Students new to the middle school were brought together on Aug. 11 at the upper school campus to take part in a special welcoming event. The students were divided into their houses (Praestantia, Scientia, Beneficium and Constantia) and participated in a series of contests to win spirit points for those houses. The first contest had each house coming up with a cheer, followed by a ring toss, jump rope, splash basketball, musical hoops and Frisbee golf.
After the contests, the students all enjoyed eating pizza in the warm midday sun.
A new summer activity program at the upper school campus offered a wide variety of things for middle school students to do this year.
Prior to this year’s program, middle school students were grouped together with younger students at the lower school campus. “The idea really came from the kids. In previous years, they didn’t want to be in these little groups the whole day,” said Keith Hirota, who directed the program. They also wanted more activities specifically geared toward their age group.
The new program offered activities such as swimming, games, crafts and three-point basketball shooting competitions to the students, whose classes ended at 11:30 a.m. Students also had the option of taking an art class or even studying in the library.
Each week of the program had a theme around which special activities were held. For instance, during Harry Potter Week, a game of Quidditch was organized, and during Fiesta Week, kitchen staff members showed the students how to make various kinds of salsa.
Students were still able to spend time in groups, and participated in various events (such as swimming laps) that allowed them to win points for their groups. At the end of the week, the group with the most points would win prizes. “Most of it revolved around food,” Hirota joked.
According to Hirota, students that were in the program reported enjoying the freedom that it offered, and he is hopeful for another successful summer next year.
Enlight’ning, a magazine published every spring at the middle school which showcases artwork, poetry and prose created entirely by middle school students, has been awarded a gold medal by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA).
The judges commented on the exceptional prose, citing, among others, eighth grader Samyukta Yagati’s “Snack Cart,” which they called “a gem. It’s syntactically advanced and strongly plotted.”
The poetry was praised as well – eighth grader Cindy Liu’s poem “Painting” was in fact called, “one of the best two pieces here,” and was noted for its “vibrant imagery.”
And for their artwork, Carissa Chen, grade 6 and Kevin Ke, grade 7, were told their pieces were “strikingly precocious” and “hilarious and well-executed,” respectively.
The magazine scored a comprehensive 823 points out of a possible 1,000.
The CSPA was founded in an effort to improve student publications by providing members with an annual written review of the previous year’s publications. Harker’s “Enlight’ning” has continually received high marks.
The annual grade 8 trip to China was once again a fun-filled and enlightening experience for all. After arriving on May 29, the students did some sightseeing around the Shanghai area, visiting such places as the Oriental Pearl TV tower.
The next day, the students met with their friends at the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS), where they took part in an assembly at which student Neil Sadhu gave a brief speech about the student exchange between the two schools. During their visit to the school, Harker students participated in a number of classes, including Chinese opera, where they made their own opera masks. They also learned about traditional Chinese musical instruments and had the chance to play them after watching the WFLMS students perform. Following lunch, the students visited the World Expo China exhibition, and that evening they viewed an amazing acrobat show.
Next on the itinerary was a visit to Zhujiajiao, the water town known for its canals and historic buildings dating back 1,700 years. Several students bought live fish and turtles that were released into the water to symbolize good luck.
After shopping and a scenic boat ride, the students then returned to WFLMS to watch the school’s P.E. classes and take part in a tug-of-war as well as several other sports with the Chinese students.
On May 31, everyone headed to the Yuyuan Gardens in downtown Shanghai to see the breathtaking Chinese architecture from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The students marveled at the ornate decorations of the gardens as they were led through the many pathways.
Back at WFLMS, the Harker students attended shadow boxing and painting classes, and learned how to use an abacus.
The students said goodbye to their buddies the next morning and hopped on a plane to Beijing. There, they visited the Temple of Heaven, which the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties visited annually to offer prayers for a good harvest. Next, they explored the hutongs, Beijing’s traditional alleyways, riding on rickshaws to the house of a man who allowed the students to take a tour of his home. The man graciously answered many of the students’ questions about his life and thoughts on a variety of subjects. Before leaving his home, he advised the students to appreciate all that they have in their lives.
The next stage of the trip saw the students leaving Beijing for the Ming Tombs. On the way, they visited a jade factory to learn more about the stone and see some of the items being made. Upon arriving at the tombs, the students couldn’t resist taking photos of the statues that lined the famous “spirit way.” They were led to the dragon-headed turtle pavilion, where they rubbed the statue’s tail for a long life, and its head for continued happiness.
The group’s next major stop was none other than the Great Wall of China. “We took a ski lift to the top of the mountain where we could enter onto the wall. It was amazing!” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s global education director. “It was a clear sunny day, and we could see for miles.” Many photos were taken of the renowned structure, and the students were thrilled to take a toboggan ride down the side of the mountain.
A dinner of Peking duck was enjoyed that evening, and the students were treated to a “Legend of Kung Fu” show, featuring graceful and skilled dancers.
The group arrived back in Beijing the next day and began “a busy and long day full of sightseeing,” wrote Walrod in one of several dispatches to parents. In the morning, they visited Tiananmen Square and spoke of the 1989 protests and ensuing military action. They next headed to the Forbidden City, where they were guided through several of its 980 palatial buildings.
After enjoying lunch, the students went to the Silk Street, a shopping center where they could exercise their haggling skills with its many vendors. “We left the place carrying bags filled with our loot,” Walrod wrote. Later, the group arrived at the Summer Palace, China’s largest imperial garden, and rode a dragon boat to the palace’s pavilion. There, they enjoyed ice cream and viewed the paintings on the roof of the covered walkway.
The students arrived safely back home on June 6, ready to rest and reflect on a trip they won’t soon forget.
Chris Nikoloff, head of school, spent some quality time with a group of grade 6 students when they came together at his home to watch the May 25 season finale of “American Idol.” The six students were invited to view the show with Nikoloff through a Harker Family & Alumni Picnic package purchased by Kristin Giammona, elementary division head, for her daughter, Mia. The group relaxed with snacks and watched as Scotty McCreery became the youngest American Idol winner to ever claim the prize.
In a strong year for Harker’s Latin department, it comes as no surprise that Harker students had stellar performances on the National Myth Exam. The exam, which is given to all middle school students studying Latin, is administered every year through the American Classical League, which encourages the study of classical literature.
The exam itself is a multiple choice test that assesses students’ learning of Greek and Roman mythology which includes a subtest that tests knowledge of specific writing such as the “Iliad” or “Odyssey.” The exam was administered the first week of March, to test the students’ learning over the course of the year.
This year, more than 30 middle school students earned medals for impressive scores on the exam, with five students, Sean Costello, Aditya Dhar and Albert Xu, all grade 6, as well as Elisabeth Siegel and Allison Wang in grade 7, earning perfect scores. While Harker students usually perform well on the exam, Lisa Masoni, middle school Latin teacher, noted, “This is the first year I’ve had more than one gold medal.”
This article originally appeared in the summer 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker has a strong reputation for producing students who excel in math and science. This tradition of success can be traced back to foundations laid in the lower and middle school curricula, which emphasize methods and hands-on learning that open the door to later growth.
These seeds of success are planted early in the youngest Harker students, the kindergarten and grade 1 students. At this level emphasis is placed on defining what science is and what scientists do. So, for three periods a week, kindergarten students are engaged in hands-on projects that, according to Michelle Anderson, who teaches kindergarten science, math, social studies and English, “are more real to kindergarten minds.” Anderson explores essential, introductory themes like “the five senses, the solar system and changes in life cycles.” One of the kids’ favorite sections is focused on life cycles, where the students are
able to observe caterpillars as they develop from their larval stages to their chrysalises and then become butterflies. These broad topics, explored through reading, activities and experiments, lay a structure for later study.
Once students have progressed to grade 2, they begin to enter into more intensive science programs. The students are learning increasingly broader topics, such as measurement (a necessity for any burgeoning scientist), water, the human body, and electricity and magnetism. These topics are taught using the Lawrence Hall of Science’s Foss curriculum, which emphasizes the key principle that science is learned through conducting experiments and understanding concepts in a hands-on manner. Katy Sommer, grade 2 science teacher, notes that Harker students “devote a large amount of time to science, four periods a week, which helps them build strong foundations.”
In grade 5 students have advanced to more complex life science topics. Here students learn about scientific method in detail and spend a substantial amount of time on essential topics such as taxonomy. At this level students continue to be exposed to real-life applications of what they learn in their textbooks. In order to associate theory learned in class into hands-on knowledge, this year’s entire grade 5 class explored the tide pools at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Monterey in April. Catherine Le, grade 5 science teacher, said that her students could find many of the things in tide pools they had just finished learning about in class. Learning the characteristics of the echinoderm phylum becomes more real when a student can hold a sea star and physically observe it.
As the students enter middle school, the fundamental topics and ways of thinking that have been established begin to come into contact with the more complex scientific concepts that will be emphasized in high school and college. In grade 6 experimental design and methods of data gathering are explored through the physical sciences. At the end of the year, students are tasked with designing an experiment, conducting it and interpreting the resulting data. The students then synthesize the information into a poster board presentation.
In grade 8 students conduct three experiments in their biology classes. These experiments utilize tools to explore human physiology, allowing students to measure characteristics like lung capacity and heart rate and also track the student-designated variable of interest.
The general process of designing and conducting experiments becomes more complex as the students move from grade to grade. When considering their progress, Lorna Claerbout, K-8 science department chair, says “the learning spirals as it moves upward. Threads are repeated as students have a higher capacity to understand.”
These repeating threads, with their heavy emphasis on data gathering, critical thinking and pattern recognition, mean that Harker students are consistently recognized as exemplary. At the Synopsys Championship Fair, held March 6-7, Harker students were recognized at many levels for their outstanding work. The middle school students produced more than a half dozen award-winning projects. They were recognized for laudable work in physics, medicine, environmental sciences, biochemistry, botany and zoology subjects for both individual efforts and team submissions.
These results are but the latest in a long line of strong Harker performances in the sciences, and while the high caliber of student cannot be discounted when tracing the roots of their success, we must certainly pay tribute to where they began, in the lower and middle school science classrooms.
Harker’s middle school has been recognized for its philanthropic efforts by Camp Okizu. Harker has established a relationship with the camp for the last five years, since their inaugural event together, a Cancer Walk organized by Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher.
Since that first event, the Cancer Walk has been an opportunity for Harker students and families to raise money for the camp. Camp Okizu is dedicated to providing quality care as well as fun activities for young cancer patients. The money raised has been used to purchase new equipment and ensure that more children are able to take advantage of the services offered at the camp.
Harker received the award this year to commemorate the five-year partnership between the camp and the middle school. Over the course of this relationship, Harker has raised more than $40,000 for the camp. We look forward to further collaboration and further giving from the Harker community.
In late May, a special event was held at the Blackford campus to celebrate the 10th issue of “enlight’ning,” the middle school’s literature and arts magazine. Students who contributed to this year’s issue were invited to discuss their works and read them to the fellow students in attendance.
“What really inspired me to write this story was my neighbor’s brother actually came home from fighting in Iraq,” said Ishanya Anthapur, grade 8, of her short story “Hope For Me,” which is told from the perspective of a young girl in 1940’s England waiting for the bombs to fall. “I just found the whole thing really interesting, and I wanted to know a little more about World War II.”
Meilan Steimle, grade 6, presented her own piece about a girl who experiences precognitive dreams. “I wrote this story because I love paradoxes,” she said.
Matthew Ho, also grade 8, was inspired to draw his piece, titled “Melting World,” when he saw a little boy’s ice cream cone fall to the ground one day. “The most interesting thing is that his dad wouldn’t buy him another one,” he said. He saw the event as an inspiration for a piece about missed opportunities.
The task of winning a single national championship in debate is demanding, but putting together victories in back-to-back years is particularly rare. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what the 23 middle school students who traveled to Dallas, Texas, last week for the 12th annual National Junior Forensic League National Championship Tournament managed to do. For the second year running, the team was recognized as one of the five Schools of Excellence across all of the debate formats offered at the tournament.
Pranav Reddy, grade 8, also extended a streak for the school by bringing home a national championship, this time in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Last year’s title came in Public Forum Debate, when two Harker pairs reached the final round and were declared co-champions. Reddy debated Resolved: When forced to choose, a just government ought to prioritize universal human rights over its national interest.
In Congressional Debate Aditya Dhar, grade 6, took third place honors nationally. When not busy winning the Lincoln-Douglas title, Reddy tackled the challenges of Congress as well, posting a fifth place result. Jai Ahuja, grade 8, and Misha Tseitlin, grade 6, joined their teammates in the Congress finals, placing them among the top 24 at the tournament.
The team of Azhar Huda and Vamsi Gadiraju, both grade 8, reached octafinals (top 16), while the team of Sophia Shatas, grade 8, and Sorjo Banerjee, grade 7, advanced to quarterfinals (top 8) of Public Forum Debate. Students participating in Public Forum considered the topic, Resolved: That the United States should intervene in another nation’s struggle for democracy.
Middle school director of forensics Karina Momary led her students to these accomplishments in her first year of coaching. “My strategy all year has been to have our middle school debaters compete against high school students, and I think that was a significant factor in our success this week,” explained Momary. The middle school team was also supported by the presence of Greg Achten, the upper school director of Policy Debate and Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and assistant coach Quinn Buniel.
This year marked the first time that the middle school NJFL National Tournament was held simultaneously with NFL Nationals for high schools. When not competing in their own rounds, all 23 middle school students had the valuable opportunity to learn by observing the high school debates.