Over the first weekend in January, the middle school debate team traveled to Spokane, Wash., for the Gonzaga University Conway Classic Tournament. Students in public forum debated “Resolved: On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission harms the election process.”
Aditya Dhar and Alexander Lam, both grade 8, competed in the varsity division, which was predominantly high school juniors and seniors. They made it to the final four. Emaad Raghib, grade 8, was recognized as being the ninth speaker in the division, and Lam was recognized as being the second speaker in the division. These awards are given to individuals who have exemplified the strongest public speaking and communication skills. Judges in the rounds not only vote for a winner but also rate each competitor on a scale of one to 30.
Students in policy debate debated “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.”
Rahul Shukla and Rishabh Nijhawan, both grade 8, participated in the JV division and made it to the top 16 teams. Ray Xu, grade 8, received the second speaker award and Steven Cao, grade 8, received the first speaker award. Xu and Cao competed in the final round and defeated their opponents on a 3-0 decision to be named JV policy debate champions.
Just prior to the break, Harker hosted a middle school debate tournament at the middle school campus. The tournament had more than 200 entries in the tournament, with 10 different middle schools from all over California and one team visiting from Canada. Harker had 75 students competing at the tournament and an additional five who volunteered to help with the logistical aspect and act as student ambassadors. Harker students helped clean the classrooms and guide visiting students in between their speech and debate rounds.
Divya Rajasekharan and Andrew Tierno, both grade 8, respectively took first and fifth in dramatic interpretation, in which competitors act out a portion of a novel, short story, play or poem. In extemporaneous speaking, in which students must do on-the-spot research for questions posed to them by the tournament director, Adrian Chu, grade 7, took third and Raymond Xu placed fifth.
Rajasekharan also took first place in humorous interpretation, while Sana Aladin, grade 7, took second and Linus Li, grade 7, placed third. Harker had four top placements in impromptu speaking, with Carissa Chen, grade 8, winning first, Praveen Batra, grade 7, in second place, Tiffany Wong, grade 6, taking fifth and Sneha Bhetanabhotla, grade 8, finishing sixth.
The original oratory competition saw Chen take second, Behtanabhotla win third, Ashli Jain, grade 6, in fourth place and Riya Gupta, grade 6, earning fifth. Nikhil Dharmaraj and Akshay Ravoor, both grade 6, both took second place in the poetry and prose events, respectively, and Aladin took first place in storytelling, while Katherine Zhang, grade 6, took third.
For their exceptional public speaking skills, public forum speaker awards were given to Batra, who took second and Emaad Raghib, who earned fourth. Batra and teammate Michael Kwan, grade 7, took second in the team public forum competition. In policy, Rahul Shukla won the second place speaker award, and took second place with teammate Rishab Nijhawan in the policy competition.
Lincoln-Douglas speaker awards were given to grade 8 student Manan Shah for first place, Liza Turchinsky, grade 7, for second place and Steven Cao in fourth place. In the Lincoln-Douglas debate competition, Shah and Kai Ang, grade 8, were named co-champions.
Harker’s best category at the tournament was the congressional debate, where Harker students, all grade 8, took the six top spots, with Aditya Dhar winning first, Alexander Lam earning second, Michael Tseitlin taking third, Venkat Sankar finishing fourth, Sandip Nirmel taking fifth and Rishab Gargeya in sixth place.
Over the weekend, the First Lego League (FLL) robotics team made up of grade 7 students Aria Coalson, Maya Kumar, Mona Lee, Anooshree Sengupta and Jessica Susai took home the championship trophy at the FLL NorCal Championship, in addition to winning first place in the Robot Performance category. The team, known as “Raining Sunshine,” qualified for the tournament on Nov. 11 after earning top honors in Robot Performance at a FLL qualifier, racking up a staggering 475 points, 100 points more than the runner-up team. In addition, the team was awarded the second-place Champion’s Award for their exceptional teamwork, research and robot design.
“G3ARZ,” another robotics team with Harker seventh graders Shaya Zarkesh, Rajiv Movva and Derek Kuo, also performed admirably at a Nov. 18 FLL qualifier, earning the first place Champion’s Award in a field of 16 teams for their excellent performance in the Project, Robot Design, Core Values and Robot Performance categories. FLL competition teams are parent-organized and supported. We look forward to the girls contributing to the upper school robotics program when they get to the Saratoga campus!
American history came alive for Harker’s eldest middle school students, who traveled to Washington, D.C., on their class trip in October.
Students on the annual grade 8 sojourn to D.C. quickly realized that it’s one thing to learn about history from text, and quite another to be able to actually journey through historical hot spots. During the trip, they acquired a new appreciation for the city, founded on July 16, 1790, and established by the Constitution of the United States to serve as the nation’s capital.
Accompanied on the trip by Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, the group’s D.C. adventure began with a smooth day of travel followed by a visit to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg.
Even before arriving in Jamestown, the students knew much of the background of the first permanent English settlement in North America, having learned about it in their history class. Yet, while on site, they were able to more fully understand how the early settlers prepared food and made clothes, and the types of living quarters they had.
The students then visited Colonial Williamsburg, an interpretation of a colonial American city. Highlights of their time there included visiting the capitol, the court and the governor’s palace. They also visited a variety of shops such as the wig maker and the apothecary before heading for lunch at the King’s Arm Tavern, a recreation of a restaurant once considered one of the town’s most refined establishments.
After lunch, students participated in an interactive African-American music program held in a slave quarter in Colonial Williamsburg, where they were actively singing and dancing right alongside presenters.
The following day the contingent was greeted by gorgeous autumn weather, the perfect backdrop for their drive to Pamplin Park, one of America’s best-preserved battlefields. The students first went to the Civil War museum on the park grounds where they learned, via an audio guided tour, about the lives of soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Students also participated in military drills and visited the park’s recreated military encampment, experiencing elements of a common soldier’s life.
From there they visited the Martin Luther King Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. Making this visit more poignant was the fact that there were several Harker students and teachers who had family members who had fought in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
The day was capped off by a lively dinner at Tony Chang’s, filled with fun, delicious food, and interesting information and dialogue. A special treat was having former Harker student Amira Valliani ’06 attend as a guest speaker. Valliani is a former White House intern who currently serves as the special assistant to the deputy chief of staff at the U.S. State Department, where she works in the Office of Secretary of State. She spoke to Harker students about what she does and how the state department functions within the executive branch.
Valliani was joined by Harker classmate Amit Mukherjee ’06, who is a venture capitalist working in Washington, D.C. Mukherjee spoke of his experiences at Harker and how they led to his personal and professional development.
The following day, unusually warm and sunny, turned more solemn as the class visited the Iwo Jima U.S. Marine Corps memorials, Arlington Cemetery, Fords’ Theater and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which contains a record number of archival documents.
From there the group enjoyed a guided tour of the exterior of the White House, including seeing the tent of Concepcion Picciotto, who has been living on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in a peace camp in protest of nuclear arms since 1981.
“While we did not see Ms. Picciotto, we did see her delegate. On a lighter note, many of the students were also able to spot a basketball on the lawn of the White House, which they presumed was used by President Obama,” recalled Gargano.
Students later enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, one of the most popular locations in Washington for lawmakers, government officials and other political figures to socialize and gather. After dinner, students visited the World War II memorial, the FDR memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial, which are beautifully lit in the evenings.
The next day included a memorial visit to Ford’s Theater where students learned about what occurred on the day of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and were able to view the balcony where he was shot.
The group ended their excursion by attending the opening night of “War Horse” at the Kennedy Center. The students were amazed by the realistic puppetry and touched by the story of a boy and his undying loyalty to his horse.
Towards the end of the trip, students visited the capitol building, touring the House of Representatives, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. Capping off the day – and trip – was a dinner dance cruise, where the class fully bonded as a group. The expedition ended the next day with a visit to Mount Vernon and Udvar Hazy Air and Space Annex before students headed off to the airport for their return flights home.
The grade 8 visit to Washington, D.C., was one of several weeklong middle school class trips held during the fall. Grade 6 went to the Santa Cruz Mountains and grade 7 toured national parks around the Southwest.
Mother Nature more than cooperated during this year’s grade 7 national parks trip, bestowing warmer than average temperatures on Harker students and chaperones as they traveled to some of the country’s most scenic and historic sites.
The class journey began in late October, with students arriving in Arizona for the start of their much anticipated trip. The first stop on the agenda was Sedona, famous for its red rock formations. Students were treated to a Jeep tour, during which they learned about the area’s geology and wildlife.
“The end of day one had us all resting comfortably in the brisk high country of Flagstaff, following our plane ride into Phoenix and an afternoon spent in perfect weather in Sedona,” recalled Lana Morrison, middle school dean of students, in the first of a series of email reports written during the trip.
The next day’s adventure began with the group leaving for the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Students participated in an organized trust walk (listening to directions while walking with eyes closed) as they headed toward the rim of the canyon.
“The general public was curious about what we were doing,” noted Morrison. “Students took off their blindfolds and shouts of ‘wow’ and ‘awesome’ were heard from beginning to end! Onlookers smiled, cheered and wished them the best of luck,” she added, elaborating that students and chaperones later hiked Bright Angel trail, participated in a program with wilderness leaders from Academic Expeditions and learned about the Navajos.
On day three a trip highlight was the Monument Valley tour, known to many as “the eighth wonder of the world.” Monument Valley has been a significant place for centuries, and houses ruins that some believe to belong to the mysterious Anasazi people who disappeared from the area hundreds of years ago. The area is also notable for the fact that it is not a national park, but rather a Navajo park.
Morrison reported that another special activity that day was in Page, Ariz., at the famous Horseshoe Bend. After a pleasant walk through the sandstone, students took part in a geological lesson with Ranger Katie from the Glen Canyon Dam. They also learned how to make art pieces by using only what nature provided.
Afterward, the group drove to Bryce Canyon, where the temperature dropped to 48 degrees. Students were told to “layer-up” because they had plans to walk to dinner (across the empty parking lot) at Ebenezer’s Ruby Inn Cowboy Dinner Show. After dinner, they boarded buses for the Bryce Canyon Lodge, where they met Ranger Kevin for an evening astronomy presentation, complete with viewing the stars of Bryce Canyon.
Day five began with students and chaperones eating breakfast and packing lunches before heading off to Bryce Canyon National Park. There the group was in awe of the world famous Hoodoos (pillars of rock formed by erosion). They hiked to the Queens Gardens, to Bryce Point and up or down Wall Street (27 sloping switchbacks). Some groups walked the Yovimpa Trail to view the Grand Staircase.
After a fabulous day of hiking, the class stopped at Ruby’s for a short shopping trip before going back to the hotel. They later walked back to Ebenezer’s for dinner and a talent show, where students performed short skits about their week of adventures at the Southwest national parks.
The trip ended with the by now close-knit contingent traveling to Zion National Park to hike the Emerald Pools, Whistling Rock and several others trails. After their hikes, the students headed to Las Vegas to catch their flight home, filled with memories of their amazing adventures.
The grade 7 visit to the national parks around the Southwest was one of several weeklong middle school class trips held during the fall. Grade 6 went to the Santa Cruz Mountains, and grade 8 traveled to Washington, D.C.
Thanks to a unique online poetry forum, grade 7 students in Mark Gelineau’s English class have gone poetically cyber – taking their literary studies to a whole new global, interactive and virtual level.
Using the forum, some 80 students have connected with roughly the same number of peers from the Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) in Kazakhstan to discuss selected poetic works. The poetry exchange program has already generated well over 1,000 posts.
Gelineau created the forum in conjunction with Harker alumna Lauren Gutstein ’06, who currently works at the NIS school in Astana, one of a group of seven existing state funded selective schools for middle and high school aged students spread throughout major cities in Kazakhstan.
The largest of the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan is prosperous and highly literate. Named after the president of the county, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the NIS schools have an international focus.
Through their online postings, students from both Harker and NIS share insights and observations about posted poems up for discussion. Currently, the forum consists of two poems: “Stopping by Woods” by Robert Frost and “Winter” by Kunanbaev Ibragim Abai, a well-known Kazakh poet.
Each poem was given a literature-based question for students to answer, as well as one that was more cultural in nature. Students at both schools used the questions as starting points to initiate their own discussions, now in process.
“This forum is a wonderful example of how well global education can enhance and enrich academic learning,” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education. “It directly ties into Mark’s poetry unit and Lauren taught it through her ESL classes as it gave her students an opportunity to communicate with native speakers.”
Before participating in the online discussions Harker and NIS students had studied both poems, which are themed around winter, in their respective classrooms. While the Frost poem contains very peaceful verses, the Abai poem conveys a much darker mood.
According to Gelineau, the Frost piece is a lovely poem about pausing to watch a patch of forest fill with snow. By contrast, he said the Kazakh poet offers up a much bleaker view, where rather than something to be enjoyed in tranquility, winter is to be struggled against.
Using the contrasting poems as springboards for discussion, Harker and NIS students created and posted their own stanzas, seeking to enhance or alter the established moods depicted by the two poets. The students then discussed their newly written works with one another by regularly logging onto the site and keeping conversations running smoothly.
“I love the fact that the poetry forum is a curriculum-based project that integrates a global perspective. It is also interesting for the kids to be able to communicate with peers from a part of the world that we do not learn much about at all,” observed Walrod.
“This project has been an incredible success!” added Gelineau.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
The middle school fall play production, “The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet,” took Shakespeare into whimsical and hilarious territory in late November.
Directed by Monica Colletti, the wacky retelling of the Bard’s famous tragedy moved the drama ahead several centuries into the late 1980s with dialogue inspired by another beloved composer of rhymes, Dr. Seuss, alluding to some of the author’s most famous stories, such as “The Sneeches” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” The plotting was mostly familiar territory, with Romeo of the cleverly renamed House Monotone (Aditya Dhar, grade 8) falling head over heels for Juliet of the rival House Capitulate (Zahra Budhwani, also grade 8). With both houses in disarray over the affair (and Juliet arranged to be wed to the unbearably narcissistic Paris), the two lovers concoct a plan involving a fake suicide that, as is now known to many, goes spectacularly awry. Along the way, the feuding of the two houses culminates in a sword fight that ends tragically.
This being no ordinary interpretation of Shakespeare, however, much of the material has been lightened up in accordance with the allegorical lessons of Dr. Seuss books. The “poisoned cracker” that Romeo consumes upon seeing apparently (but not actually) dead Juliet was switched for a normal cracker, instead, and the sword fight turned out to not be so deadly after all. In the end, the two families reconcile and, as the saying goes, live happily ever after.
But not before performing a sped-up and highly amusing redux of the entire story. Set designer Paul Vallerga and prop designer Carol Clever created an environment worthy of the humorously affectionate play. Clever also designed the cast’s often garish costumes, which were more than appropriately representative of the time period in which the play took place.
All the while, the student crew of Sneha Bhetanabhotla and Justin Culpepper, both grade 8, and Praveen Batra and Justin Su, both grade 7, made sure the show was smoothly run and free of technical hiccups.
Basketball The grade 5 junior varsity B1 boys basketball team beat Sacred Heart in the Championship game of the WBAL tournament 26-21 Wednesday. They won the league with a 7-0 record and also won the championship tournament to finish at 9-0 overall.
The JVA boys basketball team took second in their WBAL bracket, losing to Sacred Heart in the Championship game 10-18. They finished 8-1 in league play and second in the tournament to finish at 9-2.
Basketball Boys varsity basketball went 1-2 in the Lynbrook Tournament last week, scoring a blowout 72-28 victory over Lynbrook to salve the pain of two nail-biter losses to Mills and Santa Teresa; the boys fell to Santa Teresa 41-40 on a last-minute shot as time expired.
Girls varsity basketball opened their season by cruising to the finals of the King’s Academy Tournament with victories over Prospect 48-32 and Lincoln 61-31. In the final round, the girls fell to Burlingame High 85-52 despite senior Priscilla Auyeung’s 21 points.
Soccer Boys varsity soccer blanked Gunderson in their season opener last week, 3-0, behind goals from Omar Hamade, Oisin Coveney, both grade 9, and Sumit Minocha, grade 12. The JV squad defeated SLV 6-1 to even their record at 1-1, as Neil Kishore, grade 10, scored a goal and had four assists.
Girls soccer went 1-1 last week after picking up a 2-0 shutout victory over Pacific Collegiate, with goals by Nikita Parulkar, grade 10, and Sondra Leal Da Costa, grade 12. Days before, the girls had dropped their season opener by a margin of 2-1 against Notre Dame, with Parulkar scoring the lone goal for the Eagles on a Leal Da Costa assist. Next, the team faces Mills High this Saturday in the Burlingame Tournament.
Wrestling
At the Fremont High Tournament on Saturday, wrestlers Danny Wang, grade 12, and Darian Edvalson, grade 11, earned a victory and two losses apiece. They face Milpitas High next week.
Water Polo
Congratulations to water polo players Keri Clifford and Karan Das-Grande, both seniors. Clifford was selected as a first team, division II All-CCS honoree and a second team division I honoree. Das-Grande recieved honorable mention on the second team for the boys, division II. This is a tremendous honor and excellent way to cap off their Harker water polo careers.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
Excited grade 6 students met their buddies from Harker’s sister school in Tokyo in mid-October. The meeting, between Harker’s 27 middle school students and the Tamagawa K-12 School & University students, was preceded by a get-acquainted video chat.
“The video conferences are fun events held on the Blackford campus where each Harker family is scheduled for 10 minutes to meet their child’s Japanese buddy and family. We have a translator present to assist with communication,” explained Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education.
The video conferences began with Harker students introducing their families and asking questions about what their buddies will want to see, do or eat while they are visiting at the end of October. The Japanese buddies also got to ask questions about their fast-approaching visit.
The Tamagawa students were at Harker for several days before heading off to Yosemite on Oct. 22 after a farewell party hosted on their behalf in the middle school’s multipurpose room. They stayed in homestays with their Harker buddies, sightseeing around the Bay Area, visiting special classes, observing middle school classes, and reading stories and doing origami projects with K-3 kids.
While participating in a special dance class held in the gym, the students said they were having fun getting to know one another and were still excited about an outing they had the day before, which included a visit to a pumpkin patch and haunted house.
The popular student exchange program between the Tamagawa and Harker schools is just one example of Harker’s rich global education program, which strives to weave global activities into its students’ daily lives. In the spring, Harker students will head to Japan as part of the reciprocal exchange program.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
As upper school students face mounting pressure in their academic and personal lives, stress increasingly becomes a factor in their well-being, which can have a dramatic effect on their ability to function both in and out of the classroom. In recent years, Harker has become proactive in reducing stress among the student population, particularly as students prepare to take their SATs and apply to universities.
In 2008, the Wellness program was established to hold hourlong sessions and assemblies about health and general well-being. The sessions were meant as an alternative for health classes and were held for each grade, “with the content directed at the development of the students,” said Jane Keller, math teacher and director of the program. Since then, assemblies and events have been held several times each year, covering topics such as time management, stress reduction and drug abuse.
Three years ago, the program directors established a Wellness Board for a broader range of input, and in 2011 began bringing in student representatives from each class so that the board would have a better idea of what to include in the sessions. The board later changed its name to “LIFE” (Living with Intent, Focus and Enthusiasm) “so it could represent the values we are learning at Harker for life,” Keller said.
Jenny Chen, grade 12, one of the student representatives on the LIFE board, describes it as “a collaboration between students, counselors, teachers and administrators. We meet every few weeks to discuss and advocate for student health.” Student representatives deliver feedback from classmates about wellness events and assemblies. “In addition, we all share student needs and help pinpoint what we feel are the main stressors in students’ lives, arranging for assemblies and speakers to help provide students with more resources on these subjects,” said Chen.
Frequent assessments and the constantly changing nature of their daily and weekly schedules can be major stressors on students, Chen said, as is learning to juggle their academic responsibilities with extracurricular activities. “Moreover, I feel that especially as students get older, anxiety begins to build regarding college admissions; students become more stressed as they work to become competitive applicants. Parental expectations and pressures, too, can sometimes add extra stress to students’ lives,” she added.
As these challenges pile up, they can lead to health problems that affect student performance and well-being. “I know that a sizable proportion of students are chronically sleep-deprived during the week and many will spend lunch times catching up on homework or studying for upcoming tests,” Chen said.
Although some students have shown reluctance to attending the assemblies, as they sometimes occur during free periods, Chen is confident that the lessons learned at the events will show benefits in the long term. Indeed, teacher response to the program has been favorable. “Quite a few teachers have expressed approval and encouragement for the Wellness program,” she said. “Many are now more sensitive to student needs, implementing practices in the classroom to reduce stress as much as possible.”
One such practice is the inclusion of “mindful moments,” one- to two-minute intervals of relaxation and breathing that help students gather their focus, especially just before an exam.
Additionally, Athena2, Harker’s internal network for students and faculty, contains links to resources on stress reduction that both students and teachers can utilize. LIFE also recently began discussing the idea of holding a Wellness Fair, a one-day event that would make workshops on yoga, healthy food recipes and more available to students and faculty. “Though this year’s Wellness schedule has already been filled with speakers and other events, we hope to implement this event in the upcoming year and very much look forward to it,” said Chen. The board also plans to have more interactive LIFE assemblies “to help engage the students and communicate our message of well-being,” she added.
Teachers have also benefited from wellness initiatives, as demonstrated by fall visits to the school by Meg Levie of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), the organization co-founded by Chade-Meng Tan, a pioneer at Google who now seeks to foster happiness in the workplace. “The goal was to teach participants how to calm their minds and deepen their self-awareness,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “The hope is that in doing so, one reduces and manages stress, increases overall well-being, improves focus and creativity, and in general becomes more resilient and able to build satisfying relationships.”
Keller said the presentation also gave the faculty in attendance “an opportunity to relate with their peers and feel better connected across the campuses.
“One of the important aspects for us as teachers was to really drive home the point that we need to slow down,” Keller added. “Harker is a high-energy place so it was important for faculty and staff to see the benefits of stillness. Hopefully, this idea of time for themselves will have an impact on how assignments are given.”
Psychotherapist Gina Biegel, author of “The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens,” also visited in the fall and held a session for students. “Gina talked about the change that can happen to parts of your brain when you begin to live in the present,” Keller said. “Stopping to breathe, sitting quietly, counting your breaths and meditating can have an impact on how we process information.”
In 2012, Harker began working with Challenge Success, an organization based at Stanford University that is dedicated to student engagement and well-being. A team consisting of teachers, administrators and students was put together to attend conferences and speak with Challenge Success representatives to discover ways in which student well-being could be advanced.
One idea that came from working with Challenge Success was the new chime that accompanies the start and end of every period. Challenge Success found that startling bell noises actually increased stress at the moments they were sounded, and so several schools decided to do without bells. Harker opted to keep the bell system but change the sounds to something much less abrasive.
Another idea was the time management sheet currently in use by upper school students, who fill out the sheet by denoting how much time they plan to spend on each of their classes and activities. At the start of the 2012-13 school year, advisors met with students to discuss the sheet and offer guidelines on how much time each class or activity can take. It also takes into account the time they plan to spend with their families and on other important things such as sleep. If the hours they plan to spend on each item exceed the number of hours in a week, the students must then rethink how they are spending their time. The time management sheet also comes up in meetings with academic counselors.
“It just creates a conversation,” Gargano said. “What are you doing, how are you spending your time, how is it working for you?”
Since the use of the time management sheet is a new practice, it is still in the experimental stages. However, once it is determined how well it works at the upper school there are plans to introduce the time management sheet to the middle school.
In dealing with stress, Chen said, it is important for students to look into new activities but also to know when they are perhaps doing too much at once. “It is easy to bite off more than you can chew when it comes to taking on new extracurricular activities or challenging coursework. In addition, it is always helpful to talk to someone when you are feeling stressed, whether that person is a parent, teacher or counselor.” For her own part, Chen finds that putting down her thoughts is a good way to stay on track without getting overwhelmed. “I find that writing in a journal and keeping a daily log of events in your life is very beneficial and can help you organize your emotions and thoughts.”
At the lower and middle schools, an initiative was put in place last year to reduce the homework load on students by as much as an hour and a half per night. This was the result of a concerted effort by teachers to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their teaching in order to drive down the workload without sacrificing the quality of the educational experience for the students.
“Instead of giving five questions for a reading assignment, maybe [the teacher] can think of three, but those three really get to the heart of what the five used to,” Gargano said.
The middle school will also try a new testing structure in which all testing takes place in the second semester, reducing the overall number of tests the students take each week. In addition to reducing anxiety and stress, it may also enhance the classroom experience. “If you’re testing a little bit less, you can actually teach and do more in-class activities, because testing is a big chunk of time,” Gargano said.
Like the upper school, the lower and middle schools have also hosted special wellness assemblies. Students also take health classes that cover a variety of topics related to personal well-being.
Currently, a team of administrators is being formed to summarize and evaluate the school’s K-12 wellness efforts and discover what action may be taken. For now, Gargano said, it is important to be mindful of how instruction can be effective while at the same time taking into account the students’ entire school experience.
“They’re not just a student, or an athlete,” she said. “They’re a student-athlete- performer, and they do all of these things. So we can’t look at any one in isolation.”
Current grade 5 families were treated to an informative on location preview of middle school life at Harker during two separately held events last month – one for parents; the other for students.
The transition from elementary to middle school is a major academic milestone for students and their families, filled with change, even for those who continue on at Harker. The tours helped take the mystery out of the matriculation process, yet still left plenty of room for excitement over the road ahead.
In early November the annual “What’s Brewing?” event at the Blackford campus provided parents of soon-to-be middle school students a chance to explore the school and learn about all the exciting opportunities available for incoming sixth graders.
Billed as an opportunity to gather for “coffee, muffins and middle school,” the preview started immediately after school drop-off in the multipurpose room, giving parents a chance to meet and socialize before the official program began.
During the event participants had the opportunity to tour the campus, meet with administrators and familiarize themselves with the middle school from a parent point of view – in short, to see “what’s brewing” in the middle school.
The program covered how the sixth grade day is broken up, what kinds of classes the students will be taking, global opportunities (such as the grade 6 trip to Japan), community life, clubs, middle school field trips and more. At the end of the presentation, parents were given the opportunity to ask the administrators any other questions they might have about the campus, school life and academics.
Then, in mid-November, it was time for the students to have a chance to get a firsthand look at the middle school. Grade 5 students were given a fun preview tailored just for them, highlighting various aspects of their potential future lives as middle school students during Step-Up Day.
The entire grade 5 class traveled by bus to the Blackford campus where they enjoyed a free dress day and spent their time meeting with grade 6 teachers and other staff, touring the campus, eating lunch, visiting classes, and watching a presentation by the performing arts department. They also learned more about the various aspects of middle school life, such as the BEST program, athletics, laptop options, foreign language classes and electives.
According to Kristin Giammona, elementary division head, it was a great day for the students, leaving them excited about the experience. She further called both What’s Brewing in the Middle School and Step-Up Day wonderful opportunities for both students and parents to learn more about Harker’s middle school, and familiarize themselves with the Blackford campus.