This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker journalism students started their summer off with an exciting trek to Europe, accompanied by journalism teacher Chris Daren and English teacher Pauline Paskali, to learn and write about the continent’s rich culture and history.
The first stop on their trip was the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, where they searched out stories and interviewed the artistic director of the new Harpa concert hall, as well as Katrin Juliusdottir, Iceland’s minister of tourism, energy and industry. A day of sightseeing followed, traveling along the Golden Circle, a popular tourist route in the south of Iceland. Among the many breathtaking sights were Skógafoss Falls, the Sólheimajökull glacier and a still-sunny sky at 11:48 p.m.
The group then traveled to England, where they stayed at the Old Rectory in Tattingstone, Suffolk, to complete their assignments from Iceland and begin work for fall journalism activities. While there, the students were visited by veteran Associated Press photographer
Harry Hamburg, who shared his vast knowledge and many amusing anecdotes with the group.
Venice provided the next fodder for the journalists. The area around Piazza San Marco was canvassed for stories, and the remainder of the time was spent sightseeing and working on their assignments, as well as enjoying a special dinner at a 700-year-old restaurant.
Paris was next, after lunch during a brief stop in Milan. During their stay in the City of Lights, the students visited the Louvre Museum and toured the river Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral. They also stopped by the Eiffel Tower, where they enjoyed authentic French crêpes.
Back to England! In London they interviewed Member of Parliament Yasmin Qureshi of the Labor Party, who gave the students a tour of Parliament and answered questions about her job. The group was permitted to see the House of Commons and House of Lords in session, a fine treat for these inquisitive students.
Articles and photos chronicling the journalists’ exciting journey through Europe are posted at www.talonwp.com.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s Latin program is going strong, and students have an annual event at which to showcase their knowledge in the National Junior Classical League Convention.
In July, Harker students, along with John Hawley and Lisa Masoni, upper and middle school Latin teachers, traveled to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., for this year’s convention. The convention is attended by more than 1,000 students every year who compete in multiple academic and creative arts contests, and several Harker students had top 10 placements in multiple categories.
Nik Datuashvili, grade 11, took second place in four categories: ancient geography IV, Greek derivatives, Latin derivatives and reading comprehension. He also earned fourth place in academic heptathlon and eighth place in Latin grammar advanced, Latin vocabulary IV and Certamen advanced level.
Meawhile, junior Richard Fan took eighth in Hellenic history IV, ninth in Greek derivatives IV and Roman history IV and eighth in Certamen advanced.
Sean Fernandes, grade 11, reached ninth place in ancient geography and 10th in reading comprehension prose level IV.
Finishing fifth in girls dramatic interpretation and Latin oratory III was Zina Jawadi, grade 10, who also took sixth place in girls Latin prose.
Grade 12 student Jessica Lin took first place in Roman life V+ and 10th in the grade 11 girls essay category.
Finally, junior Sean Nierat earned fourth place in grade 10 traditional photography.
Alexandra Rosenboom, an English teacher at the upper school, not only teaches writing but is also a writer herself. Her book, Honest as Any Treeless Place, was selected as a “remarkable finalist” by Fanny Howe for 1913 Press’s First Book contest. As its name hints, the contest is for a book in any genre by a writer who has not yet had a book published. 1913 Press was established in just 2003, but the First Book contest is already competitive. Howe noted in her email to the competitors, “It’s inane to say how many fabulous manuscripts were submitted…yet it’s true.”
Rosenboom says Howe, “just chose the Walt Whitman Award winner a few months ago, so it is pretty exciting that she liked my book as well.”
Tennis: Girls tennis is on a win streak. After defeating Crystal Springs in mid-October, they went on to win matches against Pinewood with a final score of 6-1, and Notre Dame, where the score was 5-2. Dan Molin, upper school athletics director, singled out Harker singles players Daria Karakoula, grade 11, and Aranshi Kumar, grade 12, as being “especially dominant against Pinewood,” as well as junior Jenny Chen, who he said “continues to impress at #1 singles.” Nicole Dalal, grade 12, and Indica Sur, grade 11, were also noted for their court prowess as a doubles team. The girls are now 8-2 overall and 4-2 in the league.
Water Polo: Girls water polo had a packed couple of weeks. After winning in overtime against Fremont for a final score of 8-7, they played seven more games, five of which took place at the Western States Varsity Girls Water Polo Tournament in Modesto. They won three of their five games at the prestigious tournament, defeating Beyer, Ukiah and Newman, and losing only to San Joaquin and Bear Creek. Just one day before the tournament, they played their league foe, Mountain View, winning with a score of 11-5. The team also played Santa Clara High, losing 7-10. Keri Clifford, grade 11, and Anna Levine, grade 10, scored three goals each against Fremont, with Levine scoring the game winning point. Clifford went on to score an additional 16 goals during the weekend tournament. The girls are now 12-9 overall, 5-4 in league play.
The boys water polo team also played against Fremont and lost by only one point, with a final score of 12-13. Cole Manaster, grade 12, scored four goals in the game. The team came back for a victory over Santa Clara, winning the match 11-8, with Manaster and juniors Ryan Hume, Gilad Nilo and Karan Das-Grande scoring two goals each. Jason Yu, grade 12, had “a great showing in goal,” Molin says. The boys are now 7-10 overall.
Golf: The Harker girls golf team lost to Castilleja at the Los Lagos course, with the final tally coming in at 215-239. But the team came back to Los Lagos the next day, where they defeated Notre Dame High 222-286. Molin noted that sophomore Kristine Lin “continued her season long spectacular performances” with a 36 against Castilleja, which earned her medalist honors, and a 37 against Notre Dame. Patricia Huang, grade 11, also earned medalist honors with a one over par 35 at Notre Dame. Karen Wang, grade 12, tied her season best with a 42, while newcomer Connie Li, grade 10, shot her career best with a 55. The girls are now 4-3.
Football: Football suffered two more losses, one against Santa Clara and one against Monta Vista, dropping them to 2-5 for the season. Quarterback Spenser Quash, grade 11, threw 200 yards and four touchdowns during the Santa Clara game, two of them to sophomore Kevin Moss. The lone Harker score during the Monta Vista game came on what Molin called a “perfect throw” from Quash to Robert Deng, grade 11, on a 60 yard touchdown pass play.
Volleyball: The girls varsity volleyball team fought hard to remain undefeated, winning a five-set victory over Woodside Priory before finally losing their first game to King’s Academy. They are still tied for first place in the league, with an overall record of 6-1. Senior Alisha Mayor led the attack against Woodside with 20 kills, and had an additional 18 kills in the King’s Academy match.
Cross Country: The cross country team had their second league meet at Westmoor High. For the boys, freshman Corey Gonzales took first for Harker (and sixth overall), Proteek Biswas, grade 12, placed eighth overall, and junior Tyler Yeats took tenth. For the varisty girls, junior Ragini Bhattacharya placed 11th overall.
Harker will be recognizing all our awesome seniors on the tennis, football, water polo, and cheerleading teams this week.
From football, a big thank you to: Bradley Araki, Aaron Bisla, David Dominguez, Zach Ellenberg, David Fang, Gerard Glasauer, Daanish Jamal, Revanth Kosaraju, Jason Kuan, Jun Hee Lee, Rahul Madduluri, Avinash Patel, Angad Randhawa, Indraneel Salukhe, Saagar Sarin and Partha Vora.
On the boys and girls water polo teams, we want to recognize and thank Tariq Jahshan, Jagdeesh Kottapalli, Cole Manaster, Akshay Ramachandran, Jason Yu, Simrun Bhagat and Kaitlin Halloran.
To the senior tennis players Nicole Dalal, Aranshi Kumar and Tanya Piskun—a big thank you.
Finally, we want to recognize and thank Saira Ahuja and Jessica Lin, our senior cheerleaders.
At today’s upper school meeting, biology teacher Kate Schafer announced that The Harker School would be participating in a study on influenza with Dr. Marcel Salathe, assistant professor of biology at Penn State University and head of the Salathe Group, a start-up research group based at the university.
During the 2009-10 school year, Salathe conducted a study at Harker on how infectious diseases transfer between high school students. Salathe’s work was published in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” (PNAS) the official journals of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He received a $1.4 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the upcoming study, which is expected to last between one to one and a half years. The previous study enjoyed a 95% participation rate from the student population, a primary reason Salathe chose Harker again for his research.
“This time around a core group of students will have the opportunity to work directly with Dr. Salathe on ground-breaking research that has the potential to guide the way we understand and manage disease outbreaks,” Schafer said at the meeting. “Students will be working on a variety of different projects, such as investigating the accuracy of rapid influenza tests and looking for bacterial and viral hot spots.”
The process to find students to participate in the project is slated to begin as soon as Oct. 18. Anita Chetty, science department chair, said at the meeting that the entire project will consist of five studies, each led by a lead investigator from grade 11. Under each lead investigator will be a team of students from grades 9-12. Due to the length of the project, only juniors are eligible to be lead investigators, as the seniors will have graduated before the study is complete. Chetty said that more information on the application process for lead investigators would be divulged in Tuesday’s class meetings, and information on the application process for each lead investigator’s team would be available in the coming weeks.
Chetty estimated that the study would begin in earnest in November, “just in time for flu season.”
“We’re very excited about this opportunity and think it reflects the true research community we continue to build here at Harker,” Schafer said.
Broadway is coming to Harker! The school will host the west coast auditions for the Broadway revival of “Annie.” Harker alumna Lisa Schwebke ’04 connected the school with New York’s Telsey + Co. casting agency. As part of the visit, casting agent Rachel Hoffman, CSA, will work with candidates of The Harker Conservatory’s Certificate Program to build an educational experience on this opportune event on Harker’s campus.
On Fri., Oct. 21, from 7-9 p.m., Hoffman, who has helped cast many name productions including “Wicked”, “Rent,” “Hairspray,” “Legally Blonde” and “The Color Purple,” will
lead a workshop on effective techniques for auditioning on Broadway. Then, on Sun., Oct. 23, certificate candidates will serve as interns for the casting process as Harker hosts auditions for “Annie” at the middle school campus from 8-4 p.m..
This partnership is a new development the Harker Conservatory, which, this summer, toured its steam punk version of Stephen Schwartz’s “Pippin” to the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Harker was one of only 45 American high schools accepted to perform its work overseas as part of the festival, where “Pippin” was reviewed as an “excellent production,” created by “an enthusiastic and well-drilled cast.”
The Harker School’s Global Empowerment Organization (GEO) begins its annual awareness and fundraising week on Oct. 17, with a kickoff assembly on Oct. 14. This year, all efforts are geared toward helping the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) save the lives of children in developing countries.
Each year, GEO tackles a Millennium Development Goal (or MDG)—this is a world problem that has been identified by the United Nations as an international concern. Usually, GEO lets its members chose one MDG to focus on, and then narrows it down to specific causes and organizations. However, because GEO Week got moved forward this year, the officers of the club had to make the choice as to which foundation they would support before the school year began.
Katie Siegel, grade 12, the GEO president, had the initial idea to support GAVI. “I came up with the idea of working with a nonprofit that distributes vaccines to impoverished nations through a two week summer intensive on foreign policy. Our group’s topic was vaccine distribution. My research there made me realize the importance of the cause, so I thought it would be great if GEO worked with GAVI, the main nonprofit that controls international vaccine distribution.” Siegel says.
The club’s Public Relations Officer, Cherry Xie, grade 12, agreed it would be an eye-opening experience. “We often hear about raising the standards of life to alleviate poverty around the globe, but we don’t usually think about the possibility of preventative measures, like giving vaccinations as a way to better someone’s life. It is much less costly than having to treat someone for a certain disease, and it can prevent families from becoming trapped in the poverty cycle—children live, and therefore can work to bring in income for the family,” Xie said.
On Oct. 14, Tim Nielander, who initially served as General Counsel for GAVI and later as Managing Director of Corporate Services, will speak to students about the GAVI Alliance, what the organization does, and why the cause is so important.
Then the week’s fundraising and awareness officially starts Oct. 17. Throughout the week, students will take vows of silence. Students who take the vow will get pledges from friends and family in exchange for maintaining complete silence for 24-hours. One raffle ticket will be given for every 20 dollars raised, which will be entered to win microbe plushies. The students will represent the children of the world who have no voice because they were not immunized and succumbed to disease.
In addition to the pledges, GEO will be selling wristbands and sport bags at lunch and after school. Candy grams (or as they’ll be called, GAVI grams) will also be available to send to friends on Halloween.
Finally, on Thursday, Oct. 20th, there will be a school-wide simulation game in which students are given lists of people they are supposed “infect.” As Xie explains, “Five GEO members in each grade will start as initial infectors. The idea is to see how many students become ‘infected’ by the end of the day. This is designed to educate students about what could happen if they were not given immunizations in childhood and understand more personally the cause we are supporting.”
During the long lunch period on Sept. 28, Chris Nikoloff, head of school, gave the first of a series of lectures inspired by Alan Watts’ “The Book.” The lecture focused on human concepts of the self, and what people mean when they use the word “I.” A central focus of the discussion was how to begin answering questions about the persons that people believe themselves to be. The topic elicited many insightful questions and comments from the audience of students and faculty.
In early October, The Harker School had 18 middle school students and three upper school students attend the Jack Howe Memorial Speech and Debate Tournament at California State University, Long Beach. The tournament has been running for 16 years, and attracts students from all over California and Nevada. This year’s tournament included a student congress, all 11 California High School Speech Association individual events and three styles of debate. The students competed in policy debate, congressional debate and original oratory.
In JV policy debate, four middle school students competed on two teams: Panny Shan, grade 8, and Steven Cao, grade 7, along with Ananya Krishnaswamy, grade 8, and Shivani Gohil, grade 8. Not only did Shan and Cao advance to the quarterfinals in this category, but the students were also recognized individually for their exceptional speaking skills. Shan received the second place speaker award, Cao received the eighth and Gohil received the 17th.
In congressional debate, Misha Tseitlin, Emaad Raghib and Aditya Dhar, all grade 7, competed in the varsity division, with Dhar advancing to the finals. In the novice division, Arjun Mehta and Arjun Goyal, both grade 10 students who were competing for the first time, advanced to the finals.
For original oratory, Carissa Chen, grade 7, competed in the novice division. She wrote and memorized a 10-minute speech for which she received second place. Finally, in varsity original oratory, sophomore Zina Jawadi advanced to the semifinals, placing her in the top 12 contestants.
Over the summer, nearly 30 Harker students participated in internships at a number of different universities and businesses, including Stanford University, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN) and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Students worked in a wide variety of disciplines. Paulomi Bhattacharya, grade 11, and Jay Reddy, grade 12, worked on nanochemistry projects during their stint at UC Santa Cruz, while senior Shival Dasu, another Santa Cruz intern, helped restore a telescope at the James Lick Observatory. Aranshi Kumar, grade 12, analyzed occurrences of diabetes in Santa Clara County teenagers during his internship at Hunter Labs, and Akshay Ramachandran, grade 12, worked on the development of electroactive polymer materials at Artificial Muscle.
In late August, science department chair Anita Chetty visited Santa Cruz to see several students present on the research they performed during their summer internships. “I was so proud of our students,” she said. “They were poised, eloquent and I felt as though I was listening to graduate students talking about work that had been done over a long period of time.”
On Sat., Oct. 15, several Harker students from grades 11 and 12 will accompany advancement director Joe Rosenthal to Santa Cruz’s Evolutionary Revolutionary event, which will feature several speakers from the university’s science faculty in addition to an audiovisual performance by Symphony Silicon Valley. The event will be held at Cupertino’s Flint Center.