In late February, AP Studio Art students put their works on display at a special reception held in the Nichols Hall atrium. Using a variety of media, grade 12 students created paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs covering a vast range of styles and themes. Each student used a central subject or theme as the inspirations for his/her pieces. Inspired by Tim O’Brien’s book, “The Things They Carried,” Emily Wang created a series of drawings depicting famous historical events, such as the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima, the Tiananmen Square protests and the Vietnam War. A series of sculptures by Sylvie Dobrota illustrated principles of tension and movement that came to mind while examining a knot. Eric Swenson’s photograph portraits featured subjects as they imagined key moments in their lives, such as the passing of a loved one or a climactic scene in a movie.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school students and faculty alike gave a warm welcome to visiting exchange teacher Michiko Takahashi, who is a music instructor at Tamagawa Gakuen, Harker’s sister school in Tokyo, Japan.
During her Jan. 5-18 visit, Takahashi taught Japanese music and observed classes in the upper school’s performing arts department.
Although Takahashi does not speak English, she was made to feel at home at Harker, thanks to the efforts of several Japanese-speaking faculty members who offered to serve as interpreters, joining her for meals and serving as friendly faces around campus.
And, from the moment Susan Nace, upper school music teacher, picked Takahashi up from the San Francisco airport, it was a whirlwind of activity. After a weekend of sightseeing, Takahashi studied the upper school’s music and acting programs, had lunch with the administration, spent time teaching Japanese classes, visited with the college counseling department, and attended a farewell party with performing arts teachers.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
In February, Harker received a visit by two high school students from Tamagawa Gakuen in Tokyo. Akari Ito and Ayako Nagashima, who buddied up respectively with grade 11 students Monika Lee and Maya Madhavan, arrived Feb. 2 and spent the next month shadowing their buddies in classrooms and attending classes of their own. Classes they attended included stone carving with upper school art teacher Jaap Bongers, chemistry with Mala Raghavan, Pilar Agüero-Esparza’s painting class and Masako Onakado’s Japanese 5 class.
Ito also made a special visit to the lower school to teach a class of grade 5 students about Japanese calligraphy, showing them how to write words such as “dream” and “wind.” Students who had some proficiency in the art were challenged with writing the more advanced characters for “lemon” and “rose.”
The two students enjoyed a special farewell party in Onakado’s classroom on March 1, the day before their departure back to Japan, enjoying treats, playing games and sharing memories with their newfound Harker friends before making the trip home.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly
Strawberries dipped in chocolate mirrored the sweetness of newly formed friendships at a recent farewell dessert reception honoring nine visiting exchange students from the Collège de Gambach in Switzerland.
During the event held in the upper school’s Bistro, both Harker students and their new Swiss buddies breathed a collective sigh of relief that it was not a goodbye party.
Come June, a group of Harker students and chaperones will head to Switzerland in continuation of the exchange program. The upcoming adventure will afford the Harker contingent the opportunity to immerse themselves in Swiss culture, brush up on their language skills, and explore the country’s vast natural beauty.
The Collège de Gambach is a secondary school under the authority of the department of public education and cultural affairs in Fribourg, Switzerland. The school places a strong emphasis on the formation of character and stresses strong resolve, clear thinking, a sense of responsibility and an appreciation for thorough work habits.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
In late January, the San Francisco-based wind quintet Frequency 49 held several master classes for Harker students. Made up entirely of working professional musicians, the group visited a number of classes at the middle and upper school campuses, starting with the grade 7-8 orchestra, led by Dave Hart. The musicians showed the students the sounds and various attributes of each instrument and played a special selection of pieces in a variety of styles.
“Since many of the students in orchestra have had experience performing in chamber ensembles throughout the year, they were able to ask questions about the process of rehearsing and performing music in a chamber setting,” Hart said.
Later, the group stopped by Hart’s grade 6 wind ensemble’s rehearsal. For this session, Hart rented duplicate instruments played by Frequency 49 so that students could try them out following a brief lesson on how they were played. “They spent the rest of the class with each member trying out those particular instruments. It was a blast, and the kids were completely engaged!” Hart exclaimed.
Their final stop at the middle school was Hart’s grade 6 strings class. Students had been spending this semester separating into groups and learning a chamber music piece of their choosing. The students had the chance to play the pieces for Frequency 49, who later performed for them. “Hearing Frequency 49 provided the students an opportunity to see and hear a professional chamber music group perform the pieces the students have been working on the last two weeks,” Hart noted.
Lastly, the group visited the upper school for a workshop with Chris Florio’s class, demonstrating what could be done on their respective instruments. “For example, the flutist demonstrated how the flute can produce bird-like sounds,” said Victoria Ding, grade 9. Ding said communication was one of the important principles that the group taught the students. “Frequency 49 instructed us to sit in a certain arrangement such that each instrument’s sound carries well to the other players and the audience,” she said. “They also reminded us to maintain eye contact with each of the four other players and adjust to what we hear in order to maintain balance in the ensemble.”
“I found it to be really beneficial because I had just begun playing in a woodwind quintet this year and I wasn’t quite sure how to play so that each member could play together well as one ensemble,” said Aaron Lee, grade 11.
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Dozens of musicians from Harker’s middle and upper schools gathered at the beautiful Mexican Heritage Theater in San Jose on Jan. 11 for this year’s Winter Concert. Musical groups from both campuses performed pieces both modern and classic in a wide variety of styles.
The concert was separated into two portions, allowing students from both campuses equal
time to shine. Middle school musicians, directed by Dave Hart, opened at 5 p.m. with Harker Winds performing “Bags Groove” by Milt Jackson and “Some Nights” by the pop group fun., both arranged by the performers in the group.
Harker Strings continued with an arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and the holiday favorite “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The Grade 6 Orchestra (made up of members from the winds and strings groups) then continued the performance with “Farandole” by Georges Bizet and the ever-popular theme from “Star Wars.”
Students Donna Boucher, Connie Xu, Arushee Bhoja and Catherine Wang, all grade 6, impressively performed the first of two chamber pieces showcased that evening, “Comptine d’un Autre Été: L’Après-Midi” by Yann Tiersen. The grade 8 duo of violinists Cuebeom Choi and May Gao then played a selection from “Duo Concertante for Two Violins” by Charles-Auguste de Bériot.
Jazz musicians from grades 7 and 8 took the stage for a set of songs from greats such as Charles Mingus (“Boogie Bop Shuffle”) and Charlie Parker (“My Little Suede Shoes”). Finishing the middle school portion of the show was the Grade 7-8 Orchestra, who performed “Amazing Grace” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Greensleeves” before bringing the set to a spectacular close with the first movement of Antonín Dvorák’s “New World Symphony.”
The second half of the show featured upper school musicians, starting with the Lab Band, the introductory jazz ensemble directed by Dave Hart, who performed Benny Golson’s “Blues March,” Joe Henderson’s “Recorda Me” (arranged by the band themselves) and “Big Dipper” by Thad Jones. The Harker School Jazz Band, directed by Chris Florio, continued with “Launching Pad” by Clark Terry and Duke Ellington and the popular 1930s British standard “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” before bringing the house down with the Brian Setzer Orchestra’s “Jumpin’ East of Java.”
Finally, Florio led the headlining upper school orchestra in an array of selections from famed composers such as Dvorák, Tchaikovsky and Holst, bringing the concert to an exciting close with a performance of Percy Grainger’s famous reel “Molly on the Shore.”
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school dance talent took the stage at the Blackford Theater in early February to celebrate the classical elements of air, water, fire and earth at this year’s upper school dance production, fittingly titled “Elements of Dance.”
Directed by dance teachers Amalia De La Rosa and Karl Kuehn, the main portion of the show consisted of four parts, each highlighting one of the four elements through music, visuals and, of course, choreography. During the part of the production titled “Air,” the stage was bathed in atmospheric blue and green light, with light-footed dancers performing their routines to songs such as “Tornado” by Little Big Town and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” made famous by Judy Garland. Later, during “Fire,” the stage took on a red hue as the performers danced to Tina Turner’s “Disco Inferno” and Camryn’s “Set the Night on Fire,” among others.
In addition to starring in the show, several students also took on choreography duties, such as Tiphaine Delepine, grade 12, who did the choreography for Kerli’s “Walking On Air,” and Angela Ma, grade 11, who collaborated with Kuehn on the choreography for “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
The fantastic scenery and lighting were the work of technical director Paul Vallerga and lighting designer Natti Pierce-Thomson, who both used their creativity and expertise to provide the show its atmosphere. Brian Larsen once again performed admirably as sound engineer, while also pulling double duty as production manager. The stylish costumes worn by the performers were designed by De La Rosa and Kuehn, as well as the student choreographers, with alterations made by Harker parent Kim Pellissier (Stephan, grade 11, and Christophe ’12).
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Entrepreneurship is nothing new to Harker students and now the school will draw together existing activities and new pieces to launch an academic Business and Entrepreneurial Program (BEP) in the fall.
Current elements, including the business club and its DECA participation, and Harker’s TEDx conferences will be laced together with new elements to make a complete program.
“We are ready to take our current elements of business and entrepreneurial opportunities for our students to the programmatic level,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school. “The current elements of DECA, TEDx, career panels and other special opportunities will be assembled into a comprehensive program that will give students direct business and entrepreneurial training, experience and opportunities appropriate to the high school level. We want to leverage our location and contacts in Silicon Valley to create unique learning opportunities and experiences for students interested in these areas.”
DECA
The upper school’s Harker Business Club (HBC) participates each year in DECA events, and that effort will be rolled into the program. A new not-for-credit DECA class is being added that will teach future leaders and entrepreneurs ethics, leadership skills and expertise in business- related fields, and students will prepare business plans for DECA competitions.
Michaela Kastelman, grade 12, wound up her term as DECA Silicon Valley president in March and Sophia Luo, grade 9, ascended to a new role at DECA Silicon Valley as secretary and treasurer for the next year.
“I am very excited that Harker is starting a business and entrepreneurship program!” said Kastelman. “Many students are very interested in learning about business and entrepreneurship and I think that it will be a great opportunity for Harker students to gain pre-professional education and experience. Several current and past Harker students have already created and developed their own startups and I think that a business and entrepreneurship program will further support Harker students’ entrepreneurial spirit and interest.”
The DECA annual state competition was in March and more than 20 students qualified for and are attending the international conference in April.
DECA, which used to stand for Distributive Education Clubs of America, but is now the actual name of the program, is an international association of high school and college students, and teachers of marketing, management and entrepreneurship. The group works to prepare leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in business, finance, hospitality and marketing. Harker has had a business club for several years and 77 members attended the Silicon Valley Career Development Conference hosted by the California association of DECA in San Jose in January. Harker students won 14 trophies and several medals, with Harker teams and individuals earning eight top- three finishes. Nikoloff was one of the many judges at the event.
“Through my involvement in HBC and DECA, I’ve learned key life and business skills that I will carry with me through college and life,” said Kastelman. “I’ve particularly grown through my officer positions, which have helped me develop as a leader and team member. From arranging conferences for 800 people to helping other schools to start and develop their own DECA chapters, I’ve learned how to inspire a shared vision and foster community, which I think will be important skills for college and my future career.
“I’ve also developed my critical thinking, public thinking and time management skills through DECA and HBC, which will greatly benefit me during college,” continued Kastelman. “This program could help students discover their interest in business and entrepreneurship and … I think that (participating) Harker students will get a jump start into entering the Silicon Valley startup community as they will be able to gain essential business related skills.”
The club will now be an adjunct to the overall program. “We will be offering a DECA class, formerly only a club activity, as an extra period option for the upper school students,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs.
TEDx
Almost 200 high school students came to Harker in October 2011 for the first-ever independently organized TEDxHarkerSchool event, headlined by keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist at Apple in the ’80s. The event featured five top entrepreneurs, each offering unique perspectives and advice to the young audience. The TEDx committee is in full swing planning the next TEDx conference at Harker for April 27. Speakers are still being lined up, but the group had, by March 1, contacted its first round of potential speakers and outlined a comprehensive campaign to attract students from other high schools and colleges.
Marketing director for this year’s TEDx, Glenn Reddy, grade 10, noted, “As a student interested in going into business later in life, I am very excited about the new Business and Entrepreneurial Program. In the past, business-oriented students have had few course options in their field, but now that will change. Being a part of a larger program will help us expand the TEDxHarkerSchool event to involve more students.”
Initiating the BEP in the fall of 2013 is contingent upon finding the right person to chair the new department, said Nikoloff, and he is consulting with some of the many entrepreneurs in the Harker community to identify candidates.
Meanwhile, Kastelman is excited – and maybe a bit jealous – that the program is in the works. “I can’t wait to see how the program develops!” she said. “I really wish that this program had existed when I was a freshman; I would have definitely chosen to participate in it, and I think this will help Harker students to become even more well-rounded and amazing. The skills that will be taught and learned through the BEP could be applied to any of the other extracurricular activities that Harker offers. For example, a highly involved theater student could participate in the program and learn to start his or her own theater company. I’m really excited to hear that Harker is expanding its educational program.”
This article was originally published in the spring 2013 Harker Quarterly.
With information literacy and research skills becoming increasingly important to college-bound high school students, the history and library departments have spent the last several years developing a comprehensive research and writing program to give Harker students an edge in creating scholarly works at the college level.
A work in progress since it began as a collaboration between Susan Smith, library director, and Donna Gilbert, history department chair, in 2006, the program has since grown into a cornerstone of Harker’s history instruction. “It’s become a normative part of every history course at The Harker School, and we’ve carefully scaffolded it and planned it so that the skills build over time, and kids are constantly reinforcing and practicing and mastering and then moving on,” Gilbert said.
The initiative was spurred in part by a feeling that too much emphasis was being placed on multimedia presentations and not enough on strong writing skills – “that PowerPoints and iMovies had started to replace traditional writing,” Gilbert said.
“The reality is that our kids need to go to college and they all need to write really well,” said Smith. History proved to be a great place to begin building this foundation because of its emphasis on studying primary sources, critical thinking and developing thesis-based arguments.
“We try to get them excited about primary sources and looking at the photos of people or artifacts of an era,” said Smith. “But then understanding how to analyze, evaluate and put together a cohesive, thesis-driven argument about something is what’s more important.”
History teachers work with the library department to come up with topics each year that the students at each grade level can choose for their research papers. Key criteria include the types of research required, the amount of researchable information that is readily available and whether the topics have been covered in class.
In grade 9, world history students are assigned a compare-and-contrast research paper on an ancient history topic. During this process, students learn the basics of using databases, creating note cards, paraphrasing sources and writing a thesis. Sophomores deepen their knowledge of databases and begin analyzing more scholarly works, as well as learn to reinforce their theses and create more detailed note cards. “That’s an argumentative, thesis-driven essay where they’re defending one side or the other of an issue, and we give them a choice of lots of issues to pick from,” Smith said.
Grade 11 United States history students may find themselves creating different types of research papers, depending on if they are in an Advanced Placement or regular class. AP students will analyze a Supreme Court case, while regular U.S. history students choose a topic from the Civil War.
This year students were asked to analyze a Civil War-era photograph from the Library of Congress’ American Memories project and create a biography of a person about whom little was known. Doing so required deep research of the world around the person and thinking critically about how he or she would have lived at the time the photograph was taken.
“One of, I think, the most captivating things about the U.S. history project was that they couldn’t possibly have known anything about these obscure people that we found these photographs of,” Smith remarked. “They aren’t in history books. They don’t have Wikipedia articles.”
AP students are given a wide range Supreme Court cases to choose from for their papers. They each then develop a thesis on whether the decision made on the case came from a partisan or neutral interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
Although teachers and librarians decide which topics are open to students to research, offering a wide variety of topics to choose from is an important part of the curriculum. “We always try to add choice,” Smith said. “That is something we’ve protected and the teachers are great about that.”
For instance, grade 9 World History students may be given a list of five questions to choose from, such as comparing burial rituals from two cultures. They will then be presented with a list of cultures that they can choose to compare. AP U.S. History students are given a list of 120 Supreme Court cases as options to analyze.
Once they have completed three years of historical research and analysis, seniors have the option of applying for a grant to embark on a yearlong independent research project via the John Near Endowment or The Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities. For this endeavor, students can choose whatever topics they like. “They can move in a direction that really appeals to them intellectually. And we get complete buy-in, because they’ve now not just chosen to apply but they are sent off, really, with very few restrictions and just guidance,” Gilbert said.
Students typically begin the process by arriving with well-developed proposals. “Somewhere in their studies, they’ve decided that they really want to explore the gender identity issues of Frida Kahlo, or they really are interested in educational reform,” Smith said.
Mexican poet Frida Kahlo was a subject of particular fascination for 2012-13 Mitra Family Scholar Shivani Mitra, grade 12 (and daughter of the scholarship’s founders). She began her research by reading books about Kahlo’s life and works. She then got as close to the source as she could. “I took a monthlong trip to Mexico City during the summer, where I was able to use primary source material – letters, diary pages – for my research,” she said.
“I visited her house in Coyoacán multiple times, met her grandnephew and niece, interviewed the curator of her museum, and visited countless museums in the city that had her works. By the end of the summer, I had gathered enough material from which I could start formulating my thesis.”
Mitra found that undertaking this project allowed her to foster her intellectual curiosity, and that learning so much about a person she respects and admires was the most satisfying part. “I enjoyed traveling to Mexico City and discovering Frida for myself, the most. She is a fascinating person, and the more I got to know her, the more I respected her,” she said. “Pursuing an academic passion of mine outside of a classroom, in a different country, by myself, was an amazing experience that I will never forget.”
Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 12, a recipient of a 2012-13 Near Scholar grant, combined his love of music and history for his project. “History is not just a collection of facts, and the patterns and connections between events and people are what make history fascinating to me. I also love classical music, and I play the violin for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra,” he said. Swaminathan chose to focus on the development of American classical music, with a special focus on the works of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. “I researched the lives and contributions of these two composers by reading several books from the Harker and local public libraries. I also studied numerous scholarly journal articles about these composers from the Harker library databases,” he said.
Swaminathan found that the two composers left their impressions on one another in several ways, and each had used the plight of Hispanic people as a theme in a major work. “Copland wrote his ‘El Salon Mexico,’ a piece that celebrates Mexico, in 1936 at about the time when the Mexican Repatriation was going on,” he observed. “Interestingly, Bernstein wrote his ‘West Side Story,’ a musical about the Puerto Rican gang wars in New York City, in 1957 when the Puerto Rican immigration to mainland U.S. was at its peak.”
Though Bernstein was candid about his politics, finding information about Copland’s political views proved difficult, so Swaminathan contacted several music scholars, including San Francisco Symphony musicologist Susan Key and the University of Houston’s Howard Pollack, a noted expert on Copland.
Both students found that their research practices have helped them develop skills beyond those required for historical analysis. “The ability to perform thorough analysis and uncover hidden patterns was the most valuable skill I have developed through this research,” said Swaminathan, who added that he also developed the skill “to analyze historical events and thereby extract plausible reasons behind them as well as connections between them. This abstract ability to analyze events and arguments manifests itself in every subject from English to mathematics.”
Similarly, Mitra discovered that her newfound research skills have helped her in writing papers for other classes. “For example, this semester I have a psychology and an English research paper. Finding the right sources comes much easier to me now,” she said.
The program continues to develop thanks to constant collaboration and feedback from teachers who frequently meet to discuss methodology and share their ideas, something that has been an important part of the program since its inception.
“It’s been a five- or six-year journey,” said Gilbert. “We used department meetings for two or three years, with the librarians always there in a kind of collaborative discussion about what’s working and what’s not working.”
This practice continues today, with teachers still learning from one another in brainstorming sessions at department meetings. “We get the best of everybody’s ideas. And they don’t even get that what they’re doing is brilliant,” Smith said. Over time, this sharing of ideas has resulted in a series of best practices that teachers can draw on. “And that’s the nature of teaching,” Smith said. “You go in there, you close the door, you do brilliant things every day and most of the time, nobody knows.”
On March 16, more than 143 students from 23 high schools came to the Harker campus for the third annual Harker Invitational Programming Contest. The event pits teams of three students against each other in two challenge rounds of problem-solving and programming.
The Harker Invitational is the only high school programming contest in the Bay Area that is organized and run by high school students. Harker junior Divyahans Gupta, grade 11, and seniors Lynda Tang, Maddie Dawson and Wilbur Yang led the effort which included fundraising, problem writing, generating the scoring software, getting a keynote speaker and organizing a college fair.
The event was originally created by Christine Chen ’10 in order to provide a forum that lets students interested in computer science, especially girls, compete. Many schools lack a computer science program, especially schools in economically disadvantaged areas. Even in affluent areas, many schools lack a CS program. One key objective of the contest is to give these students an outlet for their interest in computing.
This year’s contest attracted students from throughout the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Albany.
Registration for the contest filled almost immediately. Given the demand, the Programming Club hopes to increase the number of teams by about 15 percent next year. In addition to competing in the programming contest, students were treated to an amazing interactive talk by Dr. Dan Garcia of the University of California, Berkeley, who spoke about his research in game theory. The auditorium in Nichols Hall was filled with students who participated in several activities orchestrated by Garcia that illustrated his work. The students were spellbound and participated eagerly.
Following lunch in the Edge catered by Harker chef Danae McLaughlin, participants visited with professors from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara University, Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Tom Cortina of CMU commented on how well the contest was run and said that he is looking forward to being invited to next year’s contest; he said it was well worth the trip from Pittsburgh.
The contest was made possible by generous donations from the Harker parent community and SanDisk. The officers and members of the Programming Club are to be congratulated for another overwhelmingly successful day of computer science.