While on Harker’s national parks field trip, Alexis Gauba, grade 7, received exciting news from her parents: she’d been accepted into the 2012 Western Division Junior High Girls Honor Choir!
“The audition process involved singing two scales to show range and intonation. We were also required to sing a song selected by them, ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee,’ and one song of my choice; I chose ‘Sebben Crudele,’ an Italian song. I prepared for the auditions by practicing the pieces over and over until they were perfect, and then I submitted the recordings. The waiting process was pretty nerve-racking,” said Gauba.
The audition process can be scary, and Dave Hart, a middle school instrumental music teacher, acknowledged the bravery needed to participate. “You never know what will happen with these types of auditions. The hard part is putting yourself out there and giving yourself a chance to be selected. You have to be willing to fail [in order] to create new and wonderful opportunities for yourself.”
The choir, part of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Western Conference, received auditions from up and down the West Coast, as well as from Arizona, Utah and Hawaii. According to Hart, “These conferences invite choral educators from around the West Coast to attend. Along with wonderful lectures and poster sessions, top educators are invited to work with [the honor choirs].” This year’s conference will be held in Reno, Nev., which means Gauba will have the chance to work with a variety of excellent choral educators when she travels there in February.
Hart participated in choirs such as this one when he was in school, and found the experience very rewarding. “It is special when you get a chance to spend time with other people who have a similar passion for music. When I heard about the ACDA Western Division Junior High Honor Choir, I was excited to offer the opportunity to audition to the members of my choir.”
Gauba said she’s, “Elated. I was so excited at getting this wonderful opportunity. I believe that The Harker School choir and all the audition practices and performance opportunities helped me in my preparation and I am grateful for that.”
The Harker School is proud to have many students participating in the FIRST Lego League (FLL), a program for students aged 9-16 that releases a new FLL Challenge every September. Part of each challenge is the Robot Game, in which students participate by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field. Another integral part of the challenge are the FLL Core Values, which students must be guided by throughout the duration of their projects. These include learning together, honoring the spirit of friendly competition and displaying gracious professionalism and cooperation in everything they do.
Five grade 6 students from Harker formed a team called The Fruitest Five, and took home top prizes for the Robot Game and for their commitment to the core values. Kavita Tankha, parent of team member Aliesa Bahri, said, “The Robot Performance award goes to the team with the most points earned by completing robot missions, and the Core Values award is given for teamwork and gracious professionalism. The judges called out the ‘girls in pink’ for their enthusiasm, inclusiveness and teamwork.” The other members of Fruitest Five, Anooshree Sengupta, Aria Coalson, Maya Kumar and Jessica Susai, along with Sengupta, overcame a nervous moment early in the competition when a loose connection in their robot caused it to stop working. Everything was smooth sailing from there on out, and the team came out on top, moving them to the East Bay Championship Round.
Middle school Performing Arts Lead Teacher Monica Colletti held the first ever Junior Thespian Troupe induction on Jan. 17. Eleven students were inducted into the theater honor society, which Colletti says, “represents commitment to the fantastic theater and performing arts program we have here at Harker.”
The Junior Thespian troupe is a part of the International Thespian Society, the world’s largest honor society for middle and high school theater students. Induction into the Junior Thespian program recognizes hard work and achievement within the dramatic arts.
Students interested in becoming a member of the troupe record their activities, like taking elective classes, performing in a play, working backstage on a show, or participating in summer camps or theater festivals, and are given points based on their participation. Added Colletti, “I hope that all students who love theater will want to be a member of this honor society.”
Three Harker middle school students and one former Harker student teamed up recently to win a First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition by employing water electrolysis to demonstrate an innovative way to stop the spread of salmonella in food production.
Derek Kuo, Rajiv Movva and Shaya Zarkesh, and Niko Bhatia, now of Menlo School, all grade 6, are members of the “G3ARZ” robotics team that participated in FLL’s “Food Factor” competition, which had teams devise ways to sanitize food and keep it from spoiling. Their idea provided a solution to the problem of unsanitary blades spreading salmonella while processing chicken. The key component was water electrolysis technology produced by a Minnesota-based company called ActiveIon.
The team contacted the company and presented their solution to its marketing director. Impressed with their ideas, ActiveIon arranged to have some of their products sent to the students. Using these products, they developed a way to sanitize blades between slices to prevent the spread of salmonella. The students even developed a patent for this new process and submitted to the FLL’s Global Innovation Award contest.
G3ARZ went on to win the Food Factor competition at West Valley Middle School in late November in the Project, Robot Game and Core Values categories. They also took the top spot in that event’s robotics contest. They also won first place in Mechanical Design at a Jan. 22 contest at Newark Memorial High School.
G3ARZ have also launched their own website at www.g3arz.com.
In mid-January, The Harker School had its 2012 Winter Concert at the Mexican Heritage Theater in San Jose. The show featured the middle school orchestras and jazz band for the first part of the evening, with the upper school orchestra and jazz band following right after. They were conducted by David Hart, middle school instrumental teacher, and Christopher Florio, upper school instrumental teacher.
The evening began with the Harker Winds, who played “Green Sleeves” and “Auld Lang Syne.” They were followed by the strings, who played “Canon,” and holiday favorite, “Joy to the World.” From there the grade 6 orchestra took the stage, for a performance that included a lively rendition of “The Can-Can,” and they were followed by the chamber ensemble performances. Then it was grades 7 and 8 turn to shine, which they certainly did through various jazz band pieces as well as through the orchestra’s three selections, which included an English folk song suite.
The upper school started off their portion of the evening with their jazz band, which played popular songs such as “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” After a short intermission, the upper school orchestra took the stage. They played four pieces, starting off with “Overture to ‘Candide’” and concluded the evening of performances with “Overture to ‘William Tell.’”
This year, The Harker School has two students accepted into the junior high All-State Band: Cynthia Hao and Kristen Park, both grade 8. David Hart, instrumental music teacher for grades 6-8, said “Hao made it into the Concert Band while Park made the highest group, the Symphonic Band.” Having two students accepted to the All-State Band is a Harker first, as is having a student in the Symphonic Band. “It is very exciting,” Hart said.
For the last 52 years, the California Band Directors Association (CBDA) has hosted the California All-State Honor Bands. Once each year, the CBDA conducts auditions, which are held all across the state of California, and the highest caliber students from both junior high and high school are chosen to make up the All-State Honor Bands.
In mid-December, before school let out for winter break, The Harker School’s middle school campus hosted a holiday brunch in the Blackford Theater for more than 80 parents. Tere Aceves, the director of K-8 volunteer programs and event fundraising, said the theater was decorated in white and gold, and set up as a truly social event.
“We want to start building a stronger sense of community in the middle school, so our purpose was to provide an outlet where parents could come and enjoy time with their peers,” Aceves said. She also noted that being able to see parents reconnect, sometimes after many years, was a wonderful experience. “They hugged, they giggled, and they were very happy. It actually seemed they needed more time together – they didn’t want to stop talking!”
In addition to being a great opportunity to learn more about the middle school community, Aceves said the interactions and all-around good times had by the parents let her know something else: that “we are definitely doing this again next year.”
Grade 6 students traveled to Yosemite in late October for a chance to see and hike through one of the world’s most famous and scenic national parks. Thanks to the clear weather, the students were able to enjoy the park’s natural beauty with little interruption. Clear skies gave way to a wonderful view of the Milky Way, and the travelers were greeted during their many hikes with brisk, fresh air.
Landmarks visited during the trip included the Spider Caves, Vernal Falls, Yosemite Falls and Glacier Point. It was also a bittersweet trip for some, as the students met with and bid goodbye to their Tamagawa buddies, who they will see in the spring when they visit Japan.
“I read dozens of scripts each year to find one that is a good fit for the middle school,” said Monica Colletti, a middle school performing arts teacher at The Harker School. She directs the fall play, and finding the perfect fit is a long process. “When researching this year’s show, I had heard that David Mamet, a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, had written a play for younger audiences.”
The show ended up being this year’s hilarious, lively play. “The Revenge of the Space Pandas,” is a sci-fi spoof that centers around two kids, Binky Rudich (Akhil Arun, grade 6) and Vivian Mooster (Amrita Singh, grade 7), along with Binky’s pet sheep, Bob (Maxwell Woehrmann, grade 6). In the play, Binky invents a two-speed clock, which slows time and allows them to spin off Earth and onto the planet Goolagong, which is ruled by Georgina Topax (Chandler Nelson, grade 8) and guarded by giant space pandas.
Casting started in early September, and Colletti remembers exactly what drew her to pick the main characters. Arun had a naturally curious and innocent quality that she wanted for the character Binky. Singh, she remembers, had an attractive “high energy and youthful spirit in the auditions.” Woehrmann, who plays a very civilized, nearly human sheep, was picked nearly right away. “As soon as I saw him, I thought he would make a great Bob.”
The cast list was posted about a week later, and they jumped right into rehearsals, which presented fun challenges not just for the cast, but for the crew as well. On the planet Goolagong, people are executed by having a giant pumpkin dropped onto them. Danny Dunn, the technical director at the lower school, came in to assist the tech crew in creating a three-foot tall, four-foot wide, extremely light pumpkin.
Colletti said one thing in particular also helped everyone find his or her voice. “The kids really seemed to come into their characters as soon as we had the costumes,” she said.
With all the pieces in place, the cast put on a truly fun, high energy, out-of-this-world show that took them for rescuing a kidnapped sheep to landing in space prison. They not only got to perform it for family and friends, but also got to go to lower school, and perform it for the students there.
Colletti said she ended up having a lot of favorites with this show, but nothing could compare to the feeling of watching the closing performance. “Up to that point,” she said, “I [was] still taking notes and making suggestions to the actors. But during that last performance I ha[d] the opportunity to watch a really fun play starring the kids I’ve had the chance to get to know really well. I love[d] that.”
Middle school debaters saw success in tournaments held in late October and mid-November. At the University of the Pacific tournament, held in Stockton , Calif., over the weekend of Oct. 29, Lisa Liu, grade 8, competed at the varsity level in the Impromptu category, in which students choose a topic and are given two minutes to prepare a speech, which they then spend five minutes presenting. Competing against high school students, Liu reached the semifinals and was later named one of the tournament’s top 20 speakers.
In her first tournament, Divya Rajasekharan, grade 7, made the final round of Novice Humorous Interpretation, an event that requires students to memorize a published work and then reinterpret it in an entertaining and comedic manner. Rajasekharan’s piece, “Beauty is a Beast,” relayed the tale of a conceited princess who learns that kindness is more important than beauty.
Two weeks later, at the Damien Debates at Damien High School in La Verne, Calif., students Panny Shan and Steven Cao, both grade 8, competed against high school students, winning four of five rounds in the preliminaries. They wound up losing a very close contest in the quarterfinals against Diamond Ranch High School’s top team. In the varsity division, Lisa Liu and Sophia Luo, grade 8, won against two teams from Polytechnic High School and Liu again received accolades for her speaking ability, selected as the ninth best speaker out of 40 students in her division.