Harker’s middle school speech and debate team, coached by Christopher Thiele, had a successful trip to the Middle School Tournament of Champions in Lexington, Ky., this past weekend. Harker students earned numerous awards at the event, in which 33 schools representing 145 of the best middle school debate/speech entries across 15 states participated.
Policy: First place, Deven Shah, grade 7, and Julia Biswas, grade 8; second place, Andy Lee and Jason Lin, both grade 8; third place, Akshay Manglik and Aditya Tadimeti, both grade 8; and fifth place, Helen Li and Deven Parikh, both grade 8. Manglik got eighth speaker, Lee got fourth speaker, Biswas got third speaker and Shah got first speaker.
Lincoln-Douglas: Akhilesh Chegu and Rishi Jain, both grade 7, and Aditi Vinod, grade 8, all placed fifth. Chegu got eighth speaker, Jain got seventh speaker and Krishay Mukhija, grade 8, got fourth speaker.
Public Forum: Second place, Anshul Reddy and Sascha Pakravan, both grade 7; Reddy got fifth speaker.
Congress: Third place, Andrew Sun, grade 8.
Dramatic Interpretation: First place, Rhea Nanavati; second place, Arusha Patil, both grade 8.
Original Oratory: Fourth place, Arusha Patil, grade 8.
To culminate their study of Hispanic food and restaurants, Spanish 1 students visited the home of the Meissner family (Anthony, grade 10; Nicholas, grade 8). Ivette Meissner emigrated from Cuba as a child and is now a professional chef/caterer. She prepared Cuban specialties, including “congri” (black beans and rice), “ropa vieja”(beef in tomato sauce), “tostones”(fried plantains) and “pasteles de coco y guayaba”(coconut and guava pastries), among other delicious dishes ¡Muy rico! Meissner also shared about her family’s history coming to the United States from Cuba. ¡Olé!
Upper school Japanese language students received a special visit from musician Baisho Matsumoto on May 17. Wearing a black kimono, Matsumoto played a series of musical pieces on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument resembling a guitar, and the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute.
“We learned a lot of interesting information on these instruments,” said Japanese language teacher Yumiko Aridomi. “For example, shamisen has been played for about 800 years in Japan, and tsugaru shamisen artists are expected to play their original pieces of music for their customers.”
Matsumoto played traditional Japanese folk, pop and jazz music, among other styles.
“It was really fun watching the shamisen player play different instruments that you do not get to see in the United States,” said Scout McNealy, grade 10.
“It was an interesting aspect of Japanese culture that I never took the time to investigate before,” added junior Liana Wang. “I have heard of the shamisen before, but I didn’t know it was such a complex instrument. I was quite impressed.”
Harker business and entrepreneurship student Roma Gandhi, though only in grade 9, is set to manage a household budget, having won a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block in its annual Budget Challenge. Gandhi was one of only 10 winners out of 180,000 students nationwide who participated in the challenge. Gandhi collected her oversized check from H&R Block district general manager Marilyn Raisor in front of her cheering classmates in mid-May.
“This is very, very impressive,” said Raisor. “This challenge teaches you how to set aside money for the monthly things, and also for the fun things.”
Gandhi allotted 15 minutes per evening and more time on weekends to keep up with the challenge. “I did put in a lot of effort,” she said.
“The first thing I learned is the value of money, how to budget and how to manage your money,” said Gandhi. “I feel like that is really useful. Before, I didn’t really have a grasp on that. Every time I’d go shopping, my parents would tell me to have a budget and I’d be like, ‘yeah.’ Now I’m more aware of costs, and self-conscious about having a budget every time I go out.”
This article prepared from a report by Roma Gandhi, grade 9.
The business and entrepreneurship department’s CareerConnect program hosted a mentorship banquet in early April, offering rising sophomores and juniors the opportunity to work with a mentor in their field of interest.
This year, 19 students were paired with mentors. During the banquet, each mentor offered advice, and discussed their field of work and their professional journey with their mentee. As part of a mentee/mentor activity, each mentee wrote three of his or her goals on a mug and presented it to his or her mentor, to help mentors gain a better understanding of how they can best help their mentees.
Students gained a lot of invaluable knowledge from their mentors in fields such as medicine, business, computer science, engineering and law. Enya Lu, grade 10, described her experience as “a really fun opportunity where I was able to learn a lot and connect with many different people.”
Mentors included Dr. Jerald Wisdom, an ophthalmologist at Kaiser Permanente; Bill Stevenson, a software engineer at Apple; Fabio Marino, an intellectual property lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery; and Archana Baldwa, Senior Finance Manager at Juniper Networks.
Students will continue to meet with their mentors outside of school in the upcoming months and may have the opportunity to visit them at their workplace.
Overall, the CareerConnect Mentorship Banquet was an exciting opportunity for students to gain advice, inspiration and mentorship from an industry professional in their field of interest!
Congratulations to the three upper school students who qualified to represent Harker at the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions (NIETOC)! Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 10, and Nikki Solanki and Avi Gulati, both grade 9, competed at Liberty High School in Kansas City, Mo., May 12-14.
Dharmaraj and Gulati competed in original oratory and Solanki in dramatic interpretation. Qualification was based on excellence at invitational tournaments. Harker is especially proud of Dharmaraj for making it to finals for the second year in a row. He ultimately placed fifth in the nation.
Coach Marjorie Hazeltine said, “The NIETOC brought out the best in our students. In the opening ceremony, the president of the organization encouraged the students to find ‘the why behind their what,’ or the reason why they are doing this activity and presenting their speeches. All three Harker students embodied this idea, speaking with conviction and heart.” Gulati noted that the NIETOC left him “encouraged, motivated and inspired.”
Harker Preschool is piloting a new program, Wee Engineering, that will help preschool students break down problems in an understandable way. “Wee Engineer simplified the design thinking process into three hands-on segments of inquiry-based, experiential learning,” noted teacher Robyn Stone. First, students explore the materials, second they create to try an idea and third they try to improve it. The program was developed by the Museum of Science in Boston to help early childhood educators develop an understandable process for helping very young children understand engineering concepts.
The approach uses the Stanford University d.school design thinking process, which involves five steps: empathize with the person with a problem, define the problem, ideate potential ways to solve the problem, prototype with materials and test prototypes.
The preschoolers use puppets to help them understand these concepts. “By using a puppet to share a problem,” said Stone, “Wee Engineer has combined the first three design thinking steps. Students engage in dialogue directly with a puppet with whom they empathize, define her problem and ideate potential ways to solve it. Thus, during the investigation, the children spend the bulk of their time in material exploration and iteration – prototyping, testing and improving their prototypes.”
Stone was awarded the pilot program in early spring. “The most interesting part of the program for me, as an educator, is watching the discoveries children make about the properties of materials,” said Stone.
“For example, during the exploration of potential materials with which to make a wrecking ball, students were drawn to testing out brightly colored, fuzzy pom-poms. They were surprised when a wrecking ball full of pom-poms was not powerful enough to knock down a block structure.
“Some students systematically tested the materials by type, while others tested combinations of materials. There was a lot of discussion and collaboration between students as they soon discovered how a wrecking ball filled with heavier materials, such as erasers and marbles, was powerful enough to knock down block structures.
“Once they improved the wrecking ball, a few students creatively attempted to build larger and more complex block structures on which to test their powerful wrecking balls! As a group, the students drew conclusions and shared information with the puppet about what materials worked best.
“The children demonstrated tremendous interest in all segments of the investigation – dialoging with the puppet and exploring materials, creating prototypes and improving their prototypes,” Stone said.
Along with knowledge of how a wrecking ball works, “the students gained developmentally appropriate vocabulary with which to describe the engineering practices in which they engage every day – whether in the STEM Lab, in their home cottage or out in the play yard,” said Stone. “Also, the students gained a richer, deeper understanding of what it means to be an engineer.”
Harker bid a heartfelt farewell to the Class of 2017 at today’s graduation ceremony, held at the beautiful Mountain Winery in Saratoga. As attendees filed into their seats, they were treated to music performed by the Harker Chamber Orchestra, directed by Chris Florio. As the ceremony began and the graduating seniors took their seats at the front of the stage, the orchestra launched into “Pomp and Circumstance.” Following the Carl Oser-led 2017 Graduation Chorus’ stirring rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” upper school division head Butch Keller welcomed the late-afternoon audience to the ceremony.
He welcomed this year’s valedictorian, Kai Ang, mentioning not just his academic achievements but also his character, including his work teaching piano to children with special needs. In his speech, Ang compared the journey he and his classmates had made to that of Odysseus, with the caveat that their journey had not lasted as long. Although the seniors’ achievements are remarkable, however, he reminded his classmates that much of their success was due to the support of their parents, teachers and “the tender roasting of our friends.”
“We are indebted to all who have stood behind us,” he said, “seen and unseen.”
After the applause from Ang’s speech subsided, the Graduation Chorus, directed by Susan Nace, sang “New Beginnings.” This year’s graduation keynote speaker was Nvidia co-founder Chris Malachowsky, who reminisced about visiting Harker earlier in the month, remarking about the dedication of the faculty, as well as the curiosity and accomplishments of its students.
Malachowsky offered graduated three points of advice, the first of which was investment. “Not the typical monetary kind of investment,” he cautioned, but investment in themselves. At college, he said, the graduates “should make it a priority to use your time to expand your horizons, both culturally and intellectually,” and take advantage of all the resources available, including special events, clubs and employment opportunities.
The second point was confidence, which would enable them to take chances and achieve more, adding that students should create an environment for themselves in which confidence can grow. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, life is a team sport. So surround yourself with people who will challenge and help you grow,” he said.
The final of Malachowsky’s three points was responsibility. “It’s your life to live, and you should be looking to fully take the reins of it as you move through these next phases of your lives,” he said. He stressed that the graduates had to take it upon themselves to improve the world around them. “If something is wrong, broken, inefficient, take some measure of responsibility and fix and improve it for everyone,” he said.
After Malachowsky congratulated the graduates and wished them success in their future endeavors, Christopher Nikoloff took the podium to address Harker’s senior class for the last time as head of school. Nikoloff, who will assume duties as headmaster of The American School in Switzerland later this year, once again promised to keep his remarks to one page of single-spaced size 12 font while also making no promises about the size of the margins.
In Nikoloff’s signature manner, he opened with some light humor, remarking that he and the Class of 2017 “are in fact graduating together, but I am sure that you are graduating with a higher GPA.”
Nikoloff shared with the audience his favorite quote from the philosopher Voltaire, starting with the first sentence: “Life is a shipwreck.”
“I know, very inspiring,” Nikoloff quipped. But despite the apparent darkness of Voltaire’s opening line, Nikoloff said he didn’t believe Voltaire was being a total pessimist. “In both life and shipwrecks, you both end up in places you had not anticipated,” he said. “For instance, how many of you knew you would be born?”
He then stated Voltaire’s thought in its entirety: “Life is a shipwreck. But we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
Voltaire, Nikoloff said, was reminding us to “find joy no matter where you are, to pay attention to those in the lifeboat next to you, to see that your circumstances do not necessarily dictate your attitude about those circumstances.”
As Nikoloff finished his remarks, former head of school and board of trustees chair Diana Nichols stepped up to the podium to thank Nikoloff and surprise him with an honorary diploma expressing Harker’s eternal gratitude for his years of service to the school.
The members of the Class of 2017 then walked to the stage one at a time to receive their diplomas from Nikoloff, as their friends and families cheered from the stands. After the final diploma had been handed out, assistant head of school Jennifer Gargano and Nikoloff said one more goodbye to the senior class as doves were released into the air.
Dozens of middle school students won medals in this year’s National Mythology Exam, the results of which were published last week.
Bronze medals (awarded for answering 90-94 percent of the exam questions correctly) were given to Atri Banerjee, Anthony Tong, Linette Hoffman, Nicholas Wei and Isaac Yang, all grade 6; Ishaan Parate, Aaron Tran, Prakrit Jain, Thresia Vazhaeparambil, Ysabel Chen and Akhilesh Chegu, all grade 7; and Sidra Xu, Jason Lin, Anna Vazhaeparambil, Shalini Rohra and Maria Vazhaeparambil, all grade 8.
Silver medal winners (answered 95-99 percent of exam questions correctly) were Hita Thota, Jeremy Ko, Alan Jiang, Jasmine Li, Andrew Fu, Andrew Pluzhnikov, all grade 6; Nicole Tian, Anoushka Khatri, Arnav Jain, Brandon Park, Jacqueline Hu, Angela Jia, Aaron Lo, Alez Zhang, all grade 7; and Betsy Tian, Angela Cai, Akshay Manglik, all grade 8.
In addition to stellar showings at the California Junior Classical League State Convention, Harker Latin students also have been posting excellent results on recent national exams. In the advanced level of the National Roman Civilization Exam, Venkat Sankar, grade 12, and Edgar Lin, grade 11, both received gold medals and Andrew Semenza, grade 11, won silver. At the intermediate level, freshmen Jeffrey Fung and Jack Hansen, and sophomore Alexander Young, won gold medals, and freshman Kalyan Narayanan won silver.
In the Medusa Mythology Exam, Hansen won a bronze medal, Fung was awarded with a corona laurea, and Narayanan and Young each received a corona olivae.
Lin, Sankar and Semenza also had success in the advanced level of the National Classical Etymology Exam, with each student earning a gold medal. Notably, Sankar was one of just 24 students (out of 1,768 who took the exam) to score a 46 on the exam. Senior Arnav Tandon also did very well, winning a silver medal. Fung and Hansen each won gold medals at the intermediate level, where sophomore Ayush Pancholy also earned gold. Narayanan received a silver medal.
Students also performed splendidly on the National Latin Vocabulary Exam. In Latin Level 3, Fung received a gold medal, while Hansen and Narayanan both received silver. Pancholy and Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 10, each won silver in Latin Level 4, where Timmy Chang, also grade 10, won bronze. In Latin Level 5, Sankar and Semenza were both gold medal winners and Tandon took home silver.