April was a great month for Harker’s middle school Latin students, who performed exceptionally well in the National Latin Exam, and also scored dozens of awards at the State Latin Convention.
In the National Latin Exam, Alayna Richmond and Austin Tuan, both grade 6, had perfect papers in the Introduction to Latin category. John Nicolas Jerney, grade 7, and sixth graders Kshithija Mulam, Anthony Luo, Aditya Dhar, Arjun Subramaniam, Venkat Sankar, Brandon Chow, Peter Wu, James He and Alexander Lam all received awards for outstanding achievement in the same category. Achievement awards for Introduction to Latin went to Ashley Zhong, grade 7, and grade 6 students Albert Xu, Brendan Tobin, Karthik Sundaram, Jackson Su and Manan Shah.
In the Latin I category, grade 8 students Billy Bloomquist, Richard Gu, Ryan Pachauri and Vivek Sriram received gold/summa cum laude awards, along with seventh graders Rishabh Chandra, Grace Guan, Sadhika Malladi, Kaushik Sankar, Elisabeth Siegel, Gurutam Thockchom, Robbie Underwood and Alison Wang. Silver/maxima cum laude awards were won by Celine Liang, Noko Stearns and Arjun Narayan, all grade 7. Michael Moncton, Kevin Chen and Malvika Khanna, all grade 7, won magna cum laude awards.
Aadyot Bhatnagar, Simran Singh, Sahana Rangarajan, Madhu Nori, Tiara Bhatacharya and Rasika Raghavan, all grade 8, won gold/summa cum laude in Latin II, where Sophia Shatas, Maya Nandukumar and Jackelyn Shen took home silver/maxima cum laude awards. The remaining of Harker’s 50 award recipients in the contest were magna cum laude winners Zabin Bashar, Allison Kerkhoff and Sahiti Avula, all grade 8, and fellow eighth grader Christopher Hildum, who won cum laude.
In early April, nearly 30 middle school students were in attendance at the State Latin Convention, held at Miramonte High School in Orinda, Calif. A total of 10 grade 6 students won awards in the MS1 category. Sean Costello took second in Latin sight reading. Aditya Dhar came in first in derivatives, mythology and Latin oratory and also won the individual academic sweepstakes at the MS1 level. Alexander Lam took second in derivatives, while Eric Pei earned an honorable mention in grammar. In dramatic interpretation, Venkat Sankar won first place for interpretation of a boy, and Amrita Singh won first for interpretation (girls division) while also taking third in grammar and Latin sight reading. Karthik Sundaram won first in strings performance, and Austin Tuan took second place in grammar.
At the MS2 level, Billy Bloomquist, grade 8, placed second in Latin sight reading and third in reading comprehension. Classmate Richard Gu took second place in reading comprehension and third place in mythology. Eighth grader Vivek Sriram placed first in no less than three events: derivatives, reading comprehension and Latin sight reading. Rishabh Chandra, grade 7, won first place in grammar and tied for third in reading comprehension with Bloomquist and Kaushik Sankar. Seventh grader Sadhika Malladi won first place in reading comprehension, tying with Sriram. Taking first in both pentathlon and essay was Elisabeth Siegel, grade 7, whose classmate, Allison Wang, took second in mythology and pentathlon, and third in Latin sight reading. The middle school quiz bowl team of Chandra, Sankar, Siegel and Wang took first place at the state level.
A total of four grade 8 students performed well in multiple events, including Anni Ankola, who placed third in the costume category (dressed as Charon) and earned an honorable mention in reading comprehension. Zabin Bashar won first in impromptu art and honorable mentions in both mythology and reading comprehension. Aadyot Bhatnagar came in first in reading comprehension and vocabulary and placed second in strings. Maya Nandakumar won first place in mythology and dramatic interpretation (girl) while placing second in vocal music. In addition to their awards in other categories, Bhatnagar and Nandakumar tied for first place in the individual academic sweepstakes at the MS3 level. The quiz bowl team of Bashar, Bhatnagar, Nandakumar and Rasika Raghavan took first place.
Harker’s middle school delegation at the convention won first place for spirit, aided by seventh grader Kevin Ke’s first-place-winning T-shirt design, and the first-place banner by grade 7’s Shannon Hong and Natalie Simonian, and grade 8’s Sophia Shatas and Allison Kiang. Harker’s chariot race team finished second, and the scrapbook created by Nandakumar took third place.
Innovation took top billing at Nichols Hall on Sat., April 23, as the doors opened to the sixth annual Harker Research Symposium featuring the yearlong scientific endeavors of 79 middle and upper school students. Themed “A Call to Innovation,” the day merged students and their families with leading technology companies and executives, in the sort of synergy that created Silicon Valley. Anita Chetty, science department chair and symposium director, estimated there were about 500 visitors, up 50 percent over last year.
Chetty recalled how relatively slow and limited the communication of information was in the “dark ages” of card catalogs – when a laptop was not yet even a dream. Today, Chetty noted, “When our students begin their research, they stand on a mountain of readily accessible information, not only mining it but also building upon it.”
Collaboration between students, universities and businesses was evident in breakout sessions on the summer internship work of upper school students such as Michelle Deng, grade 11, who worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on a faster method to calculate the metallicities of stars, as an indicator of origin. “I’ve always been partial to science,” said Deng. “Some of it is the culture at Harker. It is a pretty big leader in science.” Topics at the sessions ranged from the use of algorithms to predict protein structure, to an anaerobic method of hydrogen generation.
Harker welcomed back Jessie Li ’07, Nikhil Deshmukh ’04 and Jennifer Ong ’07, who demonstrated how research impacts the world. Li spoke about her work at MIT to develop a video annotation tool that has applications in face detection and robotic navigation. Deshmukh presented his work at Princeton University in retinal image processing and ultimately a better understanding of the brain. Ong encouraged students to publish their research in the international, student-led forum, “The Triple Helix.”
The relationship of innovative research to application was epitomized by keynote speakers Scott McNealy, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of the board of Sun Microsystems, and Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Facebook. Both men spoke of the importance of creative thinking and risk-taking in developing an idea into a company. Sponsored by WiSTEM, Kari Lee, senior engineering manager at Facebook, talked about how to position oneself to take advantage of opportunities.
Corporate exhibitors at this event were Barnes & Noble (Nook), eBay, Ericcson, Google/YouTube, InSync software, Inc., Kno, Inc., Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center, Menteon Learning, Meru Networks, Motorola Mobility, nVIDIA and Symmetricom. Watch for the a complete roundup of symposium events and speakers in the Summer Harker Quarterly mailing in June 2011.
More than 30 grade 8 French students went on a special lunch trip to Crepe Danielle Restaurant in Saratoga this week, enjoying the French language, culture and, most of all, snails! While crepes, the house specialty, was the most popular dish amongst the students, many of them did try the escargot, as well as coq qu vin (chicken in wine sauce) and crepe Suzette, which delighted student and teacher alike when it was flamed at the table.
This was a great opportunity for Carol Parris to help her students understand spoken French in an atmosphere that was decidedly more relaxed than the status quo, replacing notebook and whiteboard with salad fork and menu. Parris said of the outing, “the rule was French food, culture and fun.”
If you’re looking for more information about the trip or middle school French classes, email Parris at CarolP@harker.org.
Fifty-nine ravenous Advanced Spanish Honors students descended on La Habana Cuba on April 20, and not a single morsel of food escaped. Julie Pinzas and Susan Moling supervised as their classes took a field trip to enjoy traditional Cuban food in San Jose, while sharpening their Spanish-speaking skills.
The students were treated to white rice, fried plantains, refried beans, and their choice of garlic chicken, pork and vegetarian tamales. They were encouraged to converse in Spanish during the meal and the wait staff was given specific instructions not to speak to the students in English, nor acknowledge their pleas for more food in any language other than Spanish. The main courses were followed by servings of “tres leches,” or three milks cake, a dessert topped with syrup and cream, a delightfully sugary desert to end the meal. Allison Kiang, grade 8, had a great time on the trip, enjoying the good service and delectable food, saying “next year’s students can look forward to a unique trip!”
For more information about the trip, email Julie Pinzas at juliep@harker.org.
A happy group of almost 30 middle school students headed off to the bowling alley 300 in mid-April as a reward for their diligence in selling raffle tickets for last year’s Harker Family & Alumni Picnic. To win the half-day outing, students had to sell 120 tickets or more. Their reward was an afternoon at the alleys with snacks!
Over spring break, the middle school’s forensics team competed in the Novice Nationals Debate Tournament in Georgia, adding to their already impressive season. Three members of the debate team, Pranav Reddy, grade 8, Sophia Luo, grade 7 and Lisa Liu, grade 7, traveled between March 28 and April 2 to compete against high school students at the tournament.
Reddy competed in the Lincoln-Douglas events, winning three matches, and adding to his already impressive year, which included a stand out performance at the UC Berkeley tournament earlier this year. The Liu/Luo policy team won two debates and are already preparing for the end of the year event in June.
The middle school debate teams and classes are currently being taught by Karina Momary. Momary, who is enjoying her first year with the teams, looks forward to building stronger and stronger forensics teams by encouraging the middle school teams to continue competing against high school teams. This is the middle school forensics team’s first year traveling to multiple tournaments.
For more information about the middle school debate team and their plans for continuing success, contact Karina Momary at KarinaM@harker.org.
Raji Swaminathan’s science class was visited by two IBM scientists on April 5. This was Don Chamberlin’s fourth visit, in his ongoing effort to encourage more students to study engineering and sciences, specifically hoping to bring more women into the engineering field. Accompanying Don Chamberlin was his son, Steve Chamberlin, who is currently a software engineer at IBM.
Don Chamberlin, who has an electrical engineering Ph.D. from Stanford and worked at IBM for 38 years, led the class in a discussion of the “cool” and “not cool” aspects of studying and pursuing a career in engineering. After the discussion, the class conducted activities using binary numbers and learning about the differences between analog and digital. To wrap up the class, Chamberlin showed the class a video made by his IBM colleague John Cohn, who used rap music to encourage burgeoning engineers to continue studying engineering.
The Harker School, in collaboration with the Sutter Visiting Nurses organization, worked to provide middle and upper school students with their Pertussis (whooping cough) booster shots on both campuses April 19.
It will be required that middle school students and older all have these shots prior to starting school next fall, and in an effort to help Harker students (and parents) avoid the lines in September, Harker invited a team of nurses to deliver the shots to students.
Debra Nott, Harker’s head nurse, helped coordinate the effort that not only provided protection against whooping cough, but also against Diptheria and Tetanus (TDAP).
For more information, contact Nott at debran@harker.org.
Kristen Park, grade 7, has been selected to the 2011 California All-State Concert Band. Park, who plays the B-flat soprano clarinet, competed against more than a thousand applicants vying for a prestigious spot in the band.
“Kristen is very musical and self-driven, and she has improved greatly throughout the year,” said David Hart, director of the middle school’s orchestra and jazz bands. “It does not surprise me at all that she is one of the top middle school clarinetists in California.”
To audition, applicants must prepare complicated musical pieces and scales, depending on the instrument. They are judged on intonation, tone, rhythm, technique, interpretation, balance and overall performance.
Park is the first grade 7 student from Harker to ever make the all-state band. Congratulations!
Student Shasvat Jawahar, grade 6, wanted to treat his classmates to something special for his twelveth birthday. Instead of the usual party-and-snacks affair, however, he asked Dr. Sailesh Rao of the non-profit company Climate Healers to speak at a special after-school assembly.
Rao founded climate healers after 20 years in the networking industry, prompted by a talk from former vice president Al Gore about the ongoing climate crisis. Inspired, he started up Climate Healers with belief that if humanity could reforest one-sixth of the earth’s ice-free land, CO2 emissions could be reduced enough to halt or even reverse the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
In his presentation, Rao presented the example of an area of India that had become dried and withered as farmers allowed their livestock to graze on the land and deforested as people chopped trees for wood. A group called the Foundation for Ecological Security reached an agreement that allowed for the protection of a portion of the land and within four years, lush greenery and forests had returned to the protected area.
The earth’s resources, Rao said, are being depleted at an astonishing rate. According to Rao, over the past 200 years, the worldwide human consumption measured in dollars has jumped from $400 billion in 1800 to $25 trillion in 2000. Since 1980, human consumption has exceeded what the earth can produce. In doing his part to combat this, Rao has become vegan and participates in a “buy everything day,” in which he purchases almost all of the year’s necessities and buys only food and gasoline for the rest of the year.
Rao has also been traveling abroad to find ways to reduce resource consumption. During one trip to a village in India, he handed out solar lights to discourage the use of kerosene lamps. The lights ended up having the welcome side-effect of reducing snakebites by allowing people to see where they were walking at night.
On another trip, he gave solar cookers to the villagers to prevent them from chopping down trees for firewood. When he returned months later, he found out that the villagers weren’t using the cookers because during the day they worked in the fields, and no sunlight was available to power the cookers once they returned home. Undeterred, Rao has been working with teams at the University of Iowa and the University of California at Berkeley to build a solar cooker that can store energy for nighttime use. A prototype, he said, is due in May.
Following the presentation, Rao invited the students outside to enjoy samosas made with a solar cooker. Cloudy weather notwithstanding, students enjoyed both the sun-cooked treats and one of the 200 brownies that Shasvat’s mother, Radha, baked for the occasion.