The Nichols Hall atrium was packed and bursting with activity during the upper school’s Club Fair on Sept. 13, as students flocked to see the offerings of the more than 60 active clubs on campus. Club representatives set up tables and chatted with fellow students about a huge range of interests, including technology, art, music, sports and social justice. Clubs employed unique strategies to entice passersby. Members of the Unplugged Guitar Club got their fair share of attention by staging an impromptu jam session just outside the Nichols Hall entrance.
“We just want to create an environment where people can come and play and learn no matter what experience [they have],” said senior Matthew Sutton, one of the Unplugged Guitar Club representatives working the table.
Ashley Jia, grade 11, of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA) says the long-running student organization holds discussions about “the LGBTQ+ community and what’s going on with the world and how to help and be active.”
“We essentially try to spread awareness about a lot of issues going on in the community,” said GSA member Clarissa Wang, grade 11, “and I think that’s really important for increasing acceptance and equality.”
As their name suggests, Music Around the World is a club organized around discussions about music from various parts of the globe. “We want to explore different cultures and perspectives, and maybe even history and politics through a musical platform,” said club member Divija Bhimaraju, grade 12. “We just want to discuss and explore music together as a community. Sort of like a safe space to explore music.”
One of the more specific clubs represented at the fair, the Tea Club explores the many fascinating aspects of one of the world’s most popular beverages. “We talk about teas of different cultures and we trace their histories,” explained club representative Leon Lu, grade 11. “At each meeting, we will ask everybody to sample the tea we are talking about.”
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced today that 46 Harker seniors, about 25 percent of the Class of 2018, were named semifinalists in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program. Of the 1.6 million high school students who entered the program last year by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, about 16,000 – or just 1 percent – became semifinalists.
Congratulations to this year’s semifinalists, who are as follows:
Akhil Arun, Anika Banga, Praveen Batra, Divija Bhimaraju, Megan Cardosi, Emily Chen, Gwyneth Chen, Jerry Chen, Kathleen Cheng, Adrian Chu, Peter Connors, Morgan Douglas, Amy Dunphy, Shaan Gagneja, Swapnil Garg, Anastasiya Grebin, Jacqueline He, Adrian Hernandez, Kaitlin Hsu, Charlotte Huang, Julia Huang, Megan Huynh, Seunghoon Jeong, Amy Jin, Sumer Kohli, Maya Kumar, Matthew Lee, Linus Li, Edgar Lin, Millie Lin, Serena Lu, Rahul Mehta, Alexandra Michael, Jacob Ohana, Vignesh Panchanatham, Neelesh Ramachandran, Andrew Semenza, Anooshree Sengupta, Sahana Srinivasan, Megan Tjandrasuwita, Eric Tran, Alexander Wang, David Wen, Derek Yen, Shaya Zarkesh and Patrick Zhong.
Harker student singers were visited by Emily Sinclair, head of the voice area at the University of California Santa Cruz, and an accomplished professional singer and vocal teacher. Sinclair, who has performed with the San Francisco Choral Society and the Littleton Symphony, had students sing a piece of their choice, after which she offered feedback on interpretation, technique and expression. As the students listened to and incorporated her advice, she noted the improvement in their performance, for which the students were very appreciative!
Over Labor Day weekend, chess players Saanvi Bhargava, grade 5, Kyle Chang, grade 7, Mihir Kotbagi, grade 4, and third graders Lucas Lum and Ayden Grover, competed in the 2017 Labor Day Kids Championship in Santa Clara. Their combined victories resulted in Harker taking second place overall as a team, with Bhargava and Chang each winning four of the five games they played. Great work!
This past weekend, the cross country team opened its season at Golden Gate Park. Arya Maheshwari, grade 9, started the day with an eighth place finish in the freshman race, out of 294 runners. Aditya Singhvi ran an excellent 23rd.
Next up, Anna Weirich, grade 9, took third in her freshman/sophomore race, 2 seconds from winning, in a field of 289 runners. She was 20 seconds behind the leaders with 800 meters left, then sprinted to close the gap to 2 seconds at the finish line.
Senior Gloria Guo, and juniors Lilia Gonzales and Aneesha Kumar, along with Peter Connors, grade 12, and juniors Ryan Adolf and Henry Wong, led the varsity teams.
Rich Dange, grade 10, placed 25th out of 260, leading the sophomore team to a 10th place team finish, out of 32 teams.
Sept. 8 was a special day for Heather Russell’s grade 3 morning language arts students, who became the first at Harker to use virtual reality (VR) technology as a teaching tool in the classroom. Students wore headsets equipped with smartphones that displayed special YouTube videos, giving them a full 360-degree view of the area shown in the videos.
The students used the technology to take a virtual trip to Tokyo’s Shibuya Station, one of Japan’s busiest rail stations. Russell instructed them to be on the lookout for the statue of Hachiko, an Akita dog famous in Japan for waiting at Shibuya Station every day for nearly a decade for his deceased owner to return. Hachiko’s perseverance made him a national symbol of loyalty.
Russell’s students, who had been reading a story about Hachiko, watched two videos with the use of the headsets and wrote out their reactions to each video, describing how they might feel if they had to travel that way to school each day and how they might feel if they were Hachiko himself.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Upper School Art Teacher’s Work Appears in Two Exhibits
In April, Pilar Agüero-Esparza’s work was featured in the ICONIC: Black Panther exhibit in Los Angeles, which showcased art inspired by the Black Panther Party. Later that same month, she was a featured artist in the stARTup Art Fair in San Francisco.
Preschool STEM Specialist Named Consulting Editor
In January Robyn Stone was named a consulting editor for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which specializes in promoting the learning of children 8 years old and younger. In this role, Stone will help ensure the quality of NAEYC publications, which include books and the “Young Children” magazine.
Science Teacher Featured on Website
Upper school teacher Chris Spenner was recognized as the featured teacher in May by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The AAAS website published a brief Q&A with Spenner, who shared his reasons for becoming a teacher, the accomplishments he’s most proud of and his love for astrophotography.
Upper School English Teacher Published in Anthology
In February, upper school teacher Jennifer Siraganian was among 50 poets to be published in the annual “Best New Poets” anthology. Siraganian’s poem, “Monroe, Washington,” was selected from 2,000 nominations for publication in the book, which is available through Amazon.
Spanish Teacher Presents at Language Conference
In early March, upper school teacher Isabel Garcia presented on the classroom use of short films at the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching, held in Oklahoma. The workshop explained how short films can help students understand orally transmitted messages as well as use variations of a language’s structure both inside and outside the classroom. “ It was a great opportunity to present and share with fellow foreign language teachers my understanding of task-based learning,” Garcia said.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Pat Walsh is a legend at Harker. The lower school math teacher has been at Harker since 1976, first as a summer camp coach, then dorm houseparent, and is retiring this year. He’s done it all, including driving a bus, coaching sports and organizing Harker’s Thanksgiving food drive for most of his career here. Students who went through his classroom remember him forever, and it’s clear from his interview that the passion he has for teaching, for his family, for volunteer work (and, oh yes, his obsession for the San Francisco Giants) is why his students love him so dearly. Walsh’s wife, Terry, whom he calls “the rock of our family,” worked at Harker for 35 years, and their three sons, Matt, Danny and Kevin, all attended Harker through grade 8.
What is something one of your parents said that you will never forget?
My mother was a teacher, and she told me a teacher’s No. 1 job is to be an advocate for all of their students. And in order to be an advocate, one has to focus on a kid’s good qualities … and every kid has plenty of good qualities.
What was one of your funniest classroom moments?
It’s embarrassing. Years ago while teaching third grade, I let my room mom, Melody Moyer, talk me into wearing a cupid outfit for the Halloween party. The kids were absolutely howling when they saw me. Now on Valentine’s Day, we play “Pin the Diaper on the Cupid.” It gets pretty silly, and they love it.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand?
Childhood poverty and lack of opportunity. It breaks my heart. This is something I emphasize with my kids, too. I believe that those of us who have been blessed with abundance have a duty to give back to those who are less fortunate.
Where in the world are you the happiest?
Family gatherings. I love to lay low and watch my sons talking with my friends and their other relatives. I learn a lot about them just by watching. All three of them are good men and interesting people.
What’s one of the favorite things you do in the classroom?
One of the things all of my students comment on when I see them years later is the “letter.” Each year I have taught, I have my kids write a letter to themselves. The first part of the letter is a summary of their year in grade 5. For the second part of the letter, I ask them to look into the future and predict how they think their lives will change over the course of the next three years. I mail these out the week they are wrapping up eighth grade.
Over the summer, senior Liana Wang and sophomore Mohan Awasthi visited Okayama, Japan (a sister city of San Jose) as Silicon Valley Youth Ambassadors. They and other ambassadors headed to Gakugeikan High School and Kyokuto Junior High to meet with teachers and students and teach English. Wang, a prolific dancer and the designated leader of the ambassadors, gave a special dance performance to the students, while Awasthi gave a speech about what schools are like in the United States. “Overall, the public schools themselves are extremely well run and maintained, and there are many extra-curricular activities for any type of student,” he said.
On a visit to Okayama’s city hall, the group met with the Okayama mayor Maso Omori and received a tour of the building. As the leader of the ambassadors, Wang gave a speech to the mayor on behalf of the City of San Jose. “Also, similar to the school speech, we spoke to the mayor about how we came to keep a good relationship between San Jose and Okayama,” Awasthi noted. “Overall, it was an extremely fun and rare experience.”
During a homestay with the family of a local high school student, Awasthi got a firsthand look into the everyday lives of Okayama citizens. “I got to try more authentic Japanese food, play sports, visit their school, and see many landmarks in Okayama: Kojima Jean street, the Stone Windmills, Okayama Castle, and the Makido stone cave,” he said. Forging bonds with his host family, he added, was one of the most memorable parts of his trip. Wang also visited Okayama Castle with her homestay, as well as the Bikan Chiku area in Okayama’s historic Kurashiki district.
Other highlights of the trip included visiting various famous locales around Tokyo, and taking a trip to Onagawa, a city that experienced massive destruction during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, where they planted trees, and Wang gave a message of support to the disaster victims.
On Sept. 5 middle school students participated in what division head Cindy Ellis called an “empathy developing experience” inspired by recent Hurricane Harvey-related events in Texas. Students were each given a card representing a group of people affected by the disaster. Students given red cards played the role of evacuees, while those with blue cards represented those who stayed in their homes and could not leave due to flooding. Students with green cards represented people who were not in immediate danger but were concerned for their loved ones and wanted to help.
Facilitators led discussions with each group based on detailed scenarios that contained questions for the students. Red card holders posing as evacuees, for instance, imagined that their family had been forced to move temporarily to a much smaller living space than what they had grown accustomed to. As their scenario played out, they were asked questions about what they would leave behind, knowing that belongings left at home could be destroyed, and what a 12-hour drive to Austin might be like in a packed vehicle with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Later in the week, middle school advisories discussed what they had learned during the exercise. These discussions will be used to formulate ideas on how to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey. “We are trying to make this as student-driven as we can with this age group,” Ellis said.