This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
About a half dozen members from the Harker community spent time volunteering for StandUp For Kids (SUFK), a national outreach organization and center for homeless teens that seeks to end the cycle of youth homelessness throughout the United States.
From two of Harker’s upper school students painting an art mural to lower school parents donating folding chairs to members of the school’s faculty and staff preparing meals – these individuals have all helped the nonprofit, volunteer-driven effort in their own unique ways.
Stephanie Woolsey, a lower school math teacher at Harker, has been a longtime volunteer with SUFK. She said the Silicon Valley branch is an entirely volunteer-run center that survives on donations from the community.
Most recently, Avni Barman and Jessica Yang, both grade 12, painted a mural on a wall at the StandUp For Kids’ San Jose facility. They designed and created the painting using donated paint they secured themselves.
“Avni arranged getting some donated paint and materials from the Home Depot, and she and Jessica created the design, which was approved by the leadership at SUFK. I also donated artist paints and materials,” said Woolsey.
Sarah Zareen, director of the SUFK- Silicon Valley mentor program, said that it warms her heart when young people come together to help homeless youth. “The talented teen artists from The Harker School came to paint a mural in The Village. The beautiful mural not only adds color but also is inspiring,” she said.
In addition to the student artists, Woolsey noted that Harker parents Mustafa Gurleroglu and Monique Cabral (Emma Gurleroglu, grade 5) donated folding chairs to the organization last year.
“Chef Steve [Martin] is also donating meals one day a month (SUFK provides meals Monday and Thursdays, as well as showers, clothing, etc.) and I bring them to the center,” Woolsey added.
The primary goal of SUFK is to establish and build relationships with runaway, homeless and street-dependent youth and young adults, ages 13-25. Through supportive relationships with caring adults the organization helps young people adjust to safe and appropriate alternative living arrangements while becoming independent, self-sufficient, contributing members of society.
The SUFK Street Outreach Team literally goes to the streets to locate homeless and at-risk youth; extensive training helps the volunteers identify those who need help, who often blend into the crowd for their own safety. The organization also provides an outreach/drop-in center to provide a protective environment for at-risk youth who are looking to escape the dangers of the streets.
StandUp For Kids is currently seeking both volunteer and financial contributions. For more information about SUFK and its work: http://www.standupforkids.org/.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In mid-August, the office of District 28 State Assembly member Paul Fong held a special seminar at the middle school campus designed to help senior citizens identify and prevent fraud. A panel of experts instructed seniors on how to hire contractors, spot Medicare scams, prevent identify theft and more. The seminar was held in response to an increase in the activity of door-to-door salespeople in Cambrian and Willow Glen, two areas Fong represents.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
For the last three years the upper school’s Junior Classical League has sponsored a Sadie Hawkins dance as a fundraiser for charity. The proceeds this year totaled $700 and were given to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an organization that responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives.
The IRC was founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein. It offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster in more than 40 countries. The purpose of the Junior Classical League is to encourage an interest in and an appreciation of the language, literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
“[Fellow Latin teacher] Scott Paterson and I have always chaperoned the Sadies dance and other teachers have graciously donated their time for the event,” reported John Hawley, upper school Latin teacher.
In a thank you letter to Hawley, David Miliband, president of the IRC, stressed his gratitude for Harker’s gift, which will help his organization further its ongoing mission of aiding people on their journeys “from harm to home.”
He also wrote that the students’ gift enabled his organization to deliver emergency health care, clean water, counseling, safe spaces for children and other aid to families caught in crisis in the Middle East, South Sudan and elsewhere around the world. The gift will also go to assist thousands of newly settled refugees as they rebuild lives in 22 cities throughout the U.S.
“Your contribution is also allowing us to provide vital assistance to communities in Pakistan, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other countries as they rebuild their hospitals, schools and other crucial infrastructure in the aftermath of conflict or natural disaster,” said Miliband in the note.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Welcome back! After a long summer, the fall season is up and running, with cross country, golf, volleyball, football, water polo and tennis matches just now underway. The summer was not without news, however, as a Harker coach snagged a top award for the second straight year, lacrosse athletes were recognized for their academic achievements and a member of the Harker Board of Trustees grabbed the gold.
Fall Sports
Tennis The girls tennis team went 5-0 and was crowned Division 6 champions at the prestigious California Tennis Classic in Fresno. The girls earned their victories while battling 100 degree heat in early September. Congratulations, girls!
Volleyball Girls varsity volleyball lost to a strong Homestead team Sept. 5 at Blackford, one game to three. “They did really well,” said Brighid Wood, assistant to the athletic director, “and I don’t think you could ask a group of young women like that to represent our school any better.”
Water Polo Boys water polo won one and lost three at the Lynbrook Tournament Sept. 5-6.
Golf The varsity golf team took care of some old business this week: hanging the banners for last year’s league championship and the banner for winning the state academic championship!
Middle School Flag Football The middle school Varsity A flag football team, coached by Karriem Stinson, Jeff Martarano and Scott Rudolph, nailed it versus Menlo the second week of September, winning 14-0. The photo is from practice earlier in the week.
Football Our young football squad lost to Overfelt 38-21 in the season opener. Quarterback Keanu Forbes, grade 12, threw touchdown passes to freshman Nate Kelly and senior Christian Williams. He also ran 13 yards for a touchdown. Alyssa Amick, grade 12, kicked an extra point. The Harker cheerleaders did a fantastic job supporting the team, noted Dan Molin, athletic director.
Middle School Cross Country The middle school cross country team ran the Crystal Springs Relay at Hallmark Park in early September. Pictured are second place winners for grade 8, Lilia Gonzales, Aneesha Kumar, Julia Amick and Karen Krause. The grade 7 boys – Vedanth Sundaram, Grant Miner, Datha Arramreddy and Mihir Sharma – also took second, and grade 7 girls Anna Gert, Jasmine Wiese, Jenny Shaw and Gina Partridge, took third.
Lacrosse This summer, five Harker students were named as U.S. Academic All-Americans by the U.S. Lacrosse Association. Christine Lee, Mabel Luo and Brinda Perumal, all of whom graduated in June, and seniors Hannah Bollar and Allison Kiang received the honor. This past spring, those girls helped lead the team to a second place finish, including a redemptive victory against Sacred Heart Prep in the final game of the season to avenge an earlier loss. Off the field, the team claimed a CCS Scholastic Championship Team Award as well, finishing with a cumulative 3.67 GPA, the second best in the league.
Swimming and Diving Harker Board of Trustees member Martin Lundie won gold medals in both the 3-meter and platform diving competitions for athletes ages 60-64 at the World Masters Diving Championships in Montreal, beating out rivals from across North America and Japan. Lundie’s performance is a triumph of perseverance and dedication, and his lifelong passion for excellence, development and athletic competition sets a sterling example for Harker’s young sports stars. Last spring, the Harker swim team qualified for all of the relays at CCS and sent a solid half of its swimmers and diver Stacey Chao, now grade 12, to the championships. So check back in a half century to see if any Harker alumni can match Lundie’s success!
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Middle school drama teacher Monica Colletti traveled to New York City to spend a week training in improvisation with the famous Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. The session concluded with a public performance in New York, which Colletti was more than happy to brag about!
Big things happened for middle school dance teacher Rachelle Haun, who performed at San Francisco’s Mission in the Mix with the Gems Dance Team, and also successfully auditioned for the Raiderettes!
Laura Lang-Ree, performing arts department chair, was busy on vocal duties with the Los Gatos-Saratoga Big Band, which performed at numerous venues over the summer. Her performance at the San Jose Jazz Festival landed her on the front page of the local section of the San Jose Mercury News. She also joined the roster at Halvorson Model Management, signing with the agency in their commercial and voice-over division.
In addition to starring in Harker’s “Happy” video, upper school dance teacher Karl Kuehn worked with San Jose’s Atlas School of Dance as both a choreographer and performer. He also helped out the Bay Area-based Ragazzi Boys Chorus, teaching movement classes and choreography in preparation for the chorus’ performances in South Africa in 2015.
Middle school music teacher Dave Hart was commissioned by Bay Area woodwind group Frequency 49 for his compositional talents. He also lent his expertise to the International Society of Music Educators composition competition, which judges pieces by students in grades 6-12. At the Stanford Jazz Workshop, he taught and performed “with a fantastic international jazz faculty.” He also performed with acclaimed pianist and singer Dena DeRose and longtime friend Taylor Eigsti, in addition to instructing the Stanford Jazz Mentors, a group of college students seeking to sharpen their skills as jazz educators.
At the Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME) conference in Hartford, Conn., lower school music teacher Carena Montany learned a great deal by attending sessions and exchanging insights with other music teachers. Founded on the teachings of John Feierabend, a leading figure in the teaching of music and movement, FAME is an organization that seeks to spread his teachings to music educators.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In August, members of Harker’s varsity and JV dance teams attended a four-day dance camp with the United Spirit Association at University of California, Santa Cruz. Harker received the highest award – a superior – for choreography, and the team also was honored with the “Hardest Working Team” plaque.
Individual awards were given to Emily Pan and Ankita Sharma, grade 11, for their drill-down technique. Meanwhile, among the 150 participants, Noel Banerjee, Darby Millard, both grade 12, and Liana Wang, grade 9, were recognized as All-American dancers, earning an invitation to perform in London.
While it is always amazing to be awarded for hard work and technique, “the most memorable part of camp was being told by the USA instructors that Harker’s dancers were incredibly polite, dedicated, humble and supportive of both their team members and the other participating schools,” noted Karl Kuehn, dance team director. “Their passion to learn and grow as dancers fueled the team’s success, and I could not be more proud of this fantastic group of students.”
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Helen Wu, grade 12, who was selected to play and travel with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America this summer, embarked on a two-week national tour in late July that included performances at Carnegie Hall, Seiji Ozawa Hall in Massachusetts, Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and more. Wu is one of only three violinists from California who were selected to join the prestigious orchestra this summer!
“This is one of the greatest accomplishments and honors a Harker instrumentalist has ever achieved, so I’m really proud to share it with you,” said Chris Florio, leader of The Harker School Orchestra.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
This summer the business and entrepreneurship department focused on following up its outstanding first year with an even stronger second year.
In July, Harker’s DECA chapter’s operations team traveled to Phoenix to attend the Emerging Leader Summit. At the event, which featured DECA leadership from across the U.S. and Canada, students attended workshops aimed at helping them improve the Harker chapter. The team also showed off its plan for its upcoming DECA Launch2014 event, which won an award for the best project model.
The summer’s headline event was the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Entrepreneurship in the Classroom program. The program brought Wharton professor Keith Weigelt to Harker to teach 20 student attendees about entrepreneurship through lectures and activities that ranged from composing a business plan to running a business. The weeklong program challenged the students as they spent entire days learning from the professor and working in small groups.
For their business, the students decided to model the Harker Incubator program, which is designed to encourage young entrepreneurs to develop their ideas and build companies. The students broke into four teams that focused on finance, operations, bench- marking and marketing. After working on these four areas, the team united to present the business plan for the Harker Incubator.
The summer events finished strong with the inaugural DECA Launch2014 event. Held the week before the school year began, the event’s goal was to re-energize current DECA membersand introduce new members to the chapter, as well as get the entire chapter’s competitive instincts ready for an intense DECA year.
The two-day event featured teaching, collaborative activities, keynote presentations, lectures and role-playing. The first teaching event, geared toward giving new students an overview of the DECA chapter’s divisions and activities, was capped off with a delicious Chipotle-catered burrito lunch. The second teaching event was an introduction to the many competitions that the DECA chapter will compete in during the 2014-15 school year.
After a number of speakers and role-playing events the second day, Launch2014 closed with a ceremony where parents could view the results of students’ hard work.
The DECA chapter and the B.E. department now look forward to the upcoming year. Highlights include the opening of the Innovation Center on the upper school campus. The center, lined with whiteboard walls, is designed to foster collaboration in a totally modular environment, with moveable tables, chairs, and a top-notch audio visual system. Students will gather in the center to discuss their ideas, akin to brain-storming sessions held at local tech companies.
In October, the B.E. department will introduce its newest event: a business and economics convention titled BECon2014. The department’s 80 students will be expected to present at the convention, alongside a number of Stanford scholars, who will present their ongoing work and lead student discussions.
In mid-September the lower school library announced the exciting formation of a new “maker space” after-school drop-in program for students in grades 4 and 5. The program, inspired by the educational maker movement, is now up and running.
Throughout the country, parents, students and educators have eagerly embraced the growing maker movement, with its do-it-yourself (DIY) mantra evident at schools, clubs, museums and libraries Now, the lower school will have a maker space – a physical location where people come together to create – of its very own.
On Sept. 26, the Bucknall library welcomed 23 students to its inaugural maker space activity, where participants had a blast creating “Brush Bots.” The mechanical toys are powered by a simple circuit with a pager motor that vibrates and moves the bot across surfaces, such as tables and floors.
The students built and designed the tiny robots from toothbrush heads, batteries, wire and adhesive. They were provided the basic components and a pile of miscellaneous materials to enhance and modify their bot. Students also could design habitats; small boxes that contained their motorized brush bot. The result, recalled the lower school librarians, was a dynamic and open-ended exploration of the principles of motion and energy.
Fourth graders Matthew Chen and Brandon Wang took their brush bots to the next level by designing them to do battle in an arena. In the course of their experiment, the pair discovered they needed to expand their bots’ habitat and were overheard making plans to incorporate paper towel tubes and use a table rather than a box.
Fifth grade English teacher Ann Smitherman observed that the “flexibility that these kids are showing when they’re trying to decide what to do and why things work like this is really important.”
Look for expanded coverage of the lower school’s new maker space program in the upcoming winter issue of Harker Quarterly magazine!
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In late July, 10 upper school students embarked on a summer research trip to Costa Rica, where they had the unique opportunity to perform field research with working scientists and experience the country’s lush beauty.
After spending a relaxing first day in the Costa Rican capital city of San José, the group departed for the La Cusinga Lodge in Uvita. While walking on the beach, the students also were fortunate enough to observe a sea turtle laying her eggs. “They got to observe the entire process up close and we were able to get back to the lodge by 10 p.m.,” said upper school chemistry teacher and trip chaperone Smriti Koodanjeri.
The next day was packed with thrills, as the students went river and ocean kayaking before jumping into the water with snorkeling equipment. “We did more kayaking after the swim and also learned how to find, shuck and open coconuts with only a large stick and a rock,” Koodanjeri said. That evening, the students attended a lecture about how geographic information systems (GIS) are used to keep tabs on marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.
Over the next few days, the students worked on their research projects at Cabo Blanco Natural Reserve and the Monteverde Institute. At Cabo Blanco, the students went on a guided snorkeling exhibition and took part in a field research exercises, where they collected and identified shells and used the data collected to estimate the number of snail species in the area. “The controlled collection and analysis took most of the afternoon and was an excellent introduction into drawing quantitative conclusions even with a limited data set,” Koodanjeri said.
At the Monteverde Institute, the students analyzed the data they had gathered at Cabo Blanco and used it to create research projects that they later presented at a small conference. For their hard work, the students each received a certificate from the University of Georgia, which has a campus in Monteverde.
On their final night, the students went hiking through the Tirimbina rainforest.