US volleyball coach Theresa “Smitty” Smith – and The Harker School – can now let the world know she’s a Positive Coach Alliance Double-Goal Coach Award Winner with the winner’s logo she recently received. Smith received the award in 2008 for her commitment to using positive coaching to teach life lessons. Read more about the award here–look near the bottom for Smitty’s comments!
Tags: Sports– In April, flutist Pavitra Rengarajan, Gr. 9, had the opportunity to perform a solo with the San Jose Wind Symphony at San Jose State University. Rengarajan was the first prize winner of the symphony’s annual Young Artist Solo Competition, and received a $500 prize in addition to being granted the honor of per forming with the seasoned musicians of the SJWS.
No stranger to winning music competitions, Rengarajan has also taken first place in the International Areon Chamber Music Competition, Junior Division; the Flock of Flutes Competition, Junior Division; and the El Camino Youth Symphony Concerto competition. She is also the principal flutist for the El Camino Youth Symphony, the youngest member of the South Valley Symphony and the San Jose Youth Symphony Philharmonic Orchestra’s youngest flutist.
– Harker News has been keeping tabs on Anteneh Daniel, Gr. 12, who was named a semifinalist and then a finalist in the National Achievement Scholarship Program’s (NASP) competition for outstanding Black American students. We have now been notified that Daniel has indeed won a prize. He will be awarded a $2,500 scholarship, an award supported by the not-for-profit National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which conducts the NASP.
– Christina Ma, Gr. 11, recently won the “Essay” portion of the Asian Pacific Fund’s 2009 Growing Up Asian in America Art & Essay Contest. For the contest, entrants chose one thing they would change to make the world a better place as the basis for their work. For her efforts, Ma will receive a $2,000 savings bond.
On March 23, Harker had several winners at the 27th annual Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Spanish Poetry Contest, held at Eastside College Preparatory High School in East Palo Alto. First place winners were Kirsten Herr, Gr. 9, for the Spanish 3 category and Rashmi Sharma, Gr. 11, for Spanish 4. Taking second place in Spanish 5 was senior Shubha Guha, with freshman Sharanya Haran earning the number two spot in Spanish 2. Lauren Pinzás, Gr. 9, finished third in the Native Speaker category, and fellow ninth grader Nicole Dalal took third in the Spanish 1 category.
Students were required to memorize and present a dramatic interpretation of a poem of approximately 25 lines in Spanish. Their Spanish teachers Isabel García, Diana Moss and Abel Olivas accompanied Them to the event, and outstanding presentations were given by all participants. ¡Felicidades!
Cultures from all over the world were represented at the Multicultural Assembly on April 10. The assembly was a coordinated effort among GEO advisors Ramsay Westgate, Mai Lien Nguyen, Carol Zink and Kevin Lum Lung, as well as Natasha Jeswani, Gr. 12, and Niti Shahi, Gr. 11, the assembly’s main student organizers.
All around the Saratoga gym, booths were set up representing several countries from each continent. Many of the booths contained informational displays and samples of native foods.
Students spent about 20 minutes learning about the various nations and enjoying their native treats, before a series of per formances got underway. Seniors Mai Nguyen and Amaresh Shukla served as emcees, providing amusing banter between acts.
Up first were juniors Jackie Ho and Melinda Wang, who sang, danced and rapped in their native language of Chinese. Next, US math teacher Gabriele Stahl wowed the assembly crowd by tango dancing with a professional dance partner. Continuing the European excursion was the Cantilena choir group, led by US music teacher Susan Nace on piano. Their French song, “Ouvre ton coeur,” was very well-received.
Nidhi Gandhi, Gr. 10, then offered a glimpse of her culture by per forming a classical Indian dance with crowd-pleasing grace and precision. It was then time for a brief trek to Germany, as US biology teacher Matthew Harley sang a tune in German, driven by a very familiar melody from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
Another Chinese song and dance number was up next, this time from singers Susan Wang, Gr. 12, and juniors Katrina Kao and Roslyn Li. Dancers Christine Yu, Gr. 12 and Adrienne Wong, Gr. 11, provided some splendid visual enhancement, while sophomore James Du accompanied the per formance on piano.
Although Harker’s student body houses many talents, several in attendance at the assembly were no doubt surprised to learn that the school even has its own Celtic harpist in Catherine Stiles, Gr. 10, who per formed an otherworldly tune.
Vrinda Goel, Gr. 10, then offered a show of her splendid vocal prowess by singing an aria from Mozart’s “Requiem” in Latin, her voice traveling clearly and elegantly throughout the gym.
To bring things to a rousing finish, Nguyen and the varsity dancers per formed an exciting, well-choreographed and coordinated routine to a pair of upbeat Korean pop songs.
US biology teacher Anita Chetty’s students had the opportunity to do some bona fide field work in late March, as they traveled to the San Francisco Zoo to see various species of wildlife and examine how they adapted to their surroundings. The students also went to the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve to retrieve plant life and bug specimens, which they then took back to the laboratory to examine and identify.
At the lab, the students used power ful microscopes to examine their findings. The microscopes also have built-in digital cameras that allowed the students to take high-resolution photos of the specimens and examine them on their laptops.
Tags: ScienceCongratulations to the “Talon” yearbook staff, whose work is featured in the Jostens “Gotcha Covered Look Book,” which recognizes top-flight yearbooks from schools around the country. In the book, alumna Emily Chow ’08 receives an Honorable Mention for one of her photos in the 2007-08 edition of the “Talon.” It is also featured in the book’s cover gallery.
Three students have qualified for the United States Chemistry Olympiad in late April. Andrew Zhou, Gr. 11, scored 58 points out of 60 on a March 27 exam to earn a spot, while Kevin Xu, Gr. 12, scored 57. Because he moved beyond the national round in last year’s competition, Vikram Nathan, Gr. 12, will also compete for Harker, even though each school is typically allowed to enter only two students.
Tags: Featured Story, topacademics, topscienceRepresenting Harker at the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament the weekend of April 11 were Kaavya Gowda, Gr. 12, Kelsey Hilbrich, Gr. 11, sophomores Appu Bhaskar, Benjamin Chen and Ziad Jawadi; and freshman Akshay Jagadeesh.
The California State Tournament took place the weekend of April 18, with David Kastelman, Gr. 12 and Michael Tsai, Gr. 10, being the first Harker students to qualify in Student Congressional debate. Results of the tournaments were not available at Harker News press time.
It is also a record-breaking year for Harker qualifiers to the Tournament of Champions (TOC), where students compete all year to earn qualifying legs. Harker has a fully-qualified policy team for the first time in several years, two public forum teams who automatically qualified based on last year’s successful run, Harker’s first ever double sophomore team to qualify to the TOC and its ver y first freshman qualifier to the TOC. “To qualify as an underclassman is almost unheard of, let alone in your first year!” said US debate teacher Carol Green. Representing Harker as the largest delegation ever to attend from the school at the 2009 TOC will be seniors Mohit Bansal, Raghav Aggarwal and Gowda; juniors Kelsey Hilbrich, Arjun Mody, Adam Perelman and Christopher Eckardt; sophomores Justine Liu and James Seifert and freshman Sonya Chalaka.
Harker attended the Grand National qualifier in Januar y. Attending this tournament over Memorial Day weekend will be juniors Perelman, Mody, Hilbrich and David Mihai; sophomores Liu, Seifer t, Tsai, Hassaan Ebrahim, Christine Chien and Aileen Wen; and freshman Jagadeesh.
Finally, after going undefeated at the National Forensic League qualifier, the oldest national debate tournament, where they placed seventh in the nation last year, Gowda and Hilbrich will travel to Alabama in June to compete for a week at the final tournament of the 2008-09 season.
Harker’s Global Empowerment Organization (GEO) wound up a week-long program to raise awareness of global primary education in mid-April.
The second of two programs about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) this year, this program included a speaker’s forum, a simulation exercise, a phone-in to President Barack Obama’s office and a petition. The phone-in and petition urged lawmakers’ support of the Fast Track Initiative and the Education for All Act – two Measures which target providing access to education for all children. Earlier this year, GEO targeted the MDG to eliminate poverty and raised $14,000 to build a school in rural China (Harker News, Dec. ’08, p. 25).
“One of the novel parts of the week was the focus on activism,” said senior David Kastelman, GEO president. The club’s adoption of MDG 2 “fit particularly well with our plan to focus on education and activism in the spring, as there has been past legislation supporting universal primary education,” he explained. “And the message of students advocating for students resonates particularly well.” The speaker’s forum featured four experts with direct concerns to global education: Kim Plewes of Free the Children; John Tupper, a lobbyist who works to advance such issues in the U.S. Congress; Jennifer Getz, founder of the Africa-based eduWeavers, and Mark McKenna, associate director of San Jose State University’s Global Studies Program. Kastelman acted as host and facilitator of the presentation to the US student body.
The Wednesday long lunch featured a simulation exercise on Rosenthal Field in which students moved from station to station and participated in brief activities which “ranged from throwing a coin in a ‘government budget’ cup to being timed on an obstacle course that represented the transportation obstacles for students in foreign countries,” said junior Christine Trinh, GEO secretary. “They were competitive and offered a challenge, which are aspects that definitely drive Harker students.”
“I loved the enthusiasm and spirit of the students who participated in the simulation,” said GEO member Josephine Chen, Gr. 10. “Many started competing with their friends to see who would win each of the activities.” Chef Steve Martin helped enhance participation in the simulation by serving lunch outdoors and approximately 70 students took part. The week culminated with a rousing Multicultural Assembly (see below). Kastelman, along with the GEO activism committee, met with U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren on April 16 and hand-delivered their petition – signed by over 200 students and faculty.
Tags: Global Education, OutreachColby Rapson, Gr. 11, and teammates from various schools took first place at the Enterprise Leadership Conference March 11-13. The conference is a yearly event held by the San Jose Rotary Club, in which students spend three days drafting and presenting a business plan for a product they create themselves. Students from each participating school are randomly distributed into different teams.
Rapson’s company, The 9th Degree, came up with a product known as the WheelAwake. “It is a steering wheel mechanism that has sensors on it that collect heart rate and breathing rate data the first thirty seconds that a driver is in the car,” Rapson said. “The rest of the car ride, it senses for a threshold drop in heart or breathing rate. In order to prevent the driver from dozing off at the wheel, it sends vibrations through the steering wheel and sounds an alarm to the driver.”
Rapson’s team planned to use the services of an angel investor to get star ted. “Our business plan was extremely intricate, but our company, The 9th Degree, planned to start locally in the first year and extend to the entire nation by the third year,” said Rapson, who was chosen to be the CEO of her company. “Therefore, our profits would really star t to come in by the third year. Once we star ted up, we planned on advertising our product through partnerships with schools, DMVs and insurance companies.”
Although the members of Rapson’s group at first didn’t seem to have a lot of common ground, they quickly rallied behind their idea. “We all fell into our places and contributed a huge amount to the group progress,” she said. “Everything went really smoothly; we worked so cohesively that everything came together in the end and our final presentation showed the judges how seriously we took the competition.”