Providing a fun, sweet start to Harker’s Summer Institute (SI) program, a group of business-savvy students attending an SI finance class recently organized and ran a lemonade stand on the upper school campus.
The students raised $228, which was divided among three local organizations (Abode Services, the American Veterinary Medical Foundation and the Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Foundation) as part of a lesson on charitable giving. The stand was one of two culminating projects for a course called “Finance & Investing for Teens” (F.I.T., for short). For the other culminating project, students successfully designed their own mutual fund.
The lemonade sale, held in early July during SI’s morning break and lunch hour, attracted customers including SI students and faculty, as well as other Harker staff working on the Saratoga campus. Harker’s SI, which began in mid-June and runs until mid-August, gives students in grades 6-12 the chance to earn credits, learn new skills and follow their passions.
The program is off to great start, with a total of 1,088 middle and upper school students enrolled in the institute (a 242 increase from last summer), according to SI middle school director Keith Hirota and Evan Barth, SI principal for the upper school students.
Available to both Harker students and others, SI offers two tracks –one designed for middle schoolers and another for high school students. Participants typically combine a morning academic program with afternoon activities, allowing them to earn credits and learn new skills, yet still enjoy summertime fun.
The academic portion of the day offers rigorous for-credit courses such as algebra, economics and programming, as well as non-credit opportunities for enrichment and growth including creative writing, Web design, debate and robotics. A driver’s education course is available for students ages 15 and up.
For middle schoolers (grades 6-8), SI’s afternoon activity program includes many specialty classes and recreational activities; students in grade 9 are also invited to sign up for the afternoon activities. Specialty classes include backyard games, volleyball boot camp and cooking. Other classes include art, jewelry-making, magic, improv, dance, tech, junior lifeguard, chess and circus arts. There are also off-campus field trips every couple of weeks to places such as Shoreline Aquatics Center and Capitola.
The lemonade stand is an example of SI’s continued commitment to combine learning with hands-on activities. To run the stand, students in the institute’s F.I.T. class were divided into three teams and tasked to come up with a custom flavor, build a business plan, design a marketing strategy and staff the business.
Start-up money was fronted by their instructor, Jonathan Brusco. “We discussed charitable giving and how to evaluate charities based on a number of factors, including their mission statement, financial efficiency, program effectiveness and transparency. Each student evaluated a specific charity and the group voted for the final selection,” he said.
F.I.T. participant and stand worker Emily Zhou, a rising grade 7 student at the Challenger School, said that this was her first time attending SI. Previously, she had attended Harker’s Camp+ program, held at the lower school.
Zhou explained that to offset such costs as cups and ingredients, drinks were sold for $1 for regular flavor and $1.50 for specialty flavors like mango or strawberry. “But we passed out coupons for 25 cents off to attract customers,” she said, noting that refills also went for 25 cents off.
Zhou’s F.I.T. classmate, rising grade 9 Harker student Eric Tran, said he was surprised at how much money the lemonade stand netted, noting that “We made $85 in just the first half hour of its opening.” In addition to passing out coupons to help attract customers, Tran said that a lot of marketing was done “word of mouth” and by “putting up signs around campus.”
However, customer Grace Cao, a rising grade 11 Harker student, said that she simply happened upon the stand on her way to an SI class. Of the lemonade she ordered, she said, “It tasted great!”
July 23, 2014 UPDATE 2: Congratulations to Vikram Sundar ’14, who earned a gold medal at this year’s International Physics Olympiad in Astana, Kazakhstan! As one of three gold medalists (alongside two silver medalists) on the U.S. team, Sundar was instrumental in helping the U.S. tie for third place overall in the event, in which 86 countries participated.
June 9, 2014 UPDATE: Vikram Sundar ’14, will be one of only five U.S. International Physics Olympiad team members heading to the International Physics Olympiad to be held from July 13 to 21, 2014 in Astana, Kazakhstan! Go Vikram-best of luck in this prestigious event!
May 22, 2014 Four Harker students are among America’s brightest emerging physicists, who will gather at Physics Boot Camp in College Park, Md., later this month, to train and hopefully qualify for the final U.S. Physics Olympiad Team.
Harker students who qualified are Rahul Sridhar, grade 12; Vikram Sundar, grade 12; Andrew Zhang, grade 11; and Kevin Zhu, grade 12. They will be vying for one of the five spots on the team (plus an alternate), who will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan, from July 13-21. There, more than 400 student scholars from 92 nations will test their physics knowledge, competing with the best in the world.
“This must be some kind of record!” said Jason Bardi, director of media services at the American Institute of Physics, which administers the test, runs the boot camp and sponsors the team’s trip to the Olympiad. “It’s tremendous because [Harker] kids are competing with all the huge, powerhouse science magnet public schools on the East Coast, like Stuyvesant and Montgomery Blair, which together have only three members on the team — as well as all the other high schools in the country,” he said.
Over the past 10 years, every U.S. Physics Team member traveling to the international competition has returned with a medal. In 2009, Anand Natarajan ’09 earned a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad in Mexico. Harker sends a student to the boot camp most years, but has not had four members in recent memory.
The U.S. team is selected from 19 students who have emerged through a rigorous exam taken by 4,277 students. Eleven of the 19 finalists are students are from California; nine of them are from the Bay Area, including Gunn High School, Mission High School, Monta Vista High School, Palo Alto High School and Saratoga High School. The full list is here: http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/2014-United-States-Physics-Team-Announced.cfm.
“The competition for a position on the U.S. Physics Team is intense and each student who participated in the 2014 selection process is deserving of recognition,” said Beth Cunningham, executive officer of the American Association of Physics Teachers. “They are the future of America’s success in physics-related fields. AAPT is honored to recognize the exceptional scholars who qualified for the team and to support their further participation in the International Physics Olympiad.”
An integral part of the team experience is the training camp. Most of the students invited to the camp are the top science student in their high school. For many, it is their first chance to meet other students who are truly their peers. The training camp is a crash course in the first two years of university physics. Students learn at a very fast pace. They have an opportunity to hear about cutting edge research from some of the community’s leading physicists. At the end of the training camp, five students will be selected to travel to Kazakhstan for the international competition.
The coaches for the 2014 U.S. Physics Team are Paul Stanley, academic director; Andrew Lin, senior coach; JiaJia Dong and David Fallest, coaches; and Lucy Chen, assistant coach.
The U.S. Physics Team is sponsored by the generous support of private donors and the member societies of the American Institute for Physics.
About AAPT AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists and industrial scientists, with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage teaching practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Last spring, as track and field season heated up, a funny thing happened: Harker records began to fall en masse. With 2013 now drawing to a close, the cross country team has kept the streak alive, making the past calendar year one for the record books for Harker runners.
It all started in March at the Willow Glen Track and Field Invitational, when Corey Gonzales, now grade 11, topped his own Harker record in the 3,200-meter run by 40 seconds. Isabelle Connell ’13, then a senior, broke her own record in the 200 meter, and Michael Chen ’13 broke his own record in the shot put. A week later, Connell set a new Harker record in the 100 meter, while Julia Wang, now grade 11, set a new shot put record, then posted the second-best mark in Harker history for girls discus. A week after that, Gonzales set a new Harker record in the mile run, Connell set a new Harker record in the 400-meter run, and Sumit Minocha ’13 set a new Harker record in the 100-meter run.
A month later, Cheryl Liu ’13 broke a Harker record in the 100-meter hurdles. Then, three minutes later, Nadia Palte, just a freshman at the time, broke Liu’s record. That same day, Chen broke a Harker record in the discus competition. A few days later, Minocha broke a Harker record in the 100-meter run, and Palte broke her own record in the 100-meter hurdles. At the WBAL championships, Minocha won the 200-meter race, Gonzales won the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter races, Claudia Tischler, now grade 12, won the 1,600-meter race, and Connell won the 100-meter and 200-meter races. A relay team of Tischler, Palte, Connell and Ragini Bhattacharya ’13 also came in first place. Discus throwers Wang and Chen all advanced to CCS.
All told, Harker sent more athletes to CCS and saw more athletes score points at CCS than ever before. Minocha won the CCS championships in the 200-meter run, becoming the first runner in Harker’s history to win an individual CCS championship and the second Harker athlete ever to achieve such a mark. Minocha and Connell became the first athletes in Harker history to qualify for the state meet, and they and Gonzales all set personal records at CCS. Minocha was recognized as athlete of the week by the San Jose Mercury News.
It was an incredible finish to an incredible year. Spring 2013 was a breakthrough season for the program, unlikely to be rivaled. The seniors graduated, and Minocha’s and Connell’s new records were noted in the Harker gym.
When the returning athletes came back to school in the fall, an amazing thing happened: the cross country team picked up right where it left off. Tischler was now the team’s senior statesman, and Gonzales was freshly saddled with new expectations to continue his record-breaking streak. They were joined this year by a new phenom: freshman Niki Iyer.
Running cross country in September, Iyer won the first race of her Harker career. In her next effort, her first varsity race, she ran the best time of any female runner in Harker’s history, coming in second place by a single second. In her next race, she racked up her first varsity win, setting a new school record with one of the 10 best times for a freshman in the course’s 70-year history, an achievement that Harker’s athletic director Dan Molin called “truly elite level.” That race won Iyer athlete of the week recognition from the San Jose Mercury News.
In the first WBAL meet of the year, Gonzales set a new course record, while Iyer won her race and missed out on setting a new course record by, again, a single second. At Baylands, Iyer won another race, beating the previous year’s league champion and setting a new course record. At Crystal Springs, Gonzales and Iyer both set new Harker records. Both runners came in first at the WBAL championships. They and Tischler all qualified for the CCS championships, where Iyer placed third in her race and Gonzales won his, making him the new Division 4 CCS cross country champion. Both qualified for the state meet, where Iyer took seventh and Gonzales finished 85th. See the Eagle Report, page 36, for details.
One of the things that changed Harker’s fortunes was a new head coach. The 2012- 13 school year was the first for Scott Chisam, who had run cross country and track at UCLA, then coached UCLA’s women’s track and field team to two NCAA national championships. All told, Chisam has coached 36 NCAA All-Americans and Olympians, and coached the U.S. women’s cross country team in the 1984 World Cross Country Championships.
“He’s as good as it gets,” says director Molin. “The Chisam name in cross country and track is well known.” The team agrees.
“I really could not have asked for better coaches,” says Gonzales. When Chisam arrived, he took naturally quick runners and made them into smart runners, teaching them techniques to improve their times and their stamina, ensuring that not only would they improve, but improve sustainably.
“It’s amazing how little they knew. They could run fast, but just things like starts, staying near the line on the turn. Just the things that make differences, to the hundreds, to the tenths,” said Chisam.
The team’s success has been contagious. “Last year’s team has been such an inspiration,” says Iyer. “They used to break the records like every week,” she remembers. Iyer, in turn, has inspired her teammates. “She’s more tenacious than any runner I’ve ever seen,” says Gonzales. “Being able to have Niki at practice has made me more tenacious as a runner as well.” He has kind words for Tischler’s leadership, as well. “I’ve always looked up to her,” Gonzales adds. “She’s the real captain on the team. She keeps everyone together. We all look up to Claudia.”
The inspiration of last year’s team, the expertise of Chisam, Gonzales’ ascendance, Tischler’s leadership and Iyer’s sudden emergence have created a great vibe among the runners.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better team this year,” raved Iyer. “The dynamics of our team are just so amazing.” Iyer can recall walking into the gym and gaping at the records set by the team the year before. Now, she is proud to see her name on that list as well. When, at a recent race, an athlete at another school asked Iyer if she’d prefer to be at Simi Valley, one of the state’s top cross country programs, Iyer cut her off mid-sentence. “Once an Eagle, always an Eagle,” was Iyer’s definitive reply.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
In 2008, grade 5 students Glenn Reddy, Jeremy Binkley and Nicholas Sancen were in search of a way to serve their community. “We didn’t want to just do a bake sale, because everyone does a bake sale,” said Reddy, who is now a junior. Instead, the lower school students collected various household items donated by the Harker community to sell at a garage sale.
The resulting club, PEACE2PEACE, held its first garage sale that year, raising $1,500 for AIDS Orphan Education Trust (AOET), which provides child welfare, medical care and other services to African children orphaned by the HIV/ AIDS crisis. It was a big enough feat to catch the attention of Google, which donated 100 laptops to AOET.
Since then, the club, now known as Students for Charitable Causes (SFCC), has held garage sales every year, benefiting a different cause each time. Members have continued to work together even as they moved from middle school to upper school, which is rare among student clubs.
“Normally what happens is when you go to the school, whatever campus you’re at, the program is already established and you’re a part of that program, and then when you go to the next campus, there’s the equivalent but for older kids,” said Reddy. “For us, the program didn’t exist. So we started the program in fifth grade and went to sixth grade and said, ‘We’re on a different campus now, why should we stop? We still want to help people; we still have the same goals.’”
Because its membership has been relatively consistent over the years, Reddy noted, the club has been able to operate more independently each subsequent year, “because we knew more about it than our club advisors did.”
“It really helped that by now everyone knows what the process is. We’re able to set a date, set a location, get everything working very early on,” said club vice president Sophia Shatas, grade 11, who joined as a middle school student.
The consistency also has enabled the club to learn from its past missteps, such as the 2010 garage sale, which raised about $800, far below expectations. “We didn’t think it through that much,” Reddy acknowledged.
Each sale since then, however, has raised more than the previous year’s sale. Earlier this year, Reddy and Shatas delivered a check for $3,200 – the highest amount yet raised – to Alejandra Villalobos, director of development for Embrace Global, which produces low-cost warmers for infants in developing countries.
“I think the club definitely matured with the leaders, so we’re a lot more organized now than in middle school,” said Shatas.
Reddy said that adding more organizational structure and delegation of responsibilities has been a big reason for the club’s success in recent years. “Having people directly responsible for these different components and actually breaking it down and having more or less an organization chart that says who’s responsible for what and who really gets the veto here or there, it helps a lot,” he said.
The club also shifted its focus to benefiting organizations based in the Bay Area, which allowed members to have more direct interaction and gain a better idea of how the money they raised was being used.
When the members of PEACE2PEACE entered the upper school, they changed the organization’s name to Students for Charitable Causes, which more closely matches the efforts they have taken on in addition to the annual garage sale. Since the 2011-12 school year, for example, the club has managed the annual upper school food drive, which delivers goods to the Second Harvest Food Bank. Members also participate in community service days, volunteering at places such as senior living homes and Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT), a nonprofit organization dedicated to hands-on learning.
In addition to giving the students more service opportunities, these outings also help complete the community service hours required by SFCC’s grade 9 members, who were recruited this year as its leaders approach graduation. “I feel that we didn’t leave enough of a legacy behind, setting the groundwork for the club to continue after we leave campus, which is something that we’re working really hard to do now,” Reddy said. To bolster the number of younger students in the organization, SFCC made sure to have a much larger presence at this year’s club fair and is looking to increase its presence on Harker’s other campuses. Already the club has engaged the middle school’s service club to assist with the drive to collect goods for the garage sale. “My dream, especially by senior year, would be to actually collect on the lower school campus as well and then work through the campuses’ respective service clubs,” Reddy said.
The club’s younger members are already starting to have a significant impact. When the club met to decide the beneficiary of the spring garage sale, freshman Arjun Subramaniam’s suggestion of Free the Children, which works to improve the lives of children in developing countries through a variety of means, was chosen. “I think that Free the Children is a wonderful organization working to combat child labor and abuse around the world, and I hope to continue supporting it and getting involved through my high school years,” Subramaniam said. Upon seeing SFCC’s display at the club fair, Subramaniam was “immediately captivated. It’s a great initiative and I definitely want to get involved and make a difference through social service.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
The Krishnamurthi/Iyengar Family
From sports to performing arts to longrange strategic planning, Ashok Krishnamurthi, his wife Deepa Iyengar, and their two sons (Gautam ’11 and Sidhart, grade 11) have been involved in just about every Harker activity imaginable.
In 2006 Krishnamurthi, a current member of the Harker Board of Trustees, and his wife helped make Phase III of Harker’s master site plan a reality. Krishnamurthi and Iyengar supported the planning and construction phases of Nichols Hall, Davis Field and the Singh Aquatic Center; Krishnamurthi had the honor of making the inaugural swing of the Foucault pendulum at the Nichols Hall opening gala in 2008.
The Krishnamurthi Physics Center in Nichols Hall was a visionary gift to the campaign, and was named in memory of Krishnamurthi’s father, a former diplomat for the World Health Organization who emphasized the importance of global citizenship among his children.
Krishnamurthi grew up in New Delhi and received his master’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University. He has held engineering and management positions with Sun, Philips, Xerox, PARC and AT&T Bell Labs, and was one of Juniper Network’s original engineers, subsequently advancing to the role of executive vice president of engineering there in 2003.
In 2004, Krishnamurthi left Juniper to join his brothers S.K. Vinod and R.K. Anand to found Xsigo Systems. Xsigo provides input/output virtualization solutions for data center server connectivity and management and has operated as a subsidiary of Oracle since 2012.
Iyengar also holds a master’s degree in computer engineering and has worked for Thomson Multimedia, TVCom International and Grundig Designs. She is a very active parent volunteer at Harker, having assisted with the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic, Grandparents’ Day, classroom parties, arts, athletics and admissions. She also has been a member of the Parent Development Council since 1998.
Gautam and Sidhart have been active in both arts and athletics at Harker through the years. While attending Harker, Gautam played varsity football and basketball, participated in performing arts shows and was a member of the link crew and student council; he is now a wide receiver for the Stanford football team. Sidhart is participating in varsity football, link crew and DECA this year.
The Chen/Huang Family
Though their young daughters have yet to begin their studies on the upper school campus, Dr. Winston Chen and Phyllis Huang already have pledged to make a visionary level gift to support programs and capital improvements on multiple campuses at Harker. Via the Paramitas Foundation, which Chen founded in 1994, the Chen/Huang family gives generously each year to causes and organizations in the areas of education, wildlife conservation and community services.
Chen has served as chairman of the Paramitas Foundation and Paramitas Investment Corporation since 1994, after working for Solectron for 16 years. Solectron, one of the largest electronics manufacturing service companies in the world, benefited under the guidance of Chen first as an executive vice president and later as the CEO and chairman of the board. Prior to his positions at Solectron, Chen worked at IBM and later served on the board of Intel. Within the field of higher education, Chen has been a trustee of both Santa Clara University and Stanford University and is currently an advisory board member of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in applied mechanics and applied mathematics.
With a reputation as a highly intelligent, hard-working innovator, Chen lends his tenacity and good will to Harker with his participation on the Harker Board of Fellows, as well as the newly minted Harker business and entrepreneurship committee.
The couple met in the Yun Lin Temple in Berkeley, and together they have supported events such as the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic and the fashion show. Daughters Karina, grade 5, and Nicole, grade 7, have both been active in performing arts, and Nicole currently participates in forensics at the middle school.
Earlier this week at the DECA Emerging Leader Summit in Phoenix, Harker’s DECA officers received the “Best Project Model Award” for their presentation on the Harker DECA club’s upcoming Launch2014 event. Taking place Aug. 14-15, Launch2014 is designed to welcome both new and returning Harker DECA members, and offer them a preview of the exciting year ahead. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in student-run workshops and competitions, hear keynote speakers and engage in a variety of activities. “Few, if any, chapters hold such an event during the summer, and the student and judge audiences were very excited about the innovative idea,” said Juston Glass, Harker business and entrepreneurship teacher. “The judges were especially impressed by the thorough planning, professionalism, leadership skills, and creative thinking that was shown by the officer team not only during the presentation but throughout the entire summit.”
Glass received some recognition of his own for the work he had done with Harker’s DECA team, receiving the 2014 Outstanding New Advisor Award from DECA International.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school science department chair Anita Chetty recently received an outstanding educator award from the University of Chicago. Chetty was nominated by David Grossman ’13, who is now a University of Chicago freshman. The award, which has been given for more than 30 years, recognizes inspiring teachers who have helped first-year students in their academic careers through their ability to challenge and spark change within them.
In his nomination letter, Grossman credited Chetty with helping him qualify for a top internship at NASA. Although he had to turn down the offer due to other responsibilities, he expressed much gratitude for Chetty’s strong and sincere advocacy. “Words cannot communicate how much this offer meant,” he said.
Each year, the University of Chicago receives hundreds of nomination letters from students from all 50 states as well as internationally. Chetty has been a key part of Harker science students’ success, fostering in them a love of science and research that has helped earn them excellent results in the Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search for several consecutive years. She was also instrumental in kicking off Harker’s annual research symposium, which attracts respected figures from a wide variety of scientific fields and gives students the chance to present their research to industry professionals.
The most recent previous nominee for this award was upper school English teacher Alexandra Rosenboom, who was nominated in 2011.
Eric Kallbrier, a longtime member of the middle and lower school BEST programs, was recently named the upper school’s club coordinator. In this new position, he hopes to continue “working with our amazing club advisors to continue to provide a level of excellence within our valuable student organizations.” In addition to this work with BEST, Kallbrier also has worked as the director of junior staff and counselors-in-training during Harker’s summer programs. “Through these positions, I have been able to interact with students across a broad range of grade levels,” he said.
Kallbrier has grown fond of the atmosphere provided by the Harker community. “The opportunity to work closely with the advisors, officers and members of the upper school student organizations is really exciting!” he exclaimed.
Jonathan Brusco, grade 7 social studies teacher, was named the Kudos Corner winner in San Jose District One Supervisor Mike Wasserman’s November newsletter. Brusco serves on the Santa Clara County Citizen’s Advisory Commission on Elections. In a letter that was published in Wasserman’s newsletter, Brusco explained why he believes community involvement is so crucial to improving people’s lives. “The media often talks about what is going on in Washington and we often assume that the decisions made there impact our lives most directly; however, this couldn’t be further from the truth,” he wrote. “It is your local leaders who impact your life on a daily basis and as a member of a local board or commission, you can influence their decisions.”
His current position is not his first. He has held a position in the local library’s culture and arts commission. He also was elected to Gavilan College’s Board of Trustees. “While the roles and responsibilities of various boards and commissions vary, in my two years on the Elections Commission, we have dealt with countless significant issues that have benefited the voters of this county,” he said. “The newly designed and more intuitive sample ballots, policy changes regarding signature verification, and funding recommendations for voter outreach, were a result of our efforts.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Melissa Tronc, a lower and middle school teacher from St. Stephen’s College in Coomera, Queensland, Australia, visited Harker for two weeks in November for this year’s teacher exchange with the school.
Tronc had a particular interest in the many ways Harker teachers use technology in the classroom. While here she visited with Abigail Joseph, middle school computer science teacher; Scott Kley Contini, middle school assistant technology director; and Diane Main, upper school assistant director of technology. She also spent much of her time observing classes, such as Margaret Huntley’s algebra honors class, programming fundamentals with Michael Schmidt and Cyrus Merrill’s U.S. history class.
For the teaching portion of the exchange, Tronc taught several sessions of Diane Plauck’s grade 4 core math and grade 5 advanced core math classes.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Lower school English teacher Heather Russell had the great opportunity to travel to Japan as this year’s exchange teacher with Tamagawa Academy K-12 School & University, Harker’s sister school in Tokyo. While at Tamagawa, she observed several classes and taught English to students in grades 1-3. She also used her English lessons to teach the Tamagawa students about the American “Wild West,” including lessons about desert plants, wildlife, cowboys and how farm animals make sounds in English. Students from each class also contributed to a mural that followed the “Wild West” theme.
Russell was impressed at the sense of community among Tamagawa students. “From the start of the day when the whole school would gather on the field for morning exercises, singing the school song and marching to class together, there was a sense of community,” she said. “Teachers would gather in a circle to sing, share announcements and then gather by grade level to connect before the day began.” Russell also was inspired by the community effort to keep the school campus clean. “This act of service also showed great care for their school, teamwork and independence as students cleaned their school grounds together.”
In addition to her time at Tamagawa, Russell also visited a shrine in Tokyo and saw a traditional Japanese wedding procession, stood atop Tokyo Tower to take in the wonder of the city’s skyline, attended a kabuki play and enjoyed a wide variety of Japanese cuisine.
One of the highlights for Russell was a tour around the Tamagawa campus with a teacher nearing retirement after 45 years at the school. “We hiked through the gardens where the students would harvest vegetables. We saw giant spiders, a variety of trees and sculptures, as well as the original and new buildings on the sprawling campus,” she recalled. “Seeing the school through his experienced eyes gave me a new perspective of the history and culture of an amazing school.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Nichols Hall’s auditorium was packed on Nov. 15 for this year’s fall choral concert, which featured upper school singing groups Bel Canto, Camerata, Guys’ Gig and Cantilena. This concert focused on the work of Eastern and Central European composers, with a smattering of holiday favorites included in the spirit of the season.
Camerata, directed by Susan Nace, were the first performers of the evening with a pair of holiday songs by Arvo Pärt and Pierre Certon. Jennah Somers then directed Bel Canto, who performed traditional Russian and Macedonian folk songs, as well as a clever version of “The Nutcracker” with its familiar melodies sung to the lyrics of “Jingle Bells.”
Always crowd favorites, the allmale a cappella group Guys’ Gig took the stage and started things off with their rendition of Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time.” Following some amusing banter in which they realized their set was not in keeping with the theme of the show, the boys launched into “Tchaikovsky and Other Russians,” an amusing meditation on the tongue-twisting nature of Russian surnames. Susan Nace returned to direct headliners Cantilena, who were accompanied by Camerata on their first song of the evening, Tchaikovsky’s “Let My Prayer Arise,” which had the two groups trading verses, adapted to match each group’s style. They followed with a stirring performance of Mykola Leontovych’s “Shchedryk,” popularly known as “Carol of the Bells,” and ended the show on a rousing note with Zoltán Kodály’s “Táncnóta” (“Dancing Song”), which fittingly had the singers stomping in rhythm.