This year’s Summer Institute (SI) was marked by numerous exciting, first-time happenings. Highlights of the increasingly popular program included an inaugural summer science research class, a visit from a coding expert during a new computer course and a bake sale that raised money for the Humane Society.
Held on the upper school campus from June 15-Aug.7, SI was open to both Harker students and those from area schools in grades 6-12. SI allowed participants to get a jump start on the coming school year, as well as enrich their learning on topics of interest.
SI has two tracks: one designed for middle schoolers and another for high schoolers. Many students combined a morning academic program with afternoon activities. Falling under the academic umbrella was a new course called “Summer Science Research Society.” Taught by middle school science teacher Kathy Peng, the offering gave participants in grades 6-8 the opportunity to explore and research real world topics of individual interest.
Meanwhile, a chocolate chip cookie baking project and sale, sponsored by a new SI math class, raised $283.53 for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley (https://staging.news.harker.org/summer-institute-math-class-raises-money-for-humane-society). “Lots of math was used to calculate how many cookies we could bake within our limited class time and oven constraints. In addition, the students had to determine the shopping list and recalculate a recipe based on that,” reported Eileen Schick, who taught the three-week summer school course called “The Eagle Project: Math!”
Another new offering for grades 6-8 was “Beginning Python,” taught by Mike Schmidt, Harker’s middle school computer science department chair. Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Harker alumnus Abhinav Mathur, who graduated from the middle school in 2004, designed the instructional software Schmidt used in the class. Mathur, a former student of Schmidt’s, came to campus in June to speak to the 17 students enrolled in the course.
Mathur created a website called Pythonroom.com, an online learning environment for the Python programming language. He and another young entrepreneur, Keshav Saharia, founded a company called HulaLoop, which provides educational platforms on the web for various programming systems of which Pythonroom is currently their main focus.
“I had been using their product for my newly created Python programming course to teach middle schoolers the world of text-based programming. The kids were crazy about it and absorbed all the lessons like sponges!” recalled Schmidt. Pythonroom provides a solid foundation to the world of Python programming by allowing students to move forward at their own pace, he added.
“I think Pythonroom is great for beginners and it is really fun,” agreed Angela Cai, a rising grade 7 Harker student who attended the class.
“Abhi was a great (guest) teacher, and he gave great advice on finding easier ways to do certain problems,” added Stephen Yang, a rising grade 8 student at Miller Middle School.
Noting how excited he was to be back at Harker, Mathur said he was glad to give back to the school that provided him with so much. “We (at HulaLoop) are passionate about spreading coding knowledge to all students, and progressive schools like Harker make this goal achievable,” he said.
After the morning academic sessions, many SI students stayed on for the afternoon activity program, which included an array of specialty classes and recreational activities. Some students in grade 9 also signed up for the afternoon activities.
“We had a wide variety of weekly fun classes that the students signed up for, which this year included a field trip to the Oakland Zoo, an Ice Age Carnival, a Red, White and Blue Bash, and a visit to Golfland,” recalled K-8 history department chair Keith Hirota, who was in charge of SI academics and activity programming for the middle school students.
Although they were not eligible for the afternoon activity program, students in grades 10-12 were welcome to stay on campus to swim, study, shoot hoops and socialize. While the majority of the older students were primarily concerned with earing credits, many took time out for some summertime fun.
“The Summer Institute continues to grow and this year we had more than 1,300 students signed up for classes on the Saratoga campus!” reported Kelly Espinosa, director of summer and preschool programs.
For students who attended this year’s Summer Camp+, the summer was filled with engaging morning lessons and fun afternoon seafaring adventures. Themed “Camp on the 7 Seas,” the program provided educational and activity packed sessions for students in grades K-5. The very popular program, held on the lower school campus, attracts nearly 800 campers each summer.
Camp+ students in grades 1-5 have several morning program options, including the traditional academic offerings Core Focus and Learning Opportunities in Literature (LOL). Campers in grades 2-5 also had the option of art or music. An artist’s studio was led by Harker’s lower school art instructor Gerry-louise Robinson, while orchestra, rock band and songwriting workshops were led by Louis Hoffman, lower school music teacher.
New this year were extended teaching blocks during the academic portion of the day, explained Patricia Lai Burrows, who served as a Camp+ principal alongside Diann Chung. “This year’s schedule allowed for deeper and more meaningful learning,” recalled Lai Burrows.
Following the morning session, many campers stayed on for a partial or full-day activity program, which included a wide range of group and individual activities such as arts and crafts, dance, water play, wall climbing, archery and field sports.
Among those participating in the afternoon program was first-time Camp+ participant Kaleb Goldin. The rising grade 3 Harker student stood on the lower school field, waiting in line for his turn to participate in the rock wall climbing activity.
“I’m looking forward to it!” he said, as a camp counselor helped him prepare for his climb. After he had finished, he gave the thumbs up sign, declaring “That was great!”
The afternoon sessions included a variety of activities for campers of all ages, who were grouped according to their grades: kindergarteners attended kindercamp, first graders were called “owls,” second and third graders were” condors,” while fourth and fifth graders were “eagles.” Afternoon activities also were divided by themes, such as Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Artic, Bon Voyage, Pacific, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic.
The groups enjoyed many fun outings. For example, the kindercampers enjoyed parfaits at a neighborhood park; the owls went on a field trip to the Children’s Discovery Museum; the condors went bowling and to the Oakland Zoo; and the eagles spent an afternoon at Laser Quest and had a sleepover in the gym. Campers of all ages had a blast celebrating camp mascot Ray’s Deep Sea Birthday Party and a salt water pool carnival!
The Summer Camp+ program traditionally kicks off and ends with Color Clash, a fun event held in the lower school’s gymnasium. Groups of campers on yellow, red, green and blue teams participate in an array of silly games cheered on by captains (aka camp counselors) wearing color-coordinated outfits that run the gamut from superheroes to hula skirts and fun hats.
At the end of each session, there was an informative showcase for parents. The “Super Summer Showcase” allowed parents to spend some time exploring their child’s classroom and learn more about the exciting activities in the afternoon program. As part of the showcase, art work from students enrolled in the artist’s studio was on display.
The exhibit had a playful feel, with a colorful array of chalk pastels of flowers, sunsets and snails. The children also made windmills and American flags, among other seasonal artwork – reflective of both summer fun and another great year at Camp+!
The Harker School has offered extensive summer programs for more than 50 years. The Summer Camp+ program is nationally accredited by the American Camping Association.
Members of the JV and varsity dance team had a very successful run at United Spirit Association’s summer training camp at UC Santa Cruz last week. The group earned the highest award, Superior, for its choreography and performance skills, and was awarded the Hardest Working Team plaque by camp instructors. Hazal Gurcan, a rising junior, and Liana Wang, a rising sophomore, were named All-Americans, and were invited to perform in the London New Year’s Day Parade, and Ankita Sharma, a rising senior, earned an invitation to perform at Disney World’s Spirit Spectacular for her leadership and teamwork skills. Directors Rachelle Haun and Karl Kuehn noted they are incredibly proud of all the dancers for the hard work and energy they displayed during the four-day event!
A chocolate chip cookie baking project and sale, sponsored by a new math class offered through Harker’s Summer Institute, raised $283.53 for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley.
“Lots of math was used to calculate how many cookies we could bake within our limited class time and oven constraints. In addition, the students had to determine the shopping list and recalculate a recipe based on that,” reported Eileen Schick, who taught the three-week summer school course called “The Eagle Project: Math!”
In addition to hosting the bake sale, the students also learned to use linear and nonlinear computer graphing techniques, as well as how to use online software to make three-dimensional castles. The castles were then printed using a 3D printer, and the students calculated their volume and surface areas.
The class comprised mostly incoming grade 6 honors math students, with a few grade 7 students and two advanced fifth graders, Schick said.
Harker’s athletic department has hired Tomas Thompson as the new head coach of the school’s varsity girls basketball team. In addition to his collegiate playing experience, 45-year-old Thompson brings to Harker a wealth of coaching expertise, including both high school and club affiliations.
“We are very excited about Coach Thompson joining our staff as a part-time coach. He brings a tremendous amount of coaching and high level of playing experience to Harker,” said Dan Molin, athletic director for Harker’s upper school.
During the 2014-15 school year, Harker’s girls varsity team advanced to the CCS Division IV playoffs, finishing with a 12-12 overall record.
”I’m really looking forward to coaching the girls high school basketball team at Harker and developing the program. There is an incredible amount of potential and I believe it can be among the best with a lot of dedication by the players and coaches,” said Thompson, who was born and raised in Santa Cruz and now resides in San Jose.
A K-8 P.E. teacher at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Thompson previously spent nearly 12 years teaching K-5 P.E. at Harker’s lower school, while also serving as assistant coach for the upper school’s boys varsity basketball team. Thompson also has coached the grade 6 San Jose Cagers, an elite AAU girls basketball club, as well as at Los Altos High and Valley Christian (where in 2002 he was an assistant coach for the boys team that won the NorCal title).
Thompson is a graduate of the University of San Francisco, with a B.A. in exercise sports science. He played Division 1 basketball for the USF Dons, setting a record for the most 3-pointers in a game without a miss. A 1988 graduate of Soquel High, Thompson was also a standout on the Knights’ boys basketball team, where he held a record-breaking 1,948 career points and averaged 23 points per game during his senior season. He subsequently received the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League’s Most Valuable Player Award.
There was a time when Eesha Chona, a rising senior and founder of an online community for children and teens whose loved ones are battling cancer, felt like she was leading a double life.
Chona’s world changed suddenly when her mother was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer a year and a half ago. That’s when she felt like she was leading two separate lives: one at home, the other at school. At home in Saratoga, she dealt with her mother’s diagnosis, surgery and recovery. At school, she pretended everything was fine.
“Life during the months of trying to accept my new reality was awful,” she said. “But I couldn’t complain as I wasn’t the one with breast cancer. I didn’t realize that when a person is diagnosed with cancer, everyone close to them is diagnosed as well.”
Feeling isolated and alone, she turned to her brother (Harker alumnus Aneesh Chona ’13) for support. Several weeks after their mother’s diagnosis, he encouraged and helped her to follow up on an idea she had to support others in her situation by launching a nonprofit organization called Association of Teens Against Cancer (ATAC).
ATAC now offers an online community for children and teens whose loved ones have been diagnosed with cancer. An interactive educational program on the website (www.atacnow.com) helps users understand the various adult cancers and their treatments. The site also contains a directory of hotlines that teenagers can use during a crisis.
Chona stressed that her brother’s help was and is still vital to ATAC’s success. “I turned to him with my initial idea and together [we] advanced it. He mentored and guided me in marketing an organization and launching it. He also oversees the financials of the company, does the accounting to keep track of donations and important financial metrics, and analyzes the overall efficiency of the organization,” she explained, adding that her brother also runs the ATAC Philadelphia office and networks with local nonprofits interested in partnering with them.
In addition to her work on ATAC, Chona participated in AVON’s 39-mile walk for breast cancer awareness; she was later selected to join its national youth crew to help out with the walk. She also has worked extensively with Bay Area Cancer Connections (BCC), a Palo Alto-based nonprofit organization that provides support for cancer patients and their spouses.
At the request of BCC, she authored an online monthly journal, titled “A Teen’s Journey With Her Mother” (http://www.bcconnections.org/author/eesha/), to help incorporate support for children of cancer patients into their program. This summer, she also started her own therapy class at BCC: “Photo Stories: A Hands-On Family Collage Class.”
“My mother and I always bonded through crafting collages together. After she was diagnosed with cancer, the collages I made on my own supported her through her treatment. I felt that since BCC lacked a class involving children, the best class would be one that brings families together,” she said, noting that she hopes to spread the class to other nonprofits in the Bay Area.
Recently, Chona also started working with Shanti, a nonprofit organization that provides financial and emotional support to San Francisco’s most vulnerable women living with life-threatening illnesses. Chona’s involvement with Shanti helped her realize that not everyone diagnosed with cancer has access the proper treatment or care. That realization prompted her to return to her roots in India, home to some of the poorest populations in the world, where breast cancer has become the leading cancer in the country.
“Over the past two years, I’ve raised money through ATAC and have decided to ‘atac’ 11 specific, untapped villages near my parents’ home city. I’ve raised enough money to sponsor two villages to receive breast screening and prostate exams as well as mammograms … basic health care that these men and women would otherwise never obtain,” she said. When BCC found out about Chona’s work in India, the organization offered to further support her cause by donating prosthetics, wigs, scarves and specialized clothing to any individuals who are found to have cancer and need ongoing invasive treatment.
Chona also has partnered with Roko Cancer, a nonprofit based in London for which she recently became an international grand ambassador. Come spring, her role with Roko Cancer will take her to India for an intensive, hands-on experience working in the villages ATAC sponsors. She will assist with patient exams/screenings, as well as meet with the children of patients.
“Not only are we sponsoring villages for cancer screenings, but will also start providing a channel to support ongoing care with supplies for those individuals who are positively diagnosed, which is something they would not have been able to afford due to their vulnerable circumstances,” she said.
Last summer Chona became a local leader with the American Cancer Society (ACS). As the youth rally and engagement lead for ACS’s Silicon Valley chapter, she was responsible for reaching out to Bay Area high schools and providing them with information about ACS and the benefits of teen involvement. In addition, as the Pink Ambassador for all Bay Area high schools, she visited many schools to educate teens about cancer, screening and prevention, as well as ways in which they could reach out and support cancer patients. She was offered this position again for the upcoming year and is looking forward to continuing to educate and empower more teenagers across the Bay Area.
Recognizing Chona’s overall outreach efforts, the nonprofit organization ZERO Breast Cancer nominated her for its “Honor Thy Healer” award. By using her circumstances as a tool to reach out and help others, Chona said she has increased her knowledge, not just about cancer, but also about starting a nonprofit, marketing it, coding a website and updating features.
I addition to its website, ATAC is also on Facebook and Twitter, and soon will be on the App Store with an iPhone App she created called Send a Ribbon. The app enables children to support their loved ones who have cancer by drawing a personalized cancer ribbon and sending it via email with a caring message.
“Hopefully ATAC will broaden its horizons from five nonprofits and hundreds of users to thousands all across the globe, teaching children to not be scared of reality and helping them understand that they have their own community a few computer keys away, consisting of friends who share and care,” said Chona.
Three Harker teens – rising seniors Natalie Simonian and Allison Wang, and rising junior Andrew Rule – offered a national award committee their opinions on titles nominated for the 2016 Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) at American Library Association (ALA) conference in San Francisco on June 27. Upper school librarian Lauri Vaughan facilitated the students’ participation through her membership in the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), which sponsored the teen review session. To participate, students were required to read several titles from a list of 59 nominated books and prepare brief oral presentations for the committee.
In addition to the review session, students were invited to an author luncheon where they shared a table with internationally acclaimed Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat, best known for her novels “Breath, Eyes, Memory” and “The Farming of Bones,” as well as her story collection “Krik? Krak!” and memoir “Brother, I’m Dying.” Danticat offered the students galley copies of her forthcoming young adult title “Untwine,” which will be published in October. Students also met Bill Konigsberg, author of “Openly Straight” and the forthcoming “The Porcupine of Truth,” and Marissa Meyer, author of “Cress,” among others.
Simonian, Wang and Rule were given access to the ALA conference exhibit hall, which boasted more than 900 displays featuring authors, books and information technology. Wang, who offered commentary on Pete Hautman’s “Eden West,” Marcus Sedgwick’s “The Ghosts of Heaven” and Courtney Summers’ “All the Rage,” found the review session less intimidating than she expected. “The session was fairly informal, and offering my opinions in front of an audience did not feel significantly different from discussing books with friends,” said Wang who particularly enjoyed the exhibit hall. “Seeing authors whose books I love (Neal Shusterman, for instance) was exciting, and I look forward to reading the free books from the exhibits.”
“The best portion of the conference was easily the author luncheon, partly because of the opportunity to get my books signed and to meet a literary idol of mine,” said Rule, referring to Danticat. “But also because of the conversation session we took part in. To discuss writers with writers has long been a dream of mine, since the best writers are, almost invariably, the best readers. I received recommendations for authors I’m familiar with, like Shirley Jackson and Cormac McCarthy, as well as for authors like Jandy Nelson and Andy Weir, whom I hadn’t previously encountered.”
Simonian found the review session a highlight. “It was wonderful to stand up in front of the committee and audience and give my opinion and recommendation on the books I had read, and also to hear the thoughts of some other teens who had read the same books.” Simonian observed, “I find it really humbling that the committee members are going to take my opinion into consideration when deciding whether to give the book this national award.” Committee members – professional librarians from across the nation – will make their final decisions and announce winners of the 2016 Best Fiction for Young Adults at the ALA Midwinter Conference in January.
Maverick McNealy ’13 was noted in the San Jose Mercury News on July 16 for holding down third place at the inaugural Barbasol Championship PGA golf tournament in Opelika, Ala. See story at http://bayareane.ws/1Okicw1. McNealy, who won the Haskins Award as the top college linksman, is also the 2015 Division I recipient of the Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year Award, presented by Barbasol on June 5.
An article posted at www.Nicklaus.com notes McNealy’s accomplishments this year:
“A sophomore from Portola Valley, Calif., McNealy led NCAA Division I with six collegiate victories this year. He posted a dominant 10-stroke win at the Pac-12 Conference Championships, where his 18-under aggregate score of 262 established a new league tournament scoring record. The Pac-12 Conference Player owns a 69.05 season scoring average, the second best in recorded NCAA history. McNealy claimed medalist honors at the NCAA Chapel Hill Regional, Southwestern Intercollegiate, Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational, The Prestige at PGA West and The Goodwin. McNealy was selected to compete this summer on the United States Palmer Cup team.”
Four Harker singers were named to the 2015 National Association for Music Education (NAfME) All-National Honor Mixed Choir. They are Krishna Bheda, rising sophomore; Ashwin Rao, rising junior; and Sahana Narayanan and Gurutam Thockchom, rising seniors. The NAfME All-National Honor Ensembles represent the top performing high school musicians in the United States. Students will perform Oct. 28 at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., as part of the NAfME National In-Service Conference. Congrats to all four!
About 100 teachers attended the annual Harker Teacher Institute on June 6. The event offered workshops for educators looking to gain new pedagogical skills to bring to their classrooms and curricula. Teachers learned how to use Google Apps to increase classroom efficiency, methods to challenge students while reducing stress, how to use games to teach mathematics and more.
Natalie Richardson, a teacher from Sacramento who attended the Google Apps workshop, said she plans to use Doctopus to share documents with her students. She was also inspired by Eileen Schick’s workshop on Singapore model drawing, a visual method for solving complex word problems. “I even bought several books on Singapore math word problems after her presentation,” Richardson said. “I am already working on implementation in my junior high class.”
This year’s HTI featured a number of first-time presenters, “including several that were low-tech or no-tech, which was a welcome addition,” said Diane Main, upper school director of learning innovation and design.
“I overheard many attendees comment that they wanted to attend all the sessions,” Main added. “There were so many great speakers and topics to choose from.”