Latin Week events were popping up all over the upper school campus the week of April 19-23. Sponsored by the Junior Classical League (JCL), the events ranged from the sale of gummy kabobs to mosaic puzzle-making competitions and advisory trivia. Mid-week, students were invited to dress up in togas to celebrate and gain spirit points for their class. The week culminated with Dr. Caroline Winterer of Stanford University speaking on ancient Rome’s influence on the United States.
The Harker upper school Junior Classical League (JCL) earned a first-place trophy in its division at the California Junior Classical League Convention. In the last 11 years, Harker upper school JCL students have won first place eight times and second place three times. The convention was held at Woodbridge High School in Irvine. Under the guidance of Harker JCL president Sohini Khan and vice president Alex Han, both Gr. 12, Harker students kept up a loud and enthusiastic set of cheers and routines. Students wore togas and T-shirts designed by April Luo, Gr. 11.
On the dais were upper and middle school sponsors John Hawley, upper school Latin teacher, and Lisa Masoni, middle school Latin teacher, who are members of the adult board of the CJCL, national certamen chair and treasurer respectively. They were joined on the podium by Brandon Araki, Gr. 12, who serves as the webmaster for the CJCL.
Many upper school students placed high in JCL competition this year. Top placers in ancient geography were Araki, who achieved first place at the high school advanced level and Richard Fan, Gr. 9, who took first at high school level three. Performing well in Latin vocabulary were Araki with another first place spot at high school advanced, Pranav Sharma, Gr. 9, earning first place at high school level 3 and Ashvin Swaminathan, Gr. 9, who took second at high school level three.
Harker had several top finishes in the certamen team category, including Araki, Khan, Jessica Lin and Phillip Oung, both Gr. 10, taking first place athigh school advanced, Sharma winning first place at high school level three and Fan, Swaminathan and Jonathan Cho, Gr. 9, earning second place at high school level three.
In Latin derivatives, Shannon Su, Gr. 9, took first place at high school level three, Han made his way to second place at the high school advanced level, Luo took third, also in advanced, and Monisha Dilip, Gr. 12, took fourth at high school advanced.
Christophe Pellissier, Gr. 10, took first place in mottoes at the high school advanced level, with Han taking second. Other top finishers in mottoes were Anjali Menon, Gr. 12, who placed third at high school advanced, and Laura Pedrotti, Gr. 9, taking third at high school level three.
Pellissier, Han and Menon also took the top three spots, respectively, in abbreviations and quotations. Pedrotti took third place in this category at high school level three.
In the sight reading Latin competitions, Menon placed first in the prose subcategory at the high school advanced level. Meanwhile, Lin, made it to third in poetry at the high school advanced level. Swaminathan and Su reached first and third in sight reading prose, respectively, at high school level three.
Swaminathan also took second in advanced grammar, while Khan placed fourth. Michael Cheng, Gr. 9, placed fourth in grammar at high school level three.
In other categories, Eric Zhang, Gr. 9, took fourth place in Roman history, Lin placed first in Roman daily life, Menon earned first place in dramatic interpretation and Fan won first place in mythology.
Additionally, Swaminathan garnered first place in individual academic and individual combined events in third year Latin. Lin was elected 2010-11 recording secretary for the CJCL, and Ramakrishnan Menon was appointed CJCL webmaster for next year. Khan was awarded a CJCL Scholarship of $1,500 toward Latin education in college.
Next year’s CJCL convention will be at Miramonte High School in Orinda, near Berkeley.
Last month, Japanese teacher Keiko Irino’s Japanese 2 class experienced a dose of Japanese culture on a field trip to Saratoga’s Hakone Tea Garden. After enjoying the spring blossoms over o-bento, traditional boxed lunch, the students purified themselves in a ritualistic washing of hands and rinsing of the mouth called tsukubai before entering the tea room.
The students sat seiza style on the tatami mat and watched as the teishu – host – served Japanese sweets and omatcha, tea typically served during a tea ceremony. A few students said the tea was a little bitter, but the sweets were very delicious.
Afterward, the host showed the students the tools used in the tea ceremony and her assistant talked about the history of the tea ceremony. “It was such a beautiful day, and we all had a very pleasant afternoon,” Irino said.
The Harker Innovation Team has been selected as one of three semifinalists for their dashboard for the car of the future. It was entered in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize DASH+ contest, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Grand Prize winner is being judged now and a popular vote will be taken into account for the final decision.
DASH+ challenged students to consider increasing energy efficency in the ever-changing automotive landscape. The goal? To design a dashboard that helps drivers maximize fuel efficiency and reduce environmental impact by incorporating vehicle information and real-time feedback. HIT’s plan includes a graphic design, a technical plan and a video pitch for their design, the Enviro-HEART – Environment Helping Essential Adaptive Response Technology.
The dashboard panel, a result of extensive research, takes instantaneous feedback and displays the collected and interpreted data in a visually enhanced console. It offers the driver alternative transportation possibilities, information about regenerative braking and visual cues about the vehicle’s overall efficiency. The project was truly a mark of teamwork: “From when we built CARE in December 2009, we developed a good sense of the various talents and skills each team member excelled at so we were each able to contribute in significant ways,” Isaac Madan, Gr. 11, said.
For their efforts, all semifinalist teams will receive Flip video cameras. However, HIT members need your votes to win the grand prize: a VIP trip to Detroit to pitch their ideas to automotive industry representatives and receive valuable mentoring from leaders in advanced vehicle development. On May 11, a DASH+ film crew stopped by the Saratoga campus to film the students at work on their project and interview them for an upcoming promotional video.
Voting will open May 1 and last until May 30. For more information, please visit the contest’s website.
An article at Examiner.com reports that Shreya Indukuri, Gr. 10, gave a presentation at the Tech Titans of Tomorrow: Teens Plugged In 2010 conference, hosted by SDForum in Mountain View. The conference drew students who helped improve the environmental standards of their schools through forward-thinking initiatives.
In her presentation, Indukuri discussed how more efficient energy usage could be leveraged by schools to reduce costs, which could prove quite valuable in a time of budgetary crisis. She used Harker as an example, showing that the school was able to save money by monitoring and controlling energy consumption at the lower school campus.
Indukuri and classmate Daniela Lapidous, Gr. 10, were to present at the Bay Area Schools Environmental Conference on May 1 at the Hayes Mansion in San Jose. Indukuri will also speak on a youth panel for the San Francisco Commonwealth Club on May 4, at the club’s office at 595 Market St. in San Francisco.
On April 13, Namrata Anand, Gr. 12, was presented with a county commendation from the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. She was honored for being a national finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. Anand traveled to Washington, D.C., to compete against 39 other students from around the country. The commendation mentioned the coverage of her achievement in the San Jose Mercury News.
To get to the finals, Anand reached conclusions about the Andromeda galaxy that could help scientists locate areas with a high likelihood of containing extraterrestrial life.
The commendation was presented by Ken Yeager, president of the board of supervisors, to R.K. Anand, Namrata’s father. He accepted on his daughter’s behalf, as she was busy rehearsing for the upper school production of “Les Miserables.”
Three spring sports recently said goodbye to seniors whose seasons have come to a close. In mid-April, boys varsity tennis honored Samir Datta, Sanjeev Datta, Akum Gill, Ashish Mittal, Navin Sabharwal, Kevin Saxon and Sumeet Sharma.
At the end of April the swim teams also said goodbye to their seniors. On the boys team, Michael Clifford, Cole Davis, Stefan Schwartz, Jose Costa and Darren Syu will be graduating this year. Meanwhile, the girls bid farewell to Jeanette Chin, Christina Ma and Vivian Wong.
Check back in May when softball, lacrosse, golf and baseball will all be hosting senior nights as well.
The Saratoga campus received a special Earth Day gift of six western redbud trees from the Modern Woodmen of America. Representatives of the group presented the trees April 22. With the help of the Harker maintenance staff, the trees were planted along the edge of Rosenthal Field.
Founded in 1883, Modern Woodmen of America is a fraternal society that provides financial services and other benefits to its members, which number more than 750,000 nationwide.
Reprinted from the Harker Quarterly March 2010 issue
The response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti tops the list of Harker’s recent outreach efforts. Students, teachers and parents joined forces at all three campuses to fund ongoing efforts to provide food, medical supplies and shelter to the victims of the January temblor in Port au Prince, the tiny country’s densely populated capitol.
The Bucknall Student Council and the Gr. 4-5 Spirit and Service Club helped organize a hot chocolate and donuthole drive in January, earning over $3,000. Several lower school teachers and staff donated funds to offset the costs of food and drink to further enhance profit margin. “Our student body truly outdid itself with its generosity and concern displayed throughout our fundraising effort,” said Kristin Giammona, elementary division head Gr. 4-5. “It is heartwarming to witness and be a part of such an outpouring of care and monetary support.”
Similarly, middle school students participated in Coin Wars, a friendly grade-level competition to make a difference. The organizers asked students to donate pennies and nickels for Haitian relief. The class with the largest number of one- and five-cent coins in their collection earned the most points. The effort, won by the class of 2015, raised a total of $3,100 in ten days.
Blood Drive Although they planned their fundraising and blood drive months in advance, members of the upper school Red Cross Club adapted their efforts to benefit Haitian relief. The annual blood drive collected over 80 donations from eligible students, faculty, staff and parents. While donations will likely be used locally, the collection helps offset blood donations elsewhere that will be sent to Port au Prince.
In another Red Cross effort, students emptied their pockets of change in a competition to slime the class dean and class presidents at the weekly school meeting, prompting generous contributions. The mounting piles of coin attracted daily attention in Manzanita Hall, and playful challenges by the deans and presidents to stuff the jars of their competitors added spice to the contest.
In the end, the sophomores were victorious, resulting in class dean Matt Harley and class president Revanth Kosaraju suffering a sliming worth $1,137. In total, the slime contest earned $1,983, an amount complemented by bake sales and pretzel-grams which earned $274 for a total of $2,267.
“We thought that it would be great to offer the Harker community an opportunity to assist Red Cross Haiti relief efforts during our week,” said Red Cross Club president Alex Han, Gr. 12. “We put our best efforts into raising awareness for the cause and making our fundraisers original and exciting, whether through selling handmade pretzel-grams or having a dean and class president get slimed.”
Harker parents joined in Haiti relief efforts as well. Siobhan Due, mother of Kai Due, K, and a stylist at Faux Hair Salon, donated several haircuts to earn funds on behalf of earthquake victims. Due and her colleagues raised $305 for the effort.
Other Harker outreach efforts included:
Acterra In late February 18 upper school students spent half a day removing non-native plants from the Arastradero Preserve as part of a project by Acterra, an environmental nonprofit in Palo Alto. “The weather held and everyone enjoyed working together; we got a lot done,” said Kerry Enzensperger, director of upper school community service.
Pajama Program Gr. 3 students collected new pajamas and books for needy children in the U.S. and elsewhere. Over 330 pairs of pajamas and 677 books were collected. “All of the third graders were encouraged to participate by bringing in books or pajamas,” said Joe Connolly, dean of students K-Gr. 5. “We had two third graders present the donations to Pallie Zambrano, co-president of the Northern California Chapter of The Pajama Program.”
Save the Bay On Martin Luther King Day, an official Congressional Day of Service, Colin Goodwin, Gr. 4 English teacher, organized a group of about 30 Gr. 4-5 students and parents to work with Save the Bay, planting native trees and grasses at the Eden Landing Ecological Preserve in Hayward. “On our day of we planted something like 300 plants,” said Goodwin. “This was my first year organizing this project, and I hope to do the project again next year.”
Jeans for Teens Upper school Key Club members organized a drive for denim in January, collecting lightly-used jeans for homeless teenagers worldwide.
Toiletries Drives The class of 2011 held its annual toiletries drive, collecting hundreds of personal hygiene items for distribution at local homeless shelters. Similar efforts are mounted by the middle school advisories of history teacher Pat White, librarian Bernie Morrissey and math teacher Leah Moll on their campuses.
Afghanistan Valentines Lower school students authored and sent valentines to U.S. marines serving in Afghanistan.
Peace2Peace Members of the middle school Peace2Peace Club will transform donations of lightly used toys, electronics and games into funds for daycare in India via a garage sale over spring break. The program allows older siblings who would otherwise be forced to stay home, to attend school regularly.
Kicks for Cancer Upper school girls and boys soccer teams raised over $3,000 through T-shirt sales and donations for cancer research at their January doubleheader.
Warm Coat Drive The middle school Service Club gathered new and gently used winter coats to benefit the local organization InnVision (www.innvision.org), which helps Bay Area families and individuals who are homeless or struggling financially.
Kidango Christmas Math instructor Peggy Crisler challenged middle school advisories to provide Christmas gifts for families through Kidango, a Bay Area nonprofit child development agency.
Reprinted from the Harker Quarterly March 2010 issue
On Jan. 14, the tables turned at the upper school campus. The students, typically collecting awards at Intel and Siemens Science competitions and presenting their own research at the annual and upcoming Harker Research Symposium (see December Harker Quarterly), became the subjects for a cutting-edge research study conducted by Stanford University.
The collaboration began in the fall of 2008, when biologist and principal researcher Dr. Marcel Salathé contacted Katherine Schafer, biology and research teacher at Harker. After meeting with Schafer, Salathé knew that Harker would be a great place to run the study and that Schafer would be a great partner in the project.
“It’s … very important that everyone is excited about the research and the project,” Salathé said, “and after talking to a few teachers and students it became clear that Harker would be a very good place to do this.”
“There is no data of such detail about human contact networks at this scale, especially at schools,” Salathé said, “so the data will be the first of its kind, which is always a very exciting prospect in science.”
The data will be used to create a detailed contact network and Salathé and his team will run epidemic simulations on this established network to help advance understanding of how diseases spread through human interactions and, potentially, use the conclusions to improve epidemic control within schools.
Setting up the research took a year’s worth of preparation and two trial runs to work out kinks, but the experiment will offer new insight into the spread of viruses. For a day, students, faculty and staff wore wireless devices, called motes, around their necks, and stationary motes were mounted on the walls of most classrooms. These low-powered sensory devices logged interactions with each other through weak radio signal detection
To properly set up the research, Harker forwarded a letter from the researchers to parents explaining the project. Then, Salathé and colleagues Philip Levis, assistant professor of computer science, and James Holland Jones, assistant professor of anthropology, provided details at a schoolwide assembly the day before the data collection to stress the importance of student involvement in the research.
The study is a marriage between Stanford’s biology, anthropology and computer science departments and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of major research to Harker students. Harker is the only school participating in the study and the participation reflects the scientific spirit fostered on campus.
“One of the ideas [for the assembly] was to try and give a little bit of a feel for the different disciplinary perspectives and how it comes together in a single coherent project,” Jones said. Schafer also stressed the importance of reminding students to pursue multiple interests.
“One of the goals of this assembly, in addition to learning about the study, was to get the kids thinking about the fact that having lots of different talents is going to help them a lot down the line,” Schafer said. “Having knowledge of computer science and biology and all of these other things could potentially be a huge benefit for them in their careers and in their lives in general.”
Students were given the opportunity to expand their research interests by providing feedback and working closely with the researchers to determine the best possible way to extract data. Salathé’s team initially thought self-logged data would be sufficient and tested this possibility with Schafer’s research club.
The students in the club were given journals to record their interactions throughout a school day to test the method, but returns were short of the mark. “We then switched to the advanced version of motes, and quite a few students helped us test that idea,” Salathé said.
Andrea Lincoln, Gr. 12, participated in the study and coincidentally did research at Boston University last summer using wireless sensor networks (WSN) similar to the motes used in Stanford’s study. Lincoln thought the experiment served as a worthy introduction to the vast world of research.
“Given the huge percentage of Harker students who are considering research as a possible career, I believe it is valuable for us to have an introduction,” Lincoln said. “Perhaps seeing the WSN research will convince some students to look into research internships.”
Almost 800 motes were distributed across campus and roughly 6.5 million pieces of raw data were collected. Both Schafer and Salathé said the day went incredibly smoothly.
“This is in large part because we were so well prepared,” Salathé said.
The entire process was also Schafer’s chance to get involved in research again. After studying the population ecology of stomatopod crustaceans and pygmy octopuses on coral reefs in Belize for her doctoral dissertation, Schafer said the Stanford research project contrasted significantly from the type of research she did as a field biologist.
Salathé is pleased with the whole data gathering process and results should be available in April. “I think we would do it pretty much exactly the same way if we were to do it again,” he noted, giving full credit for the successful effort to Schafer.
“She was excited from the beginning and is the main reason why this Harker-Stanford collaboration has worked out so well,” he said. “It couldn’t have been done without her.”