the event was well run. Grade 10 students Cindy Liu, David Lin and Ashwath Thirimalai, all of whom were participants at the invitational in their previous years at Harker, wrote problems for the exams. Liu also created the design that went on the T-shirts for this year’s event. “It is with pride I can say that the students who went through these contests as middle school students come back to write problems as upper school students,” Kadam said.
With the knowledge that there is nothing like a favorite “blankie” to comfort a suffering child, grade 7 middle school students in the advisories of Karina Momary and Julie Pinzás teamed up in early February to create blankets for donation to the South Bay chapter of Project Linus.
A volunteer-driven nonprofit organization giving blankets to children who are seriously ill or living in shelters, Project Linus works to provide a sense of security, warmth and comfort through the donation of handmade, washable blankets lovingly created by volunteer makers or “blanketeers.”
The blanket creation for Project Linus was the middle school students’ community service project for this year. Working in pairs, students produced 12 blankets for donation to the local branch of Project Linus.
To date, Project Linus has delivered more than 4,000,000 security blankets to children around the world and has nearly 400chapters in the United States. Although the organization originally donated blankets to pediatric cancer patients, recipients now include any child who is seriously ill or traumatized in some way.
“What a great opportunity to be able to use our advisory time to make a collaborative impact on our community to help children in need of comfort,” said Pinzás.
Dance Jamz, the annual middle school dance show, entertained audiences at the Blackford Theater on March 8 and 9. Directed by Gail Palmer with choreography by Rachelle Ellis, Grant Chenok, Stephanie Bayer, Kimberley Teodoro and Palmer herself, middle school students (and several faculty members) hit the stage to perform a variety of uptempo dance numbers set to music by Skrillex, David Guetta, No Doubt, Michael Jackson and more. One of the highlights of the show was a routine featuring a cast made up entirely of faculty members, including history teacher Cyrus Merrill, English teacher Patricia Lai Burrows and art teacher Elizabeth Saltos. The finale saw the entire cast of dancers gather on the stage for a rousing number that received a fittingly enthusiastic ovation.
As usual, the stalwart crew of set designer Paul Vallerga, sound engineer Brian Larsen and lighting designer Natti Pierce-Thomson worked tirelessly to keep all the moving parts of this technically demanding show in order.
Harker teams took the top two spots at the Middle School Regional Science Bowl competition on March 3, held at the National Hispanic University. The first-place team was captained by Venkat Sankar, grade 8, who led eighth graders Arjun Subramaniam and David Zhu as well as Edgar Lin and Rajiv Movva, grade 7. The second place team consisted of team captain Peter Wu, Brandon Chow and Nikhil Manglik, all grade 8, and Adrian Chu and Shaya Zarkesh, both grade 7.
“It was fun to watch the two teams play against each other in the final match. It was almost like their Friday practice but a bit more intense,” said middle school science teacher Vandana Kadam. Wu’s team actually claimed a victory over Sankar’s team earlier in the tournament, but the two teams met again in the finals, with Sankar’s team winding up victorious. “Both teams played exceptionally well,” Kadam noted. The winning team will head to the National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C., in late April.