This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the 2012 fall play produced by the Harker Conservatory Oct. 25-27, offered a refreshing take on the revered, centuries-old tale of the rotten happenings in the state of Denmark.
Featuring no fewer than five capable actors and actresses in the title role – Cecilia Lang-Ree, Rahul Nalamasu, Hannah Prutton, all grade 12, Jai Ahuja, grade 10, and Namrata Vakkalagadda, grade 11 – director Jeffrey Draper’s take on one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays uniquely depicted Prince Hamlet’s various and often conflicting mental and emotional states; the transitions as each actor handed the role off to the next were interesting and seamless.
Other characters were portrayed by multiple players: Hamlet’s mother, gertrude, was played by Shazdeh Hussain, grade 11, and Cristina Jerney, grade 12; sophomore Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari and junior Ian Richardson were Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and murderer of his father; and Ishanya Anthapur, grade 10, and Apurva Tandon, grade 12, portrayed Ophelia, Hamlet’s would-be lover.
The guileful Polonius, royal counselor and Ophelia’s father, was played by junior Damon Aitken, who brilliantly put across the character’s stately yet playful attitude. In the role of Horatio, Claudia Tischler, grade 11, was more than effective as Hamlet’s best friend and confidant, and the brash, vengeful Laertes was expertly portrayed by Vishal Vaidya, grade 10.
The Saturday matinee show featured an understudy cast that was very warmly received by the afternoon audience. Freshmen Rachel Renteria and Gurutam Thockchom, and sophomores Maya Nandakumar and Simran Singh were stirring as Hamlet, while Aashika Balaji, grade 9, and Madi Lang-Ree, grade 10, had convincing turns as Gertrude. Claudius was well-played by freshmen Dhanush Madabus and MC Smitherman, and Shannon O’Shea and Cordelia Larsen, both grade 9, deftly handled the challenging role of Ophelia. Grade 9 students Rishabh Chandra and Janet Lee were both strong as Polonius and Horatio, respectively.
Paul Vallerga’s set design made clever use of a large video monitor that changed with each setting. Natti Pierce-Thomson’s evocative lighting was also a key feature, particularly in the scenes in which Hamlet speaks with his father’s ghost (played by Justin Gerard, grade 12, also cast as the player king, messenger and priest, and by Kaushik Sankar, grade 9, at the understudy show). They were drenched with red light and intensified by the reverb and bass that boomed throughout the Blackford Theater when the specter spoke.
Eschewing the usual period garb, costume designer Caela Fujii placed the characters in modern attire more befitting a gangster movie, evidence of the transcendent power of the play’s themes of betrayal, revenge and moral conflict. The climactic sword fight sequence was well-choreographed by Kit Wilder, managing director of San Jose’s City Lights Theater.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the 2012 fall play produced by the Harker Conservatory Oct. 25-27, offered a refreshing take on the revered, centuries-old tale of the rotten happenings in the state of Denmark.
Featuring no fewer than five capable actors and actresses in the title role – Cecilia Lang-Ree, Rahul Nalamasu, Hannah Prutton, all grade 12, Jai Ahuja, grade 10, and Namrata Vakkalagadda, grade 11 – director Jeffrey Draper’s take on one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays uniquely depicted Prince Hamlet’s various and often conflicting mental and emotional states; the transitions as each actor handed the role off to the next were interesting and seamless.
Other characters were portrayed by multiple players: Hamlet’s mother, gertrude, was played by Shazdeh Hussain, grade 11, and Cristina Jerney, grade 12; sophomore Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari and junior Ian Richardson were Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and murderer of his father; and Ishanya Anthapur, grade 10, and Apurva Tandon, grade 12, portrayed Ophelia, Hamlet’s would-be lover.
The guileful Polonius, royal counselor and Ophelia’s father, was played by junior Damon Aitken, who brilliantly put across the character’s stately yet playful attitude. In the role of Horatio, Claudia Tischler, grade 11, was more than effective as Hamlet’s best friend and confidant, and the brash, vengeful Laertes was expertly portrayed by Vishal Vaidya, grade 10.
The Saturday matinee show featured an understudy cast that was very warmly received by the afternoon audience. Freshmen Rachel Renteria and Gurutam Thockchom, and sophomores Maya Nandakumar and Simran Singh were stirring as Hamlet, while Aashika Balaji, grade 9, and Madi Lang-Ree, grade 10, had convincing turns as Gertrude. Claudius was well-played by freshmen Dhanush Madabus and MC Smitherman, and Shannon O’Shea and Cordelia Larsen, both grade 9, deftly handled the challenging role of Ophelia. Grade 9 students Rishabh Chandra and Janet Lee were both strong as Polonius and Horatio, respectively.
Paul Vallerga’s set design made clever use of a large video monitor that changed with each setting. Natti Pierce-Thomson’s evocative lighting was also a key feature, particularly in the scenes in which Hamlet speaks with his father’s ghost (played by Justin Gerard, grade 12, also cast as the player king, messenger and priest, and by Kaushik Sankar, grade 9, at the understudy show). They were drenched with red light and intensified by the reverb and bass that boomed throughout the Blackford Theater when the specter spoke.
Eschewing the usual period garb, costume designer Caela Fujii placed the characters in modern attire more befitting a gangster movie, evidence of the transcendent power of the play’s themes of betrayal, revenge and moral conflict. The climactic sword fight sequence was well-choreographed by Kit Wilder, managing director of San Jose’s City Lights Theater.
Several Harker students successfully auditioned for roles in an upcoming independent film being produced by the Bay Area-based Silk Road Films. Auditions for the movie, to be titled “Family Party,” were held Dec. 4-5 at the upper school campus. With filming scheduled for April, during Harker’s spring break, the film will feature students Vishal Vaidya, grade 10, as Nick; Apurva Tandon, grade 12, as Arti; Jai Ahuja, grade 10, in the role of Sahil; Rahul Nalamasu, grade 12, playing Sanjay; Cecilia Lang-Ree, grade 12, as Tanya; and Alice Tsui, grade 12, as Amanda.
In early November, this year’s Siemens Competition regional finalists gave presentations of their research to Harker students and faculty in the Nichols Hall auditorium. Ashvin Swaminathan, Paulomi Bhattacharya and Rohan Chandra, all grade 12, and Zareen Choudhury, grade 11, each gave presentations on the projects that they would be presenting at the regional finals later in the month.
After the presentations concluded, each student took questions from the audience concerning the findings shared in the presentations and the methodology used to reach their conclusions.
Upper school music students received a special visit from New York City jazz ensemble the Wee Trio. The visit was arranged by music teacher Dave Hart, who played with the group during a visit to New York. Students were treated to some performances from the trio’s repertoire and had the opportunity to have their questions answered by the seasoned, talented musicians, who gave them their insights on the composition process, their history as a band and how they send and receive cues to one another while performing.
Basketball The grade 5 junior varsity B1 boys basketball team beat Sacred Heart in the Championship game of the WBAL tournament 26-21 Wednesday. They won the league with a 7-0 record and also won the championship tournament to finish at 9-0 overall.
The JVA boys basketball team took second in their WBAL bracket, losing to Sacred Heart in the Championship game 10-18. They finished 8-1 in league play and second in the tournament to finish at 9-2.
Basketball Boys varsity basketball went 1-2 in the Lynbrook Tournament last week, scoring a blowout 72-28 victory over Lynbrook to salve the pain of two nail-biter losses to Mills and Santa Teresa; the boys fell to Santa Teresa 41-40 on a last-minute shot as time expired.
Girls varsity basketball opened their season by cruising to the finals of the King’s Academy Tournament with victories over Prospect 48-32 and Lincoln 61-31. In the final round, the girls fell to Burlingame High 85-52 despite senior Priscilla Auyeung’s 21 points.
Soccer Boys varsity soccer blanked Gunderson in their season opener last week, 3-0, behind goals from Omar Hamade, Oisin Coveney, both grade 9, and Sumit Minocha, grade 12. The JV squad defeated SLV 6-1 to even their record at 1-1, as Neil Kishore, grade 10, scored a goal and had four assists.
Girls soccer went 1-1 last week after picking up a 2-0 shutout victory over Pacific Collegiate, with goals by Nikita Parulkar, grade 10, and Sondra Leal Da Costa, grade 12. Days before, the girls had dropped their season opener by a margin of 2-1 against Notre Dame, with Parulkar scoring the lone goal for the Eagles on a Leal Da Costa assist. Next, the team faces Mills High this Saturday in the Burlingame Tournament.
Wrestling
At the Fremont High Tournament on Saturday, wrestlers Danny Wang, grade 12, and Darian Edvalson, grade 11, earned a victory and two losses apiece. They face Milpitas High next week.
Water Polo
Congratulations to water polo players Keri Clifford and Karan Das-Grande, both seniors. Clifford was selected as a first team, division II All-CCS honoree and a second team division I honoree. Das-Grande recieved honorable mention on the second team for the boys, division II. This is a tremendous honor and excellent way to cap off their Harker water polo careers.
Rohan Chandra, grade 12, was recently named the first-place winner of the Kids Who Give contest for the period ending Sept. 30. The Kids Who Give program, sponsored by Farm Rich, recognizes young citizens who devise solutions to help their local communities. Chandra created the Earthquake Preparedness for Seniors project for the senior citizens of his Fremont neighborhood, whom he felt would be particularly vulnerable in the event of a major earthquake. He even created an instructional safety guide in no fewer than six languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, Farsi and Tagalog, which are also the most commonly used languages in the Bay Area. In order to fund the project, Chandra raised more than $10,000. To date, more than 1,000 copies of the guide and more than 250 earthquake kits have been distributed.
As a quarterly winner, Chandra will be awarded $3,500 and has been entered into a voting competition that will take place in early 2013, the winner of which will be awarded a grand prize of $10,000.
College applications. With so many schools to choose from, career paths to take and requirements to meet, it is easy for juniors to feel overwhelmed, so Harker’s college counseling department offers them a wealth of advice and guidance. Alumni and others augment that process.
College application preparation also begins in some measure right as students enter the upper school. “I meet with every freshman student. I meet with his or her advisory and set up a course plan,” said Evan Barth, dean of studies at the upper school. “I like the focus to be on that so that the students are taking classes that they’re interested in, which means they’re going to be doing better.”
In addition to making them more attractive to colleges to which they may later apply, the course plan also makes them more well-rounded students, a goal central to Harker’s overall mission.
“In high school you don’t need to specialize. You don’t need to be a math person or a science person. Just be a student,” Barth said. “CalTech is going to want to see that you’re in good English classes getting good grades. It’s not like they only care about math and science.” Counselors help drive that point home.
Process
The quality of counseling is often about case load, and “we have very manageable loads,” said Sandy Padgett, co-director of the college counseling department. Juniors meet with their counselors dozens of times from their second semester until applications are filed at the end of their first semester as seniors, and a lot of preparation goes into the applications.
“Almost every college has a different set of questions that need to be answered and they can sometimes be confusing,” said Lori Berenberg, grade 12. “I can always count on someone to be in the college counseling office who can help me navigate through the seemingly impossible college application process. Even if my own college counselor is busy with a meeting, every single counselor is available to answer general questions regarding applications.”
“When you’re working with students, you’re going over their interests and what kind of environment they are looking for,” said counselor Kevin Lum Lung. “Large school, small school, are they willing to go out of state, in state, suburban, urban – those are big factors that can narrow it down.” Counselors also strongly encourage families to visit college campuses to help gauge the student experience at the campus level.
Students can narrow down choices through visits to college campuses, via their own research or hearing impressions from students attending prospective schools. Counselors then help students gauge their career interests and look at the admissions requirements of some of those schools to construct a list of possible universities.
Counselors find students eager to apply to prestigious schools but are quick to encourage them to research which school would best suit them rather than look best on a résumé. “We really encourage the research, as opposed to just going to the U.S. News & World Report and picking from a list,” said Nicole Burrell, college counseling co-director.
“I think sometimes you can bypass a school that would be a perfect match for you,” Lum Lung said, “because perhaps it’s not going to show up on a U.S. News & World Report ranking in the top 10. And there are many schools overlooked just because you haven’t heard about them or your relatives haven’t heard about them.”
College Visits to Harker
Every year approximately 80 college and university representatives visit Harker seeking applicants, providing an invaluable opportunity for students to learn more about the schools along with admission requirements. “I think a number of [students] haven’t had the chance to visit or know very little about a particular school,” said Padgett, “and the representative visits give a little bit more of a face and a name to the person who might be reading their eventual application.”
These visits have resulted in many students finding their school of choice. “Every year I usually have one or two students who go to an information session, they get intrigued by the school, they apply, they’re admitted, maybe they go out for a visit and then they end up at this school,” said counselor Martin Walsh. On the flipside, many students also find out that schools they were interested in are actually not right for them.
“The college counseling office actually scheduled representatives to come speak from nearly every college that I was thinking about, and this helped me narrow my list,” said Rohan Chandra, grade 12.
College Counseling Classes
Harker’s college counselors hold classes to help students get up to speed in the application process, just one unique way Harker prepares its students for this busy time.
“The course begins with, ‘Here’s where you should be at right now,’ and then, ‘Here’s what you should be doing in the coming week,’” Walsh said. Later on, the classes cover more specific parts of the application procedure, such as how to write personal statements or what types of questions will be asked at an interview.
“Through presentations, guest speakers and various paper resources, we were given everything we’d need to be effective applicants,” said Berenberg.
“I find myself infinitely more prepared than I was in the spring, and I credit all of my growth to the college counseling department and my college counselor.”
Guest speakers at these sessions include teachers who discuss their experiences at college, perhaps also informing students of schools they previously weren’t familiar with. grade 12 students who have gone through the application process also appear to give the juniors advice and answer their questions.
“They not only see us dozens of times over the year, but they’re in class with us once a week, so we’re working with them all the time,” said Padgett.
“Those classes are also designed to disseminate broad information,” Lum Lung noted, “and then in their individual meetings, you can kind of tailor it specifically to a student and address the individual needs.”
The Alumni Connection
Soon-to-be applicants are also encouraged to contact Harker alumni currently studying at schools they may want to attend. “We have a really good alumni network,” Burrell said, “and a lot of our students will go visit colleges and stay with or meet up with Harker alums, or visit classes with Harker alums.”
The college counseling department compiles a list of alumni who can be contacted by students looking to visit their schools. Alumni then give them a firsthand account of their experiences and show them around. “Our kids have reported back that the alumni have been really great about giving them that inside view of what it’s like to go to that school, and what it’s like to be transitioning particularly from Harker to that school,” Burrell said.
Giving Seniors Time
Another intriguing aspect of the college application process is the Harker approach of not administering final exams to seniors, to allow them more time in December for applications. “The seniors make appointments and we’re here with dedicated time to help them finalize their applications and send everything out before winter break,” Walsh said.
The practice helps lower student stress. “You can imagine trying to finish all your college applications and study for your final exams at the same time,” said Lum Lung. “So the school and the administration did such a great job in making that decision for student stress reduction and to really help the seniors.”
To further ensure that students can both dedicate the right amount of time to their applications and finish them in a timely manner, students are also required to begin working on their applications in the summer prior to senior year. “Without this counseling, I likely would not have started my apps until much more recently, at which point I now would have been extremely stressed out and would have probably written subpar essays,” Chandra said.
“College counseling helped ease me into the college application process quite well, as I was consistently given information on college applications, as well as personalized attention through counselor meetings,” Berenberg said. “Once I began my applications, I was eager to come to each of my meetings because I had something new to show every time.”
Counselors also make sure to let students know when to take a break from something. “One of the things I’m saying most frequently is, ‘You’re working too hard on this essay. Let’s step back. You don’t need to do all that. There’s a much easier way to do that,’” Padgett said.
Added Lum Lung: “The structure of [our process] is designed to prevent stress and anxiety. We’re trying to keep people organized, and I think stress can develop when people don’t know where they should be; and we’re debunking the myths and rumors out there.”
Harker students Richard Yi, grade 9, and Rahul Sridhar, grade 11, placed eighth and ninth, respectively, out of 276 participants at the CalTech Harvey Mudd Math Competition, held in mid-November at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. Additionally, Sridhar and Ashwath Thirumalai, grade 10, took third in the team competition, while Yi and sophomore David Lin’s team took fifth out of a total of 47 teams.
Harker was also among the top-performing schools in the California Mathematics League in November and December. The upper school tied for first place with 60 points and scored 54 points with the middle school students’ scores included. A total of 13 students earned a perfect score: Shaya Zarkesh, grade 7; David Zhu, grade 8; Michael Zhao, grade 9; Patrick Lin, Cindy Liu, Suzy Lou, Nitya Mani and Sachin Peddada, all grade 10; Varun Mohan, Alex Pei, Rahul Sridhar and Vikram Sundar, all grade 11; and Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 12.
At the Mexican Mathematical Olympiad in November, Varun Mohan, grade 11, was one of four members the United States team that was one of 200 teams at the event. Mohan won silver, just a few points shy of the gold medal award.
In the Mandelbrot Competition, which takes place in five rounds occurring over the course of the school year, Harker currently sits at fourth place among the 55 schools in the Redwood Region, and seventh place nationally. Sophomores Patrick Lin, Cindy Liu and Andrew Zhang are among the top individual contests in the Redwood Region, tied with the other top scorers at 14 points. At the national level, Varun Mohan, grade 11, has 12 points and David Lin has 11.
At the fourth annual Math Prize for Girls Contest in September, held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cindy Liu, Nitya Mani and Suzy Lou, all grade 10, received Honorable Mentions for their performance. As they were among the top 44 students in the contest, all three students were later invited to compete in the 2012 Math Prize for Girls Olympiad.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
As upper school students face mounting pressure in their academic and personal lives, stress increasingly becomes a factor in their well-being, which can have a dramatic effect on their ability to function both in and out of the classroom. In recent years, Harker has become proactive in reducing stress among the student population, particularly as students prepare to take their SATs and apply to universities.
In 2008, the Wellness program was established to hold hourlong sessions and assemblies about health and general well-being. The sessions were meant as an alternative for health classes and were held for each grade, “with the content directed at the development of the students,” said Jane Keller, math teacher and director of the program. Since then, assemblies and events have been held several times each year, covering topics such as time management, stress reduction and drug abuse.
Three years ago, the program directors established a Wellness Board for a broader range of input, and in 2011 began bringing in student representatives from each class so that the board would have a better idea of what to include in the sessions. The board later changed its name to “LIFE” (Living with Intent, Focus and Enthusiasm) “so it could represent the values we are learning at Harker for life,” Keller said.
Jenny Chen, grade 12, one of the student representatives on the LIFE board, describes it as “a collaboration between students, counselors, teachers and administrators. We meet every few weeks to discuss and advocate for student health.” Student representatives deliver feedback from classmates about wellness events and assemblies. “In addition, we all share student needs and help pinpoint what we feel are the main stressors in students’ lives, arranging for assemblies and speakers to help provide students with more resources on these subjects,” said Chen.
Frequent assessments and the constantly changing nature of their daily and weekly schedules can be major stressors on students, Chen said, as is learning to juggle their academic responsibilities with extracurricular activities. “Moreover, I feel that especially as students get older, anxiety begins to build regarding college admissions; students become more stressed as they work to become competitive applicants. Parental expectations and pressures, too, can sometimes add extra stress to students’ lives,” she added.
As these challenges pile up, they can lead to health problems that affect student performance and well-being. “I know that a sizable proportion of students are chronically sleep-deprived during the week and many will spend lunch times catching up on homework or studying for upcoming tests,” Chen said.
Although some students have shown reluctance to attending the assemblies, as they sometimes occur during free periods, Chen is confident that the lessons learned at the events will show benefits in the long term. Indeed, teacher response to the program has been favorable. “Quite a few teachers have expressed approval and encouragement for the Wellness program,” she said. “Many are now more sensitive to student needs, implementing practices in the classroom to reduce stress as much as possible.”
One such practice is the inclusion of “mindful moments,” one- to two-minute intervals of relaxation and breathing that help students gather their focus, especially just before an exam.
Additionally, Athena2, Harker’s internal network for students and faculty, contains links to resources on stress reduction that both students and teachers can utilize. LIFE also recently began discussing the idea of holding a Wellness Fair, a one-day event that would make workshops on yoga, healthy food recipes and more available to students and faculty. “Though this year’s Wellness schedule has already been filled with speakers and other events, we hope to implement this event in the upcoming year and very much look forward to it,” said Chen. The board also plans to have more interactive LIFE assemblies “to help engage the students and communicate our message of well-being,” she added.
Teachers have also benefited from wellness initiatives, as demonstrated by fall visits to the school by Meg Levie of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), the organization co-founded by Chade-Meng Tan, a pioneer at Google who now seeks to foster happiness in the workplace. “The goal was to teach participants how to calm their minds and deepen their self-awareness,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “The hope is that in doing so, one reduces and manages stress, increases overall well-being, improves focus and creativity, and in general becomes more resilient and able to build satisfying relationships.”
Keller said the presentation also gave the faculty in attendance “an opportunity to relate with their peers and feel better connected across the campuses.
“One of the important aspects for us as teachers was to really drive home the point that we need to slow down,” Keller added. “Harker is a high-energy place so it was important for faculty and staff to see the benefits of stillness. Hopefully, this idea of time for themselves will have an impact on how assignments are given.”
Psychotherapist Gina Biegel, author of “The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens,” also visited in the fall and held a session for students. “Gina talked about the change that can happen to parts of your brain when you begin to live in the present,” Keller said. “Stopping to breathe, sitting quietly, counting your breaths and meditating can have an impact on how we process information.”
In 2012, Harker began working with Challenge Success, an organization based at Stanford University that is dedicated to student engagement and well-being. A team consisting of teachers, administrators and students was put together to attend conferences and speak with Challenge Success representatives to discover ways in which student well-being could be advanced.
One idea that came from working with Challenge Success was the new chime that accompanies the start and end of every period. Challenge Success found that startling bell noises actually increased stress at the moments they were sounded, and so several schools decided to do without bells. Harker opted to keep the bell system but change the sounds to something much less abrasive.
Another idea was the time management sheet currently in use by upper school students, who fill out the sheet by denoting how much time they plan to spend on each of their classes and activities. At the start of the 2012-13 school year, advisors met with students to discuss the sheet and offer guidelines on how much time each class or activity can take. It also takes into account the time they plan to spend with their families and on other important things such as sleep. If the hours they plan to spend on each item exceed the number of hours in a week, the students must then rethink how they are spending their time. The time management sheet also comes up in meetings with academic counselors.
“It just creates a conversation,” Gargano said. “What are you doing, how are you spending your time, how is it working for you?”
Since the use of the time management sheet is a new practice, it is still in the experimental stages. However, once it is determined how well it works at the upper school there are plans to introduce the time management sheet to the middle school.
In dealing with stress, Chen said, it is important for students to look into new activities but also to know when they are perhaps doing too much at once. “It is easy to bite off more than you can chew when it comes to taking on new extracurricular activities or challenging coursework. In addition, it is always helpful to talk to someone when you are feeling stressed, whether that person is a parent, teacher or counselor.” For her own part, Chen finds that putting down her thoughts is a good way to stay on track without getting overwhelmed. “I find that writing in a journal and keeping a daily log of events in your life is very beneficial and can help you organize your emotions and thoughts.”
At the lower and middle schools, an initiative was put in place last year to reduce the homework load on students by as much as an hour and a half per night. This was the result of a concerted effort by teachers to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their teaching in order to drive down the workload without sacrificing the quality of the educational experience for the students.
“Instead of giving five questions for a reading assignment, maybe [the teacher] can think of three, but those three really get to the heart of what the five used to,” Gargano said.
The middle school will also try a new testing structure in which all testing takes place in the second semester, reducing the overall number of tests the students take each week. In addition to reducing anxiety and stress, it may also enhance the classroom experience. “If you’re testing a little bit less, you can actually teach and do more in-class activities, because testing is a big chunk of time,” Gargano said.
Like the upper school, the lower and middle schools have also hosted special wellness assemblies. Students also take health classes that cover a variety of topics related to personal well-being.
Currently, a team of administrators is being formed to summarize and evaluate the school’s K-12 wellness efforts and discover what action may be taken. For now, Gargano said, it is important to be mindful of how instruction can be effective while at the same time taking into account the students’ entire school experience.
“They’re not just a student, or an athlete,” she said. “They’re a student-athlete- performer, and they do all of these things. So we can’t look at any one in isolation.”