An abridged version of this article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
By Mark Brada
Editor’s note: Mark Brada teaches upper school physics. He submitted this article after chaperoning Harker’s Costa Rican adventure.
On July 27, 14 Harker students and two teachers left their homes and set out for an adventure in the wilds of Costa Rica. Upper school chemistry teacher Mala Raghavan and I accompanied grade 11 students Adarsh Battu, Allen Cheng, Albert Chu, Tiffany Chu, Nathan Dhablania, Darian Edvalson, Chris Fu, Dennis Moon, Daniel Pak, Shreyas Parthasarathy and Renu Singh and grade 12 students Jonathan Cho, Zoya Khan and Alice Tsui. Upon landing in the Alajuela airport we were met by our guide, Jimmy Trejos, who took us to breakfast at a hotel overlooking the central valley of Costa Rica before boarding a small 20-seat airplane bound for the Nicoya peninsula. From there we took a bus to the Absolute Reserve at Cabo Blanco National Park, one of the most remote sections of the country.
We were also welcomed by professors Milton and Diana Lieberman, who proceeded to give the students a crash course in doing field research in the tropics. This involved lectures, brainstorming sessions, guidied hiking and snorkeling sessions, as well as many hours of collecting and analyzing samples.The students undertook a variety of research projects, including a project to identify and characterize body wall oscines in two species of sea cucumbers and a project that examined the shell selection criteria of marine hermit crabs. After three-and-a-half days of this, it was time to move to a new venue: Caramonal Beach to observe marine turtles and to perform some community service.
We all went with our guides, Nelson and Jimmy, at around 8 p.m. to the beach and were greeted by an olive ridley turtle that had just came up from the water to lay her eggs. Once she finished making her nest and had moved back to the water, Nelson, who is the director of the Caramonal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, dug up the nest and moved the eggs to a location that is safe from egg poachers as well as other predators. The entire experience was both amazing and humbling.
The next morning we headed to the University of Georgia research station in the San Luis Valley below the Monteverde cloud forest. Here the students continued to work on their research projects. Their projects culminated in an evening colloquium where they presented their preliminary research findings to a public audience. Their presentations were incredibly detailed and showed a great deal of insight into the problems that they had investigated while in the country. I was particularly impressed with the questions that the students asked after each presentation, which showed that they not only grasped the other students’ presentations, but had been able to glean the key information and provide helpful feedback to them as well. Overall the night was a resounding success.
The students also enjoyed a great time in the country, including some white water rafting, zip-lining through the forests near Monteverde and taking a chocolate tour in the Sarapiqui region, where we saw a great deal of wildlife. We saw dozens of different species including keel-billed toucans, white-faced monkeys, a caiman and blue jeans poison dart frogs to name just a few. Everyone had a great time on this remarkable trip.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
By Diana Moss
Editor’s note: Diana Moss teaches upper school Spanish. She chaperoned this trip and gave us this report.
Eight Harker travelers had the adventure of a lifetime in the Galapagos Islands this summer. Jeremy Binkley, grade 10, Divya Kalidindi, Avi Agarwal, Damon Aitken, Kenny Zhang, all grade 11 and Taiwanese ELI student Winnie Lin, along with chaperones Eric Nelson, upper school physics teacher, and myself, flew to Quito, Ecuador, then to the Galapagos, where we boarded a 140-foot yacht to cruise around the islands for seven days, ending with a day in the port city of Guayaquil.
We visited a total of seven different islands, all of which varied in topography from barren desert black lava flows to scrub, tropical jungles and mangrove lagoons. Each day we went on hikes, raft tours along the coast or snorkeling along with extensively trained and knowledgeable park naturalists. A highlight of the islands was our proximity to the wildlife. We saw adorable sea lions napping, posing and frolicking in the surf, land and marine iguanas, blue footed boobies with fluffy cotten chicks, frigates that floated in the air currents behind the boat, as well as males displaying their distinctive red pouches under their beaks to attract females to their nests, colorful crabs along the black lava rocks, finches, sea turtles, sharks, whales, rays, penguins, flamingos, many varieties of colorful fish and of course the giant Galapagos tortoise, both in the wild and in captive breeding centers. Most of these creatures could be approached without showing them any fear!
Life aboard the ship was also enjoyable; we dined on delicious buffet meals, star-gazed from the top deck, played cards, chess, spoons and even Twister and Jenga (difficult on a rocking boat). Spanish students had the additional benefit of having their land tours delivered in Spanish, as there were Puerto Ricans, Spaniards and Ecuadorian travelers aboard the ship. Additionally, we had the opportunity to visit Colegio Miguel Angel Cazares in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, where students had a lively exchange about their schools and cultures. The trip culminated with a day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and a tour of the beautiful Malecón 2000, a miles-long riverfront with parks, monuments and museums.
In mid-September, five Harker seniors joined 75 volunteers involved with the California Coastal Cleanup Day by spending several hours picking up litter scattered about Los Gatos Creek between Park and Santa Clara Avenues in downtown San Jose. The coastal cleanup program is the state’s largest volunteer effort and covers all coasts and inland waterways.
“We helped picked up nearly three tons of garbage, including a two-person inflatable raft, sofa, mattress, box springs and a couple of car batteries,” recalled Izzy Connell, whose father helped spearhead the effort, which concluded with a raffle for a bike from REI and time out to enjoy a bagged lunch.
Pictured here are Harker volunteer participants Izzy Connell, Daniel Wang and Ryan Mui.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school students, faculty and staff saw firsthand the results of Harker parent philanthropy as they set foot on campus at the start of the year. Digital signs, manufactured by Cisco, have been placed at various points around the campus to inform passersby of upcoming events, lunch menus, sports scores and more.
The signs are expected to be a big help in keeping those traversing the upper school campus up to date on the many happenings at Saratoga, while also allowing several of the school’s key donors to see the fruits of their donations and hard work. The hardware for the project was made available to Harker through a special Cisco donation program, wherein Cisco employees can have three dollars added to every dollar they donate if the donation is made in Cisco products equal to that value. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of Harker parents employed at Cisco, the school has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cisco products in the last several years.
“For many years, the Cisco families have been giving us stuff which blinks in closets, and so they don’t get the opportunity to say, ‘See, I helped buy that,’” said Dan Hudkins, director of instructional technology. making the latest Cisco implementation visible to all who pass through the upper school campus on a daily basis is also an outward gesture of thanks to Cisco families.
The signs have been placed in strategic locations with large amounts of foot traffic to ensure that they are viewed by as many people as possible. Three of the screens are located in the main classroom building: one in the lobby, one just outside the college counseling office and another in the hallway near the northern entrance of the building. The Shah Hall and Dobbins Hall lobbies each have one of their own, as does the Nichols Hall atrium. One more will sit on the wall in the Manzanita Hall dining room.
Each sign’s content is tailored to the area where it is located. For instance, the dining room sign will be updated daily with lunch menus, while the sign in the main building hallway may contain announcements, information about upcoming events or video clips of recent sports highlights. The content of each sign is handled by a person in the building or department where the screen is located.
The signs, however, are just one component of a planned multimedia technology project to produce and share video with the Harker community in a variety of ways. Once fully implemented, Cisco’s Show and Share server will enable those who produce videos at Harker to quickly and easily encode their videos into various formats and then make them available to the appropriate audiences.
“Sometimes there are things that you want to share with everybody. YouTube works great for that,” Hudkins said. But some things you only want available to students. Some things you only want available to upper school students. Maybe you have a recording of a faculty meeting; you only want the rest of the faculty to see it.”
Using the server, video producers will also be able to simultaneously create videos for a wide variety of devices, including high-definition TVs, laptops and smartphones.
Both Show and Share and the digital signs are part of Cisco’s Digital Media Management Suite, meaning videos produced by Show and Share can easily be output to the signs.
The Show and Share server is planned for rollout over the course of the 2012-13 school year. Digital signs are tentatively expected to appear at other Harker campuses by the spring of 2013.
Over the summer, tech also completed the installation of Cisco’s LAN Management System (LMS), also known as Cisco Prime. With the ever-increasing use of online teaching resources combined with new device policies that allow students to connect to Harker’s network with smartphones and tablets, the need for improved network management became more apparent than ever. Cisco Prime enables network managers to take a more active approach in keeping Harker’s network infrastructure up and running.
“It used to be that network administration, in terms of troubleshooting, had to respond to a report of a failure,” Hudkins explained. “Now we’re actively monitoring so that we avoid failing.”
The project was helped immensely by parent and Cisco employee Mark Basinski (Alexander, grade 7). “Thanks to Mark’s help, we were able to implement the system very efficiently,” Hudkins noted.
Cisco Prime allows Harker’s network administrators to keep track of the status of the network much more efficiently than before. It can notify tech staff, for example, when a piece of network hardware’s software is out of date and automatically install the most up-to-date version. It will also alert them when a power supply is becoming unstable.
The new LMS also offers the ability to schedule downtime for large portions of the network in order to save on energy costs. Hudkins hopes to begin this stage of the implementation sometime in the fall.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
This summer Harker varsity and junior varsity dancers won a number of awards and earned the opportunity to perform in Hawaii and London.
The United Spirit Association Dance Camp, held in July at the University of California, Santa Cruz, featured classes on technique and choreography and also featured a number of competitive challenges. Under the guidance of upper school dance teachers Amalia De La Rosa and Karl Kuehn, the Harker dancers won several awards.
The group comprised Ria Desai, Mi- chaela Kastelman and Molly Wolfe, grade 12; Jenny Dai, grade 11; Noel Ba- nerjee, Darby Millard, Erika Olsen and Jacqui Villarreal, grade 10; and Selin Ozcelik, Emily Pan, Kristen Park, Ankita Sharma and Madison Tomihiro, grade 9.
As a group, the Harker dance group was awarded a “superior” plaque, the highest group recognition at the camp, and was invited to perform at next year’s NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii. They also won the teamwork challenge and received an award for being the most improved team at the camp.
Kastelman, Millard and Villarreal were recognized as All-American dancers, an honor that included an invitation to perform in London with the United Spirit Association. For their overall technique and performance acumen, Kastelman, Banerjee, Millard and Villarreal all received “super sensational” ribbons. Millard and Kastelman reached the final round of competition and were among the top 10 dancers at the camp.
Desai’s and Sharma’s efforts in drill classes earned them first- place ribbons and Park and Ozcelik received second-place ribbons. In the drill competition, Sharma received a medallion for her second-place finish.
“It was really fantastic seeing the dancers take classes and participate with dance teams from all over California,” said Kuehn, noting that the students did a fantastic job representing Harker’s dance program.
“I am hoping the students walked away with a greater sense of team unity and Harker pride. This camp gave them a preview of what life is like as a professional dancer – taking classes, working on choreography and rehearsing all day long,” he said.
The junior varsity team is now working on their routine for the family picnic and the varsity troupe will be preparing for the homecoming festivities.
According to De La Rosa, a huge benefit was having members of both junior varsity and varsity participate, bringing together the whole dance department. “The dancers had an opportunity to challenge themselves both individually and as a team,” she added.
There was something for everyone at the upper school’s recent club fair, where students perused a range of inviting offerings on display at tables staffed by volunteer recruiters.
Held in the gym during a long lunch on Sept. 12, the club fair served as a “one-stop-shop,” allowing students to sign up for a club or clubs that matched their interests. Among this year’s offerings were the Robotics Club, Japanese Club, Tri-Sports Club (fencing, ultimate Frisbee, four square), the Gay Straight Alliance and the Chemistry Club.
There were also clubs promoting community service and activism including such stalwarts as GEO (Global Empowerment and Outreach), HEART (Harker Environmental and Animal Rights Team) and the Key Club, part of an international high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International.
According to Kerry Enzensperger, director of the upper school’s community service and activity program, “There are no club meetings until after the fair, so it’s really an official start to clubs for the new school year.”
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school journalism students, accompanied by journalism teacher Chris Daren, history teacher Julie Wheeler and Evan Barth, dean of studies, spent two weeks at the end of June on Maui for this year’s annual trip, preparing for the challenges of the upcoming school year.
Staff members for the yearbook, the Winged Post student newspaper and the Harker journalism news website TalonWP.com gathered to plan for coverage, learn how to use the tools of the trade and, most importantly, hone their real-world journalism skills taking photos, interviewing locals and writing and publishing stories about their experiences on the island.
The students spent the first few days of the trip discussing the incoming school year and prospecting for stories. Students discovered a local artist carrying on the traditional South Pacific artistry taught to him by his grandfather and told his story, in addition to publishing a detailed review of the nearby Makena Beach.
The second week started with an interview at the Maui Academy of Performing Arts (mAPA), whose staff discussed their latest production, “Narnia.” Later, the journalists got a firsthand look at the process of harvesting, preparing and skinning pineapples.
A highlight of the trip was the trek up the face of the enormous Haleakala, the shield volcano that makes up more than three quarters of the island of Maui. As the students reached the crater, the breathtaking visual. The group later took a trip along the road to Hana, famous for its gorgeous scenery. The final few days of the trip were packed with activity, starting with a double dose of live theater and finishing up with, of course, surfing lessons.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona, now seniors, were crowned national champions in public forum debate at the National Forensic League’s national tournament on June 15. Recent graduates Akshay Jagadeesh ‘12 and Aakash Jagadeesh ‘12 (no relation) reached the top 30. The tournament featured more than 260 teams, and thousands of students across the country competed just to qualify for the tournament.
Harker also won a school of excellence award in the debate category. These awards are given to schools with multiple successful teams.
Harker’s honor council hosted an honor and ethics conference that brought together representatives from the Pacific Collegiate School, San Francisco University High School, Pinewood School and the Bay School of San Francisco to discuss various scenarios and find out what issues schools need to address. The Harker students came up with case studies and presented them to the other schools’ representatives. Case studies included information on tests revealed during conversations between periods, plagiarism and theft of unattended school-related items such as books and calculators.
Evan Barth, dean of upper school students, said the scenarios presented in each case study were primarily used to generate feedback from each school and spur discussion in order to discover the issues that schools were having with ethics violations. “It’s for the students to have ideas to bounce off of each other,” he said.
This article was originally published in the fall 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s InvenTeam visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June for this year’s EurekaFest, an annual event held by Lemelson-MIT for young inventors. 2012 graduates Prag Batra, Sachin Jain and Arihant Jain, along with grade 12 students Shantanu Joshi, Wilbur Yang and Ramakrishnan Menon and grade 11 student Nikhil Dilip, were at the event to showcase the invention that won them funding in this year’s InvenTeam contest. Their project, an aquatic thermoelectric generator that can produce solar energy without the need for expensive panels, won them a $9,110 grant in the fall of last year to build a prototype.
During their time at the event, the team toured MIT’s wind tunnels and fusion lab, and participated in a 20-minute design challenge in which they were randomly placed into teams which were then instructed to build a free-standing structure made with balloons. They also attended presentations that showed them how to market their inventions, and saw presentations by the collegiate and industrial winners of the InvenTeam competition.