Raghav Sehtia, grade 12, has been honored with the prestigious Blue Diamond Award from the Second Harvest Food Bank. The award was handed to Sehtia from Kathy Jackson, CEO of Second Harvest, during the food bank’s recent 21st annual recognition event held at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts.
This award is the food bank’s highest level of award, and is normally given to corporations and organizations. Sehtia stood out as an exception in receiving this award as an individual. Previously, Sehtia was recognized for his efforts to fight hunger by being named a 2011 Stephen J. Brady STOP Hunger Regional Honoree. He also received the Platinum Award last spring from the Second Harvest Food Bank for his work in organizing food drives for the past four years.
“Using birthday money along with the proceeds of bake sales held during the school year and at assorted school breaks, Raghav raised nearly $3200 for Second Harvest Food Bank over the past year. I was delighted to present him with a Blue Diamond Award at our recent Freedom From Hunger awards. Raghav’s determination to support the hungry in our community is truly inspiring,” said Jackson.
“I want to convey my heartfelt thanks to the whole Harker community in motivating and inspiring Raghav in one way or the other,” said Arvind Sehtia, his father.
Sehtia has called volunteering a passion of his. To read more articles about his volunteer efforts with the Second Harvest Food Bank and other organizations, click on the links below:
Last month the lower, middle and upper school jazz bands united to present an Evening of Jazz. Held at the Blackford Theater, the event was led by Louis Hoffman, Dave Hart and Chris Florio, the directors of the jazz bands for each campus.
Kicking off the evening, The Harker School Jazz Band performed “Two Seconds to Midnight” by composer Alan Baylock and “Harker Swing” by David Len Allen, arranged by Harker music aide Paul Woodruff.
Those numbers were followed by the Lower School Jazz Ensemble’s rendition of John Coltrane’s “Equinox” and Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man.” Then, the Middle School Jazz Band performed the more traditional numbers “Motherless Child” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Following a brief intermission and further performances by all three ensembles came the combined finale, “Work Song” by Nat Adderley. Running the gamut from rousing, upbeat swing numbers to slow, soulful ballads, Evening of Jazz showcased the breadth of Harker student talent and entertained and delighted its audience.
Staff for the show included Brian Larsen, production manager, and Paul Vallerga, technical director. The Harker performing arts department noted its gratitude to contributors to the school’s annual campaign, which helps make programs such as this possible.
Rohan Chandra, grade 11, recently received the news that he has been selected as a tenor for the All-National Honor Mixed Choir by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). Chandra will participate in a three-day program this June that culminates in a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on June 24, during which he will perform with other top student musicians selected from all over the country.
Chris Nikoloff, head of school, has delivered the fifth and final lecture of his 2011-12 Cum Laude Society series based on author Alan Watts’ “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.”
Held in the Nichols Hall auditorium, Nikoloff’s recent address further explored topics revolving around the theme of fully knowing oneself, and opening up the mind to allow for the possibility of being much more than you think.
He told an audience of about 20 Harker students and several faculty members that he got the idea to speak on the philosophical topic of knowing oneself after spending a plane ride engrossed in reading Watts’ book, which is aimed at teenagers and young adults.
Nikoloff began his lecture with the disclaimer, “You don’t have to buy any of this, I’m just presenting his (Watts’) ideas.” He then carried on with a brief review of previous talks, before discussing such intriguing topics as being an “ego in a bag of skin”—a metaphor he said Watts likely uses not to “gross you out” but to jar us into questioning our purpose in being part of the universe.
He also examined the age-old argument between body and soul, or spirituality versus physicality. “We need the earth, the earth grounds us, but we are obviously more than just a body,” said Nikoloff.
Pondering whether existence itself can be for its own sake, he acknowledged how hard it is to “make sense out of a nonsensical world.” He closed his talk by reading a moving passage from Watts’ book that says it is we who evoke light out of the universe, because “without eyes to see there would be no sun.”
The Cum Laude Society hosts engaging talks and lecture series related to the lives of Harker students. Leading the discussions has clearly been a labor of love for Nikoloff, who took time out after his talk for an informal chat with his audience.
Joking around, he said he “likes to get together and talk about weird things” with the Harker Cum Laude Society. He then added on a more serious note that “these hours have been among the best of my year.”
Noah Levy, grade 12, earned the rank of Eagle Scout in a recent ceremony at Harker’s Nichols Hall. Levy completed requirements for 23 badges, thoguh only 21 are required, in addition to rebuilding a dilapidated footbridge/horsebridge in Belgatos Park in Los Gatos, as part of his Eagle Service Requirement. Levy has played varsity baseball for Harker for four years, now starting as a center fielder. He is also proficient in Japanese, after taking the language for six years at Harker and spending a summer learning abroad in Tokyo and living with a host family. Levy begins his first year at Tufts University, his first choice, in Boston in the fall.
Anooshree Sengupta, grade 6, recently participated in “Dear Mr. Henshaw,” a play presented by the California Theater Center (CTC) in Sunnyvale. The play, written by Newberry Award-winning author Beverly Cleary (Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby), is about an author, Mr. Henshaw, who encourages Leigh, his number one fan, to write a journal to help him come to terms with the challenges of growing up, his parents’ recent divorce, and with being the new kid in school. The plays at CTC are a mix of adult and child actors. Sengupta participated in 15 performances of the play.
Harker’s Tech Club has developed a new election software program. The program used during freshman Honor Council elections in January will be brought back for the upcoming April ASB, Student Council and Honor Council elections.
Work on the program began last spring and was coordinated by Prag Batra, grade 12. Batra said, “Some of the biggest challenges involved developing an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and bug testing.”
The software is online and Web-based. Users visit a website on a designated school computer, enter a code given to them (to preserve anonymity), then indicate their preferences for each officer position on a series of screens. On each screen, users drag and drop their preferred candidates from the left side of the screen into a list on the right side in order of desired preference.
Students used PHP, CSS, HTML and JavaScript to build the software, which is hosted as a website on a server.
The most memorable moment for Batra was seeing the site come to life after several hours of coding testing. “It was very rewarding in the end once we had a fully working final product ready,” said Batra. “I think this sense of knowing that we built a working product that would then be used by hundreds of fellow students was what made the entire project worthwhile for us.”
After the software was ready for the Honor Council elections, Batra worked with teachers and administrators to deploy it and set it up for the elections.
Pauline Paskali, upper school English teacher and one of the first to see the technology said, “These young people are extraordinary in their willingness to spend countless hours working on projects for the school. They deserve to be commended for their skill, their perseverance and their generosity.”
Harker’s Clean Tech team, a new club sponsored by Smriti Koodanjeri, upper school chemistry teacher, came in third at the inaugural Clean Tech Competition Student Challenge on March 20, announced the National Science Teachers Association and Applied Materials, Inc., which sponsored the competition.
The Clean Tech competition is a collaborative student design contest developed to inspire the next generation of leaders and innovators in the field of clean technology. It immerses high school students in real-world challenges that illustrate the powerful potential of clean technology to address problems that confront humanity.
The competition involved students, ages 13-18, from the San Francisco Bay Area and Xi’an, China. The challenge posed to students was “Solar Solution to the Rescue.” Under the guidance of a teacher or other adult team leader, teams of students designed solar-powered solutions to basic human needs identified in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
After identifying a situation, students explored the issue and presented their clean tech solution to a panel of industry and education experts for judging. Harker’s team, which consisted of Maya Sathaye, Shelby Rorabaugh and Lorraine Wong, all grade 11, won third place with its project: A Solar Alternative to Charge Electric Wheelchairs. In addition to the distinction of winning, the team won $1,000 to use toward education.
Students interested in alternative energy may want to attend the upcoming Green Teen Summit on Sat., April 14 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. hosted at Harker’s upper school campus. The student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee). A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the price of the ticket, which can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.
About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Signups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the signups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.
The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.
Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.
The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.
The shelter’s guests were a happy lot as they ate with relish. “The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.
The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s tenth grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime drop-in center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”
Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a class room and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.
Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.
“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.
Harker’s robotics team participated in mid-March in the University of California, Davis Sacramento Regional, where Eric Nelson, the robotics advisor, received the prestigious Mentor of the Year award. The Davis tournament was an excellent opportunity for the team to introduce its influx of freshmen students to robotics competitions as well testing its robot against teams from Northern California and the Sacramento Valley.
Robotics competitions involve pitting robots against each other in a game. This year’s game was called Robot Rumble, in which robots attempted to score points by shooting foam balls into basketball-like hoops of varying heights. The robots were controlled by a Kinect motion-sensing device as well as by remote controls. To see an entertaining animated walkthrough of the game, please click here.
Though Harker’s shooter had some minor problems, the team was confident they could have a fully-functional and proficiently-working robot at its next competition. Abhinav Khanna, grade 12, the team’s press liaison, said, “Overall, the team had an excellent opportunity to bond and put our engineering abilities to the test, and in the end, every member came away with a better understanding of the game.” The team also participated in the Silicon Valley Regional at the end of March – watch for the report – and will enter the championships in late April.
Students interested in mobile technology got a special treat on March 21 when young entrepreneur Ashutosh Desai spoke to the Tech Club about developing games for iOS (the Apple mobile operating system), even with only basic programming skills. Desai also discussed his new startup, makegameswithus, which offers programming tutorials and community support.