This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Senior Alicia Clark was awarded Harker’s Community Service Spotlight Award at a recent Monday morning school meeting. At the gathering, she received a $200 check from the Harker Upper School Community Service Program, which she in turn donated to the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto.
The Community Service Spotlight Awards are sponsored by Harker’s outreach department and take place several times during the school year. They were created to celebrate and honor the outstanding community service completed by upper school students.
In her acceptance speech at the meeting, Clark explained that she began doing community service in grade 7 when she joined the National Charity League, a mother/daughter organization that helps less fortunate community members. Since then she has completed more than 500 volunteer hours with more than 15 organizations.
Clark went onto say that community service can be a great opportunity to spend time with friends and family while also helping others in need. “I can’t imagine my life without all of the organizations I have volunteered with and I really encourage those of you who have not had the opportunity to get involved in the community to start now,” she concluded.
This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Congratulations to upper school biology teacher Mike Pistacchi, who recently received National Board Certification in teaching young adolescents and young adult science. This advanced teaching credential is awarded to teachers who demonstrate their ability and dedication to advancing the learning goals of their students. National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) are widely recognized for their ability to improve student learning and achievement. To receive this accreditation, Pistacchi spent nearly two years extensively documenting his teaching methods, which were then measured against the high standards of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. This process included closely examining student needs, recording videos of teaching sessions and submitting examples of student work that showed their growth in understanding the material and principles being taught in the classroom.
This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In late December, Harker Quarterly received word that Jason Berry, the highly regarded English teacher who died suddenly in August 2013, had received an outstanding educator award from the University of Chicago in 2012. First-year University of Chicago students nominate candidates by submitting letters detailing how teachers have changed their lives by inspiring and challenging them to make the most of their educational experiences. The prestigious award has been given for three decades. Berry was nominated by Rachelle Koch ’12, who wrote in her letter that Berry taught her the value of writing. “Before I met Mr. Berry, English was just another class. I read when I had to. I wrote when I had to. I analyzed (if it could be called that) when I had to,” she wrote. “Once Mr. Berry became my teacher, I began to recognize and appreciate the beauty of literature and writing.” More about Berry’s life and teachings can be found in the Milestones section of the fall 2013 issue of Harker Quarterly.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In early January, upper school chemistry and astronomy teacher Rachel Freed presented at the Google Apps for Education Summit in Napa Valley. Hosted by the Ed Tech Team, a self-described “global network of education technologists,” the summit brought together a wide variety of education experts to share how they use technology in the classroom. Freed’s presentation demonstrated how she uses a Web-based tool called LiveBinders to organize the teaching materials she uses in the classroom, including Google docs and online resources. Students also use it to submit their work. In addition, Freed’s session covered the use of LiveBinders to create a project-based environment and how she teaches students to maintain and maximize their online learning experiences.
On a windy and cold afternoon at Boulder Ridge Country Club, the boys golf team outdueled four time defending league champion Menlo by one stroke 208-209 to win its first ever title. After the first two pairings, the Eagles were up by seven strokes. On the last hole, Menlo’s William Hsieh, playing on this home course, lips out the par 4 9th. Then Knight senior and medalist Jordan Stone, who sunk 10-15 footers all day long, lips out another putt, finishing with a remarkable 11 putts for the round. Not to be outdone, in front of the gallery, our own Mr. Clutch, Freshman Avi Khemani calmly sank an eight footer for the one shot victory. Freshman Sandip Nirmel, who is playing his best golf of late, led the Eagles with a 3 over par 39. Nirmel earned his first Harker medalist honors last week at Shoreline against Pinewood. Junior Shrish Dwivedi chipped in with a 40, followed by Khemani’s 41, Ryan Vaughan’s 42 and Jonathan Lee’s 46 to assist in the victory. After hitting a ball out of bounds on his first tee shot on the par 4 fourth hole, Jonathan stuck a 220 yard, blind shot, into the middle of the green to save a remarkable double. The Eagles secure first place in the WBAL with a 9-1 record. This is a culmination of 15 weeks of tremendous amount of hard work, time, and effort by all eight of these gentlemen. Please congratulate Shrish Dwivedi, Dakota McNealy, Nikhil Reddy, Ryan Vaughan, Sandip Nirmel, Avi Khemani, Zarek Drozda and Jonathan Lee on this championship run! Each and every one of them played their role in making this dream a reality and absolutely gave it their all. We can’t be more proud. The team’s next competition will be at League Finals next Wednesday. Go Eagles!!!!
April 22, 2014 Golf
The Eagles are off to their best start ever, even after dropping a contest to rival Sacred Heart Prep by just three shots, 186-189. The Eagles are tied for first place in the WBAL with an 8-1 record. In the close loss, sophomore Dakota McNealy led all other golfers with an even par 33.
At the Champions Invitational in Palm Springs earlier this month, the team placed 22nd out of 40 schools in a crowded field that included teams from Texas, Nevada, Washington and Canada. They have a huge showdown with Menlo today!
Track and Field
The Eagles competed in their second league meet, with seniorshot putter Nithya Vemireddy setting a school record. The day also was filled with personal bests. In addition to Vemireddy’s new record, junior shot putter Julia Wang and sophomore Mehul Khetrapal set personal bests in the 400m. Senior Ravi Bhandia, junior Matt Bloch, sophomore Jonathan Hochberg, freshman Davis Howard and senior Rohan Kapatkar had personal bests in throws. The boys went 1-2-3-4 in the high-jump, led by senior Wei Wei Buchsteiner with a school record of 5’2″!
Senior Claudia Tischler and sophomore Alex Dellar ran 1-2 in the 800m, both with season bests, and junior Allen Huang’s personal best in the 100m was the best Eagle mark on of the year! Freshman Niki Iyer placed second in the 3200m run, breaking her old school record at the CCS Top 8 Invitational with a time of 10:57.39 and edging out the third-place finisher in the final 100m. Then, at the San Mateo Bearcat Invitational, Vemireddy and Wang took fifth and sixth place in the discus, with Vemireddy’s personal best throw just 8 inches shy of the school record set last year by Wang. Vemireddy also took sixth in the shot put, while seniors Sean Nachnani, Arjun Kumar, Krish Sanghi and Nishaant Murali set personal bests in the discus. Kumar equaled his personal best 39’9” to take eighth place in the shot put.
Lacrosse
The varsity lacrosse team roared back against Sacred Heart Prep but ultimately fell short, losing 12-9 despite four goals from juniorHannah Bollar, three goals from senior Mary Liu, two goals from seniorMabel Luo and 17 saves from seniorgoalie Christine Lee. The girls bounced back by trouncing York School 14-3 behind four goals from freshmanSarah Baz, three from Liu, two from Luo and one apiece from sophomores Shreya Sunkara and Natasha Mayor, Bollar, freshman Taylor Iantosca and Lee. The girls are now 4-9 overall, and will celebrate their senior day on May 6 when they bid farewell to seniors Alicia Clark, Nikkan Ghosh, Lee, Liu, Luo, Maya Madhavan and Brinda Perumal.
Tennis
The boys varsity squad beat Pinewood and Crystal Springs last week. Their match against Crystal Springs was a tense and heated fight for second place, and the boys prevailed 4-3. This week is a busy one for the team, with four matches! The team will send off senior Kevin Xue at senior day on April 25.
Baseball
The boys crushed Pescadero 11-1 over the break for their second victory of the year. FreshmanNic Bean went 4-4 with a two-run homerun. SophomoreDalton Forbeshad two hits with a triple and an RBI. FreshmanKedar Gupta had two hits, a triple and two RBIs. Senior Varun Kamat pitched a complete game, allowing just one run and three hits while striking out 13 across four innings. The boys play three times this week and host a senior day for Kamat on May 8.
Softball
The Eagles lost to Mercy-Burlingame last week despite hits from juniors Alisa Wakita and Vivian Isenberg. They’ll be back in action today at Blackford against Castilleja.
Volleyball
The boys won the bronze bracket at the Bellarmine Tournament after defeating Cathedral of LA and Nevada Union. They went 3-3 overall at the tournament. Against their league competitors Homestead, they boys fell, dropping their record to 13-7 overall and 4-3 in league. Tonight, they head to Blackford at 6:45 p.m. for a game against Los Gatos. The boys’ senior day is on May 9, where they will send off seniors Samir Chaudhry, Will Deng, Gaurav Kumar, Huck Vaughan, Jithin Vellian, Sean Youn and Andrew Zhu.
Swimming
You can catch the swim team’s senior day on Wednesday at 4 p.m. against rival Sacred Heart Prep. Say goodbye to seniors Brian Tuan, Kenneth Zhang, Manon Audebert and Kimberly Ma.
This report provided by Jenny Heidt The Harker Forensics team had a record-setting weekend at the National Debate Coaches Association Championship at Weber State University April 11-14. The speech and debate team won national championships in three out of the four events at the tournament! Eight students went home with titles in three categories: Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum and Congress. Pranav Reddy, grade 11, won first place in Lincoln-Douglas debate; Misha Tseitlin, grade 9, placed first in Congressional debate; and Jasmine Liu, grade 10, and Kevin Duraiswamy, Arjun Kumar, Stephanie Lu, Sreyas Misra, and Sebi Nakos, all grade 12, were co-champions in Public Forum debate.
“We’ve had different parts of the program win a title before, but we’ve never had this much overall strength all at once,” said Jenny Heidt, debate coach.
Nakos added, “I don’t think it was as much of an individual effort as much as it was a team effort. As a team everyone put in their part and did their part and everyone put the work they needed to do well as a team.”
More than 300 students from states throughout the nation participated in the tournament. Harker sent 26 upper school students to compete. To qualify for the national tournament, students had to do well at various debate tournaments throughout the invitational season.
Debaters grapple with very complicated issues of public policy and philosophy. The Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas topics were about potential conflicts between economic development and environmental protection in poorer nations. The Congressional debaters covered a wide range of issues, including assistance to the Ukraine in maintaining its independence from Russia and whether or not various groups or nations ought to be removed from the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. Coach Greg Achten said, “It is not possible to achieve the level of success in an activity as challenging as debate without a tremendous amount of hard work. Succeeding in debate not only requires incredible intellectual acumen, it also requires a very strong work ethic.”
This year’s debate team set a new precedent for the future success of the school’s speech and debate program. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s the single most successful weekend in the history of Harker speech and debate,” Heidt said. Coach Carol Green summed it up nicely by saying, “We are really proud of all of the students and the work they have done in addition to the successes they achieved.”
The team has several more important tournaments coming up at the end of the 2013-2014 season, including travel to Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas and Texas.
Harker’s Middle School Spring Art Exhibit went on display in the upper school’s main lobby gallery after an opening reception on April 3. The show, which will run until April 23, also spilled over to the Nichols Hall atrium.
Sponsored by Harker’s middle school visual arts program, the exhibit features select works from the 2013-14 school year, including colorful paintings, sketches, ceramics, figurines and wire sculptures.
This year’s exhibit included an impressive array of ceramics, such as tea pots, plates, boxes and figurines. Students in grades 7-8 showcased clay and glass works called “African Granary Doors.” Whimsical wire sculpture figures with accessories such as umbrellas, golf sticks and building blocks also filled the shelves. Grade 6 ceramics students displayed work done during the fall semester titled “Art Shoes,” which took the form of dinosaurs, rabbits, dragons and more. And, adorning the walls, were drawings of bikes, colorful landscapes, and assorted fruits and vegetables.
Encased in a glass display were several sculptures that won regional Scholastic Art Awards earlier this year. Eight Harker middle school students won the prestigious awards for their outstanding artwork. Two received the coveted gold and silver key awards, while six others were lauded with honorable mentions. All of the winners’ work was featured in the exhibit. (To read another HNO story about the art award winners: http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/eight-middle-school-students-win-scholastic-art-awards/).
Meanwhile, a series of drawings called “Renaissance Self-Portraits” was on display in Nichols Hall. For this project, second-year middle school art students were asked to do a self-portrait of what they will look like at age 50, and at the same time put themselves in the time of the renaissance. To accomplish this feat, they studied Rembrandt’s self-portraits and followed that period and style as closely as possible.
“Scrolling through photos of Renaissance poses and portraits, I found a picture of a man with flowing, curly hair very interesting. Incorporating my cheerful countenance into the body of a royal ancient figure was extremely difficult, but weeks of sketching self-portraits eventually paid off to help accomplish this piece,” recalled art student Darren Gu, grade 8.
Classmate Kaitlin Hsu, also grade 8, said that for her Renaissance portrait she chose to draw herself as a young maiden who “probably lived the life of a servant.” Drawing this portrait, she noted, was fun and interesting since the clothing, accessories, and style at the time were very unique and distinct. “Using various materials to finish this portrait was fun,” she added.
Also in the atrium were drawings from first-year art students, including illustrations of Audubon birds and sketches of rocking chairs. The drawings were done in the Italian artistic style of chiaroscuro, which utilizes strong contrasts between light and dark (similar effects in cinema and photography also are called chiaroscuro).
The middle school art show is unique in that it hosts its opening reception at the upper school. After the exhibit’s run there, it will be relocated to the middle school multipurpose room where it will join the middle school’s end-of-the-year exhibit.
Each spring, each of Harker’s campuses hold art shows, giving students age-appropriate venues in which to display the special works they have completed throughout the year.
After being diagnosed as a freshman with hypothyroidism – a disorder in which the thyroid gland fails to produce sufficient thyroid hormone, causing fatigue, lack of focus and other symptoms – Samantha Madala, now grade 11, became determined to help prevent health problems from interfering with children’s education.
To that end, Madala founded Healthy Scholars last year to raise awareness of health issues that could stymie education. In December, Madala and her team trekked to Varni, India, to perform screenings for medical problems that could be obstacles to learning. Healthy Scholars worked with organizations in India, including the Lions Club, NICE Hospital and LEAD Foundation, to offer blood pressure tests, individual medical consultations, dental exams, vision and hearing tests and more to nearly 600 schoolchildren.
“Students who exhibited symptoms such as intense fatigue, inability to concentrate, memory loss, weight gain, cold intolerance, irregular menstrual cycles and dry skin were referred to bloodwork,” Madala said. “During the screening process, I also interviewed and helped identify girls who were suffering from hypothyroidism, like me, and had yet to be diagnosed.” Healthy Scholars paid for the necessary blood tests with funds provided by donors and other charitable organizations.
Those with impacted hearing were treated to ear cleanings with an ear wax removal device provided by Clear Ear, whose president Lily Truong is also on the Healthy Scholars team. The Meghna Institute of Dental Sciences offered free dental cleanings to students with dental problems. “Ultimately, students received thorough physical examinations, with emphasis on symptoms that can impact learning, and were connected to affordable or free treatment options. For many of these students, our screening was the first physical health exam they had ever received,” Madala recalled.
That same month, Healthy Scholars kicked off a fundraising effort, raising nearly $4,000 via fundraising website Crowdrise. An additional $25,000 donation enabled Health Scholars to stage more screenings. Madala is planning another trip to Varni in early June. Stateside efforts are also on the agenda. “We also aim to hold a similar health screening camp for at-risk Native American youth in Montana.”
Healthy Scholars also is looking into the possibility of partnering with Stanford University’s Medical Scholars Research Program, which would provide the opportunity to conduct medical research at screenings. An iPhone app designed to help maintain ear, nose and throat health – with a focus on ear and thyroid problems – is also in the works.
More information about Healthy Scholars and its current activities can be found at its website. Healthy Scholars is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization, so all donations to the organization are tax-deductible.
This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Three Harker seniors made their directorial debuts at this year’s Student Directed Showcase in January. The show features three one-act plays directed by Harker students, the culmination of years of hard work in Harker’s Conservatory and one very intensive yearlong class, offered by Laura Lang-Ree to seniors through an application process. The plays featured in this year’s production were “Beyond Therapy,” directed by Ian Richardson, “The Case of Alex Hansen,” directed by Namrata Vakkalagadda, and “The Wonderful World of Dissocia,” directed by Shenel Ekici.
“Being a SDS director was really a goal I had for myself around freshman-sophomore year,” said Richardson. “The idea of directing a show using the talents of your fellow classmates really drew me to the program. Also, just being in control of your own show, having your own interpretation, blocking, lights, sound and stage for your choice of play was just too good to pass up.”
The directors of each play are heavily involved in every step of the process from the planning to the premiere. All of the elements necessary for the play to be a success, from auditioning and choosing the cast to managing props and costuming, fall under the director’s purview.
One lesson Vakkalagadda learned was that unexpected circumstances are part of the process. “No matter how much planning is done, I always had to be open to sudden changes and twists and turns, but by doing so, I was also able to take in so many new and exciting ideas I may not have had the chance to experience if I was solely set on my initial plan,” she said.
She also learned that often it is better for directors to trust the people they’ve chosen. “Being in charge does not necessarily mean controlling every aspect,” she said. “In reality, by letting my cast come to the conclusions I had come to on my own and wanted them to finally come to, we were able to grow together and make the show all of ours rather than just mine.”
Despite the frequent challenges and months of hard work, the students found the experience useful and fulfilling. “I really learned that you stick to what you love, no matter the hardships,” said Richardson. “Especially when directing a show, it’s all up to you and what you make of it.”
This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In mid-January, San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater played host to the annual middle and upper school Winter Concert, which featured the talents of a wide selection of musicians from Harker’s various music programs.
Middle and upper school music teacher David Hart directed all but two of the evening’s groups, leading performances by the Grade 6 Orchestra, Grade 7-8 Orchestra, Middle School Jazz Band and, now in its second year, The Harker School Lab Band. The grade 6 winds group kicked things off with the up-tempo “I’m Walkin’” by Fats Domino, followed by Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” The grade 6 strings group then performed three pieces, including a rendition of the “Spring” section of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” which included solos by Jun Lin, Ahn My Tran and Gabriel Chai. Winds and strings then joined forces to perform Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and the iconic “Star Wars” theme by John Williams. Soon after, the evening audience was treated to a special appearance by the middle school chamber group, which performed a haunting version of the traditional favorite “Scarborough Fair.”
The show then shifted gears to feature the Middle School Jazz Band, which performed selections by Horace Silver, Billy Strayhorn, Oliver Nelson and Joe Henderson before the Grade 7-8 Orchestra performed pieces by Johannes Brahms and Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, finishing their set with the theme from the film “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
The Harker School Lab Band was the last of the groups directed by Hart. Their set included Thelonius Monk’s “I Mean You” and “Manteca” by the great Dizzy Gillespie. Upper school music teacher Chris Florio took over to direct The Harker School Jazz Band, leading them through four songs, including Dan Gailey’s “The Cheese That Time Forgot” and the swing classic “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” by Count Basie.
Capping off the night was The Harker School Orchestra, also directed by Florio. It began with Franz von Suppé’s “Poet and Peasant Overture” before moving on to a grand performance of excerpts from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Concluding the show was an exciting rendition of Stravinsky’s “Scherzo a la Russe.”