The boys volleyball hot streak continued last week as the Eagles defeated Eastside College Prep and Santa Clara, each in three games. Over the weekend, the Eagles went 4-2 in the Harbor High Tournament, taking the silver division championship. They are now 15-11 on the season and still undefeated in league. This Wednesday is Senior Night as the Eagles face King’s Academy at Blackford at 5:45 p.m. to determine the league champion!
Swimming
Seniors Karen Tu, Grace Guan, Angela Huang, Justan Su and Philip Krause were honored at their final home meet last week as the swim team took on King’s Academy. Alex Yu, grade 9, took first in the 500 free and qualified for CCS. The 200m relay team of Guan, Huang, Taylor Kohlmann, grade 10, and Vivian Wang, grade 10, also qualified for CCS with their first place time. Other event winners included Guan in the 100 fly, 100 back and 400 free relay, Huang in the 100 free and 400 free relay, Ihita Mandal, grade 9, in the 500 free, and 400 free relay, Kohlmann in the 400 free relay, and Angela Li, grade 9, in the 400 free relay. The Eagles travel to Sacred heart Prep for the WBAL trials this Friday and Saturday.
Boys Tennis
After a 7-0 loss to undefeated Menlo early last week, the boys tennis team headed into the WBAL tournament looking to regain some momentum heading into CCS. The Eagles did just that, as six of the seven Harker participants advanced to the round of 16. Also showing well at the tournament was the doubles team of Randy Zhao, grade 10, and Anjay Saklecha, grade 9, who eventually ended with a third place finish. The Eagles now await their seeding fate as CCS begins later this week.
Softball
Tong Wu, grade 12, had two hits and two RBIs as the softball team dropped a 15-5 game to Castilleja early last week. However, later in the week the Eagles defeated Pinewood 7-6 in dramatic fashion as Anika Rajamani, grade 9, came through in the clutch with a two out, two run, bases loaded, walk-off single in the bottom of the seventh inning. Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FepIOFW8iFo
On Tuesday the Eagles travel to Mercy Burlingame and are home on Friday versus King’s Academy for Senior Day.
Baseball
The baseball team picked up two wins against Westmoor last week. In a 10-4 victory early in the week, Dominic Cea, grade 10, had three hits and two RBIs. Later in the week, the Eagles defeated the Rams 12-6. Tanay Kamat, grade 10, and Miles DeWitt, grade 12, each drove in two runs, and Nate Kelly, grade 10, added three hits. The Eagles host Pinewood on Tuesday a 4 p.m., and then travel to Pinewood on Thursday and Menlo on Friday.
Track and Field
It was another big day for the Harker track and field team last week, as 25 season bests were produced at the meet at King’s Academy. Anthony Contreras, grade 10, continued his impressive season as he won the 200m and 400m and anchored the winning 1600m relay. Demonte Aleem, grade 9, took first in the shot put with a throw of 41’0”. Kevin Wang and Jason Lee, both grade 12, took second and fourth, respectively, in the shot put. Wang also placed second in the discus, with Jonathan Hochberg, grade 12, placing third. Finishing fourth in their respective races were Gloria Guo, grade 10, in the 800m, Sara Min, grade 9, in the girls 200m, and Bill Liang, grade 11, in the boys 200m. Jonathan Dai, grade 12 , sprinted to a third place finish in the 100. Finally, Arthur Ye, grade 12, and Davis Howard, grade 11, took first and second in the JV shot put. This weekend, the Eagles travel to Palo Alto high school for the WBAL League Championships.
Boys Golf
Last week the boys golf team picked up a win by forefeit, but still enjoyed Senior Day as Dakota McNealy and Zarek Drozda, both grade 12, were honored. The Eagles travel to Half Moon Bay today to defend their league title, followed by the start of CCS next week.
Girls Lacrosse
The girls lacrosse team dropped a 12-9 matchup with Mercy Burlingame and an 11-10 game against Carlmont last week. In the tight matchup with Carlmont, the Eagles fell in the final minute, but Elise Mayer, grade 9, scored 5 goals in the loss. This week, the Eagles host Aragon on Wednesday and travel to Woodside on Friday.
Last month, The Harker School Orchestra traveled to Sonoma State University to perform at the fourth annual Sonoma Invitational Wind Band & Orchestra Festival. They performed a selection of pieces from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” as well as the finale from Howard Hanson’s second symphony. Director Chris Florio reported that the performances were well-received by Sonoma State faculty.
Florio nearly missed the concert due to the birth of his son the previous day. Luckily, a family friend who is a pilot graciously flew him to a nearby airport so that he could conduct the performances.
Mother’s Day came a little early for the moms of 22 first graders in teacher Larissa Weaver’s class.
On April 29 the students hosted a late-afternoon spa day celebration for their mothers in their classroom, which they had decorated with beautiful handmade paper flowers. During the special event, the children made their moms feel like queens for a day.
They delighted in pampering them and serving delicious treats as well as presenting them with gorgeous thumbprint necklaces they had earlier created. The students also were trained by a massage therapist on how to give simple back and arm massages. After giving their mothers massages, they then showed them heartwarming video messages they had previously filmed in their honor.
“The whole concept was for kids to learn to celebrate their moms by taking care of them. Over the last couple of weeks, the students had been preparing excitedly for the event!” said Weaver.
Last week, Harker held its first LID (Learning, Innovation and Design) Vision Day, during which teachers shared with fellow faculty members the technology-based methods they have been using in their classrooms. On the lower, middle and upper school campuses, teachers held special sessions that were attended by other faculty members. Teachers used a mobile app called Guidebook to help them find the sessions, which covered a wide variety of topics.
At the upper school, physics teacher Scott Pflaumer showed teachers how to add questions to YouTube videos with an app called Edpuzzle. English teacher Ruth Meyer hosted a session that showed how coloring and meditation can aid in teaching world religions, and biology teacher Mike Pistacchi demonstrated the effects of teaching choices on student stress.
Middle school teachers had the opportunity to learn from social studies teacher Jonathan Brusco, who explained how to use Badgelist and gamification to promote student learning by setting milestones. History teachers Cyrus Merrill and Ramsay Westgate also showed how gaming could enhance learning in their session about classroom video games.
Heather Russell, lower school English teacher, showed her fellow teachers the merits of interactive HyperDocs, while Scott Murphy taught teachers how to use YouTube more effectively by exploring YouTube’s own functionality as well as apps.
“It is great to see our highly talented colleagues present these workshops right under our roof,” said middle school computer science teacher Sharmila Misra. “It is fun learning from our own.”
The Acorn Cottage at Harker Preschool raised a swarm of Painted Lady butterflies over the past few weeks, patiently observing and documenting their progress as they went through the life cycle: larva, caterpillar, resting caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly. The activity came to a wonderful ending, as students cheered each of the five butterflies as they flew off to find nectar and continue their journey.
Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 9, was named an H&R Block Budget Challenge scholarship winner! Panchapakesan won the award for proving himself a personal finance master in the game of “life.” Students who participated in the challenge were given a virtual job, complete with a 401(k), credit card bills and student loans. They then had to successfully manage their paychecks for 10 weeks. Panchapakesan was in competition with thousands of students nationwide and was one of only 22 to receive the $20,000 scholarship.
“The most challenging part of the budget challenge was managing my credit card utilization rate,” said Panchapakesan. “The game deducted points from your score if you used more than 50 percent of your available credit. In the simulation, I had to overdraft multiple times, increasing my credit card balance. Therefore, I brainstormed different ways to decrease my balance and near the end of the simulation, purposely paid a deductible late in order to lose fewer points because I would lose more points if I over drafted from my credit card.”
“I think this challenge will help me manage my money in life because it brought the different issues of money management to my attention and allowed me to formulate and try out solutions to these problems, therefore increasing my knowledge about finance,” Panchapakesan finished. Great strategy, great appreciation of the value and a great win!
San Jose Mercury News: April 27, 2016 – Junior Niki Iyer is highlighted for her fourth place finish in the girls 1600-meter run at the CCS Top 8 Classic.
Pepperdinesports.com: April 16, 2016 – Izzy Connell ’13, now at Pepperdine, is highlighted for breaking a personal record in the 200-meter run at a recent track competition.
The Hindu: April 9, 2016 – Vignesh Panchanatham, grade 10, is the subject of a brief story about his win at the US Chess National High School Championships.
Earlier this semester, upper school students began building structures using Keva planks in an ongoing contest comprising various challenges. “We thought this might be a fun way for kids to do something creative and de-stress in the library,” said upper school librarian Lauri Vaughan. “The planks are out for anyone to use pretty much all the time.”
In the first challenge, students were tasked with extending a structure as far as possible past the edge of a table with no underlying support. Winners Tiffany Zhu, grade 11, Connie Miao, grade 11, and Vivek Bharadwaj, grade 12, devised a structure that stretched 18 inches past the table’s edge.
Most recently, students were challenged to build the tallest structure possible using only 50 blocks. Two teams tied with a winning height of 63 inches: seniors Evan Lohn and Divya Periyakoil and seniors Vivek Bharadwaj and Naman Jindal.
Last week, the kindergarten classes of teachers Katherine Lo, Grace Wallace, Kimberly Sandoval and Michelle Anderson each held their annual kindergarten show. Titled “Wing It” and directed by lower school music teacher Carena Montany, the shows followed the story of several baby birds who are hesitant to leave the nest but are convinced by their feathered friends to learn to fly so they can see the world beyond home. Gail Palmer provided the choreography, while and the costumes by Marilyn Watts and scenery by Whitney Pintello brought the aviary theme to life. With the help of her grade 5 technical theater students, Danny Dunn kept all four shows running smoothly.
The inaugural grade 8 off-campus 1920s party was a rousing success! This year, the eighth grade class placed emphasis on concluding many units with a social event at which students debated issues, values, and even food and drink from each era while playing the roles of different historical individuals.
The students, however, stepped it up recently. Rather than playing the roles of 1920s celebrities and learning about scandals and social history from the period in class, they did so in an authentic 1920s atmosphere off campus. The students, all very well dressed in 1920s attire, convened at the Orchestria Palm Court in downtown San Jose. A special thanks to Denise Sorkin, French teacher, who attended in a magnificent flapperesque dress herself, said Cyrus Merrill, social sciences and history teacher who led the group.
History flowed throughout the night, from the pouring of Prohibition-era non-alcoholic drinks to searching all over the restaurant for various sheet music covers of songs they had learned in class – many of which were decorations on the wall of the restaurant. Students were even greeted by a historically dressed doorman (who reports say bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Merrill’s brother, wink, wink!) as they arrived.
A special thank you to the staff and owners of Orchestria Palm Court in downtown San Jose, which reserved the entire restaurant on a Sunday night to host all of these eighth grade socialites. One student noted the group literally closed the joint down, even though they had to hang with a “fire-extinguisher” (1920s slang for a chaperone).
The restaurant is a wonderful place to hear authentic 1920s music in a fun atmosphere where everything is frozen in time, and the food is quite well done, noted Merrill. “The owners were amazed by the kids’ enthusiasm and endless questions about how the various ‘high-tech’ player pianos and more than 20 other machines, including a player violin, worked,” he added.
The restaurant’s owners even came out with extra desserts for students who best captured the decade with their use of slang and dress, as well as their breadth of knowledge regarding film and music of the era. The owners, however, refused to help with how to make a phone call from an old phone booth on a very strange (rotary dial) phone.
The students were mesmerized by the instrument and desperately tried to figure out how to get a dial tone and operate the mysterious telephone. They were astounded that such a device could call a cell phone. Many of them called their parents (yes 14-year-olds willingly contacting their parents!) to share the news that they were calling form a “very odd phone.”
Student Sofie Kassaras noted that most students dressed as flappers or upper class types. “As they all sat down at tables with their friends, the staff there brought out drinks with crazy names such as Raspberry Ambrosia and Chocolate Phosphate,” Kassaras said.
“Then came the entrees,” she added, “which included Shrimp Puttanesca and Austrian Goulash, which was frankly delicious. Finally, the dessert came, which was a cream puff, or a Profiterole. We summed up the night with a fun little scavenger hunt, where we searched for various picture, labels and items scattered throughout the venue. The night overall was ruled as a success, and the students went home with satisfied hungers and a sense of the 1920s.”
In a nice science/social studies crossover, after briefly discussing an article from the era claiming “flappers made better mothers” with healthier babies, the students correctly deduced that the much improved infant mortality rates of babies born during and after the 1920s was probably due to outside impacts and advances in science rather than the counterintuitive and mysterious claim made in the article that smoking, drinking and general carousing must contribute somehow to healthier children.
“Everyone had a blast! This pilot project of taking our end of unit dance parties out of class and into the real world was a smashing success!” noted Merrill.