Following an extensive multiyear effort across the Harker community, The Harker School has now been recognized by as a Certified Green Business by the Bay Area Green Business Program. In addition to being a major sustainability goal, fulfilling the requirements for certification also is expected to reduce costs in a variety of ways.
“Aside from the primary goals of being a more environmentally sustainable institution and meeting Harker’s standard of modeling and teaching sustainability through our actions, CGB provides a report card,” said Jeff Sutton, Harker science teacher and a member of Harker’s Green Committee. “This report card provides positive feedback as to how much savings, both fiscal and in the reduction of our impact on the environment, the actions are generating. These numbers are estimates but still provide encouragement for continuance in the program.”
The effort to become a Certified Green Business began in late 2012, when the newly formed Green Committee was searching for a way to advance Harker’s sustainability goals. “[Harker head of school] Chris Nikoloff began the search for a tool to implement to gain better understanding of sustainability at Harker, including knowing what Harker was doing to be stewards of resources and looking for ways to improve the overall sustainability of the operation of the school,” Sutton said. “The CGB application provided an excellent framework because it was so comprehensive and very objective in the tasks needed to achieve CGB status.”
Preparation for the application process began in 2013 and lasted through the year. Applications for all four of Harker’s campuses were submitted in May 2014, and inspectors from Santa Clara County visited in June and noted what needed to be done to qualify for the certification.
The schoolwide effort to become certified lasted for the next two years, with key projects and initiatives occurring on all campuses. Shipping/receiving manager Bob Benge and business manager Clif Wilcox devised a more sustainable policy for school purchases. Stephen Martin, executive director of food services, worked with the Harker kitchen staff to acquire food products that had been sustainably produced, in addition to using more environmentally friendly paper products and discontinuing the use of polystyrene. Thanks to transportation supervisor Heather Armada, all of Harker’s vehicles now use recycled oil. Other projects included spearheading the use of Energy Star-rated electronics, using recycled paper for photocopying, examining the use of LED lighting and much more.
Harker’s Green Business certification is up for renewal in three years, and Sutton is confident that the school will maintain its dedication to sustainability. “As an institution of education, it is awesome to see Harker modeling ways to improve its sustainability in its relationship with the environment,” he said.
Thanks to a nationwide effort co-sponsored by Harvest Snaps and Table for Two (TFT), Harker’s middle school students were able to help combat hunger simply by enjoying free samples of Harvest Snaps snacks handed out by members of the Academic and Cultural/Cuisine Exchange (ACE Club).
The ACE Club, co-led by Jennifer Walrod, director of global education, and middle school math teacher Kathy Pazirandeh, coordinated the arrival and distribution of the snack donations. They were handed out to students during lunchtime last month.
For each snack handed out, Harvest Snaps donated 25 cents to TFT to provide healthy school meals for children in East Africa, as well as in low-income communities in the U.S. ACE Club members raised $250 by distributing 1,000 bags of Harvest Snaps, reported Walrod.
By participating, Harker students had the opportunity to learn about healthy eating habits while providing nutritional school meals for malnourished children. The goal of the program was to elevate awareness on both childhood hunger and obesity around the world.
Through their partnership, Harvest Snaps and TFT raised enough money nationwide to provide more than 100,000 school meals to African children in Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, as well as in the U.S. In Africa, 25 cents funds one school meal for a child, and in the U.S. it enables school meal upgrades for healthier options in low-income neighborhoods.
“It was fun – and easy!” recalled Walrod, sharing that ACE Club members had created a PowerPoint about the project, which they presented at a schoolwide meeting in advance of the effort.
ACE Club members Jackie Hu, Ritika Rajamani and Niecey Atwood, all grade 6, called the project a great way to have fun while helping others.
“It’s a creative way to not only advertise their project but to raise awareness of the needs of good school lunches. We have good lunches but other schools do not,” said Rajamani.
“It’s something where you can be social and raise awareness of a good cause,” added Atwood.
According to TFT statistics, of the more than 7 billion people in the world, 1 billion suffer from hunger and malnutrition, while 2 billion are overweight or obese.
Throughout the school year, lower school students participated in an engaging global education exchange program with their peers at the Bayan Gardens School (BGS) in Saudi Arabia. As part of that effort, students in Sejal Mehta’s grade 2 class held an informal Skype session with the BGS students in April.
Prior to the Skype session, the Harker students had watched videos created by the BGS students about their culture and school, as well as read a book about BGS (also created by the Saudi Arabian students). During the Skype session, students from both schools gave tours of their classrooms and participated in a fun and informative question and answer exchange.
“The global education department looks forward to hosting more of these Skype sessions in the lower school during the coming school year!” said Jennifer Walrod, director of global education.
Rosenthal Field transformed: The power shovels are piling up the last of the debris for removal as the demolition phase of building the new Harker School performing arts and athletic centers wraps up. Stay tuned for updates as interesting milestones are reached!
Beginning in June 2016 Harker launched two new state-of-the art building projects on the upper school campus, the result of a $45M capital campaign. The 33,000 square-foot athletic center, opening August 2017, features a 12,000 sq.-ft. gym, athletic training room with advanced hydrotherapy unit, and spacious team rooms. The Rothschild Performing Arts Center, opening spring of 2018, features a 450-seat theater with fly loft and hydraulic orchestra pit, a state of the art scene shop, vocal, instrumental, theater/musical theater classrooms and dressing rooms. For more information visit the news and video links below or contact communications@harker.org
La Oferta – May 26, 2016 (Spanish): Harker is mentioned in a story about the Rita Moreno California High School Musical Honors. Harker’s “Bye Bye Birdie” was nominated for Outstanding Overall Production.
San Jose Mercury News – May 18, 2016: Harker swimmer Vivian Wang, grade 10, is mentioned for her second place finish in the CCS finals, which qualified her for the state meet.
Patch Saratoga – May 12, 2016: Seniors Victoria Ding, Anika Mohindra and Evan Lohn are listed in a story about National Merit Scholarship winners from Saratoga, Los Gatos and Campbell.
Patch Cupertino – May 12, 2016: Senior Karen Qi is listed in a story about Cupertino residents who received National Merit Scholarships.
Daily Democrat — May 11, 2016: Senior Evan Lohn is named in a brief update about local National Merit Scholarship winners.
SmartBrief – May 11, 2016: Diane Main, upper school director of Learning, Innovation and Design (LID), authored this blog entry on managing student projects with the Doctopus add-on for Google Apps.
Harker celebrated Earth Day 2016 in a big way on April 22, with activities across many grade levels, highlighting Harker’s schoolwide dedication to sustainability.
At the upper school, Earth Day celebrations began as early as the previous week, as students, faculty and staff engaged in the Green Challenge. Using an app called SJEnvironment, participants made note of and “buzzed” each act of sustainability they performed over a weeklong period. Simple actions such as refilling water bottles, minimizing shower time, turning off lights and appliances, and taking public transit could all be recorded in the app for points that were later tallied. Participants were awarded with prizes from Starbucks, Sports Basement, Summer Winds Nursery, Aqui Restaurant and other businesses.
“Our hope is that through participating in the Green Challenge, everyone learned how many simple actions we can each take every day to help promote sustainability and reduce our carbon footprint,” said upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss, who is also the upper school representative for the Harker Green Committee.
Upper school biology teacher and Green Committee member Kate Schafer added that it “challenged our students to think about their actions and modify those actions and learn about why it’s important to modify those actions.”
The upper school campus was also the location of the final Eagle Buddies event of the year, in which grades 3 and 10 teamed up to make special flags with imprints of leaves and other objects found in nature.
Lower school students celebrated at special Earth Day-themed stations set up by BEST staff. Students in grades 4 and 5 gathered at a table to make crafts from recycled materials, while second graders made potted plants from plastic bottles and string. Kindergartners dressed up as “Earth Jedis” and trekked about the lower school campus picking up trash and recyclables.
The preschool campus was the center of much activity, despite rainy weather consigning it to the indoors. Grade 8 students visited their preschool friends in the Eco Buddies program. In a number of cottages, the middle schoolers set up stations to demonstrate various ecological concepts. One station demonstrated the concept of solar power by having a solar-power operated toy car move around when light was shone on it. At another station, eighth graders used a sock puppet (a stand-in for a worm) to explain Harker’s “wet/dry” waste disposal program: anything that the worm ate would go into the “wet” bin, while anything the worm rejected was headed to the “dry” bin. Other students cobbled together bird houses, made water filters and cut out makeshift helicopters that twirled to the ground when dropped.
“I thought that this was a really cool buddy program, especially since we don’t do very many at middle school,” said Tasha Moorjani, grade 8. “I liked it a lot, for the most part, and my favorite bit was when I realized that the kids were genuinely interested, because it made me really excited to teach them.”
Harker celebrated Earth Day 2016 in a big way on April 22, with activities across many grade levels, highlighting Harker’s schoolwide dedication to sustainability.
At the upper school, Earth Day celebrations began as early as the previous week, as students, faculty and staff engaged in the Green Challenge. Using an app called SJEnvironment, participants made note of and “buzzed” each act of sustainability they performed over a weeklong period. Simple actions such as refilling water bottles, minimizing shower time, turning off lights and appliances, and taking public transit could all be recorded in the app for points that were later tallied. Participants were awarded with prizes from Starbucks, Sports Basement, Summer Winds Nursery, Aqui Restaurant and other businesses.
“Our hope is that through participating in the Green Challenge, everyone learned how many simple actions we can each take every day to help promote sustainability and reduce our carbon footprint,” said upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss, who is also the upper school representative for the Harker Green Committee.
Upper school biology teacher and Green Committee member Kate Schafer added that it “challenged our students to think about their actions and modify those actions and learn about why it’s important to modify those actions.”
The upper school campus was also the location of the final Eagle Buddies event of the year, in which grades 3 and 10 teamed up to make special flags with imprints of leaves and other objects found in nature.
Lower school students celebrated at special Earth Day-themed stations set up by BEST staff. Students in grades 4 and 5 gathered at a table to make crafts from recycled materials, while second graders made potted plants from plastic bottles and string. Kindergartners dressed up as “Earth Jedis” and trekked about the lower school campus picking up trash and recyclables.
The preschool campus was the center of much activity, despite rainy weather consigning it to the indoors. Grade 8 students visited their preschool friends in the Eco Buddies program. In a number of cottages, the middle schoolers set up stations to demonstrate various ecological concepts. One station demonstrated the concept of solar power by having a solar-power operated toy car move around when light was shone on it. At another station, eighth graders used a sock puppet (a stand-in for a worm) to explain Harker’s “wet/dry” waste disposal program: anything that the worm ate would go into the “wet” bin, while anything the worm rejected was headed to the “dry” bin. Other students cobbled together bird houses, made water filters and cut out makeshift helicopters that twirled to the ground when dropped.
“I thought that this was a really cool buddy program, especially since we don’t do very many at middle school,” said Tasha Moorjani, grade 8. “I liked it a lot, for the most part, and my favorite bit was when I realized that the kids were genuinely interested, because it made me really excited to teach them.”
Harker celebrated Earth Day 2016 in a big way on April 22, with activities across many grade levels, highlighting Harker’s schoolwide dedication to sustainability.
At the upper school, Earth Day celebrations began as early as the previous week, as students, faculty and staff engaged in the Green Challenge. Using an app called SJEnvironment, participants made note of and “buzzed” each act of sustainability they performed over a weeklong period. Simple actions such as refilling water bottles, minimizing shower time, turning off lights and appliances, and taking public transit could all be recorded in the app for points that were later tallied. Participants were awarded with prizes from Starbucks, Sports Basement, Summer Winds Nursery, Aqui Restaurant and other businesses.
“Our hope is that through participating in the Green Challenge, everyone learned how many simple actions we can each take every day to help promote sustainability and reduce our carbon footprint,” said upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss, who is also the upper school representative for the Harker Green Committee.
Upper school biology teacher and Green Committee member Kate Schafer added that it “challenged our students to think about their actions and modify those actions and learn about why it’s important to modify those actions.”
The upper school campus was also the location of the final Eagle Buddies event of the year, in which grades 3 and 10 teamed up to make special flags with imprints of leaves and other objects found in nature.
Lower school students celebrated at special Earth Day-themed stations set up by BEST staff. Students in grades 4 and 5 gathered at a table to make crafts from recycled materials, while second graders made potted plants from plastic bottles and string. Kindergartners dressed up as “Earth Jedis” and trekked about the lower school campus picking up trash and recyclables.
The preschool campus was the center of much activity, despite rainy weather consigning it to the indoors. Grade 8 students visited their preschool friends in the Eco Buddies program. In a number of cottages, the middle schoolers set up stations to demonstrate various ecological concepts. One station demonstrated the concept of solar power by having a solar-power operated toy car move around when light was shone on it. At another station, eighth graders used a sock puppet (a stand-in for a worm) to explain Harker’s “wet/dry” waste disposal program: anything that the worm ate would go into the “wet” bin, while anything the worm rejected was headed to the “dry” bin. Other students cobbled together bird houses, made water filters and cut out makeshift helicopters that twirled to the ground when dropped.
“I thought that this was a really cool buddy program, especially since we don’t do very many at middle school,” said Tasha Moorjani, grade 8. “I liked it a lot, for the most part, and my favorite bit was when I realized that the kids were genuinely interested, because it made me really excited to teach them.”
Donna Gilbert, history and social science chair, opened the event with remarks about each of the grant programs. She remembered beloved history teacher John Near, who passed away in 2009, saying, “He inspired in his students a love for the excitement of historical exploration, which lives on in this special program.” Gilbert also had kind words for the Mitra family, “whose vision and kindness extended the scholars program to allow students opportunities to study topics in the broader disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.”
This year’s John Near scholars are seniors Jasmine Liu (“A House Divided: Residential Segregation in Santa Clara County”), Sadhika Malladi (“Graphic Soldiers: Popular Sentiment as Reflected in Captain America and Spider-Man”), Zarek Drozda (“Learned Lessons: Financial Innovation and the Panic of 1873”) and Sahana Narayanan (“’Bee-Boppa-Doe’: The Sounds of Musical Revolution”).
The 2016 Mitra scholars are seniors Elisabeth Siegel (“Ideology Through Subliminal Propaganda: A Critique of Portrayals of Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli and Western Online News Media during Operation Protective Edge”), Kaitlyn Gee (“Pretty in Punk: An Examination of European Female Punk Rock of the 70s and 80s Through a Feminist Lens”), Natalie Simonian (“Whispers in Russia: The Influence of the Rumors Surrounding Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on the Russian Revolution and Their Role in the German Effort to Overthrow the Tsarist Regime”) and Kavya Ramakrishnan (“The Eggleston Effect: Color Photography as Fine Art”).
“These eight seniors conducted “hundreds of hours of research that led … to scholarly analysis of musical scores, journals, maps, images, song lyrics, interviews and on and on,” said library director Sue Smith.
All of the scholars took the stage to share their thoughts on their research and thank their mentors for their invaluable guidance. Malladi, who shared heartfelt thanks to mentors Katy Rees, upper school history teacher, and upper school librarian Lauri Vaughan, also thanked her parents “for almost believing me when I said I was reading comic books for research.
“Being a Near scholar has been an incredible experience,” she continued. Although she found the research initially “more passive” than the kind of work she had become accustomed to, “I realized it was my responsibility to think critically about what I read.”
Gee also had kind words for her mentors, upper school English teacher Ruth Meyer (who wore Doc Martens in keeping with the theme of Gee’s work) and Sue Smith: “Their encouraging, patient and accommodating nature is beyond compare.”
She also expressed her gratitude to Harker “for providing me with 13 years of outstanding education.” A video of the entire reception is now available for viewing.
Last week, Harker held its first LID (Learning, Innovation and Design) Vision Day, during which teachers shared with fellow faculty members the technology-based methods they have been using in their classrooms. On the lower, middle and upper school campuses, teachers held special sessions that were attended by other faculty members. Teachers used a mobile app called Guidebook to help them find the sessions, which covered a wide variety of topics.
At the upper school, physics teacher Scott Pflaumer showed teachers how to add questions to YouTube videos with an app called Edpuzzle. English teacher Ruth Meyer hosted a session that showed how coloring and meditation can aid in teaching world religions, and biology teacher Mike Pistacchi demonstrated the effects of teaching choices on student stress.
Middle school teachers had the opportunity to learn from social studies teacher Jonathan Brusco, who explained how to use Badgelist and gamification to promote student learning by setting milestones. History teachers Cyrus Merrill and Ramsay Westgate also showed how gaming could enhance learning in their session about classroom video games.
Heather Russell, lower school English teacher, showed her fellow teachers the merits of interactive HyperDocs, while Scott Murphy taught teachers how to use YouTube more effectively by exploring YouTube’s own functionality as well as apps.
“It is great to see our highly talented colleagues present these workshops right under our roof,” said middle school computer science teacher Sharmila Misra. “It is fun learning from our own.”