This year’s grade 4-5 Wintry Spirit Assembly, sponsored by the Service/Spirit Club, was recently held on the lower school’s blacktop with a new format. Rather than competing for points, students enjoyed various interactive stations supervised by homeroom teachers.
The festive, holiday-themed stations included Santa’s Workshop, where students colored and stacked various cups; Pin the Nose on Rudolph; Presents Down the Chimney, featuring students playing a lightning-quick game; and Naughty or Nice, which saw students shooting bean bags and other objects into small nets.
“Oh, the weather outside was frightful, but that didn’t stop our spirit assembly!” enthused Katie Molin, lower school English and study skills teacher. “I think everyone had a great time!”
“Enlight’ning,” an art and literary magazine published each spring at the middle school, is in the running for the much-lauded Gold Crown Award, given by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA).
The publication, which showcases artwork, poetry and prose created entirely by middle school students, is one of only three such magazines nationwide to be short-listed for the award.
“While Enlight’ning has won several gold and silver medals from CSPA during its 12 years of publication, we have only won the Gold Crown Award once, in 2008,” reported Sabina Grogan, middle school expository writing instructor.
“I’m truly so honored and humbled to have been a part of this talented team to create such an amazing magazine,” said Carissa Chen, who was the lead editor of the magazine, which was published in spring 2013 and which she worked on last year as an eighth grader.
In addition to The Harker School, the two other middle school magazine Gold Crown Award finalists are the Kealing Middle School in Texas and Pierce Middle School in Michigan.
Finalists will be presented with either a Gold or Silver Crown Award during the 90th annual convention held in March at Columbia University in New York City. Remaining awards will be mailed out at the beginning of April.
The CSPA is an international student press association uniting student journalists and faculty advisors at schools and colleges through educational conferences, idea exchanges and award programs. The organization has been owned and operated by Columbia University since 1925.
Welcome back, Eagles fans! With 2014 kicking off, Harker’s sports teams are back in action. Let’s check the results from the first week of the new year!
Wrestling
Freshman Davis Howard went 3-1 with three pins to place fifth in the Cupertino Tournament last weekend. Senior Darian Edvalson went 3-1 with two pins and finished as the consolation champion. On Thursday, the wrestlers headed to Milpitas High.
Soccer
Over the break, the boys played twice, tying Lynbrook 2-2 and falling to Mills 2-1. Juniors Nikhil Kishore and Jeremiah Anderson each scored against Lynbrook, while senior Jeff Hanke’s penalty kick was the lone Harker goal against Mills.
The junior varsity boys were in action as well, defeating Mills 3-2 on goals by sophomore Zeyad El-Arabaty, sophomore Ryan Fernandes and junior Eric Roxlo. Both boys teams opened league play this week on the road against Sacred Heart.
The girls began their league play this week as well, hosting Eastside College Prep on Tuesday and traveling to play Mercy on Thursday. Their record entering league play stood at 3-1.
Basketball
The varsity boys basketball team is now 7-3 overall entering league play after going 3-2 over the holiday break. In a victory against Terra Nova, senior Wei Wei Buchsteiner netted 23 points and senior Will Deng added 19 more. The boys host rival Sacred Heart tonight.
The junior varsity boys are on fire, going 5-1 during a busy winter break!
The varsity girls went 1-2 over the break and now own a record of 4-5 overall. The highlight of the holiday was a 39-30 win against Wallenberg. Freshman Jordan Thompson led the team with 17 points, while senior Regina Chen added 13. The girls travel to Mercy and Notre Dame this week.
Senior Alicia Clark was awarded Harker’s Community Service Spotlight Award at a recent Monday morning school meeting. At the gathering, she received a $200 check from the Harker Upper School Community Service Program, which she in turn donated to the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto.
The Community Service Spotlight Awards are sponsored by Harker’s outreach department and take place several times during the school year. They were created to celebrate and honor the outstanding community service completed by upper school students.
In her acceptance speech at the meeting, Clark explained that she began doing community service in grade 7 when she joined the National Charity League (NCL), a mother/daughter organization that helps less fortunate community members. Since then she has completed more than 500 volunteer hours with more than 15 organizations.
“Today, I have been asked to tell my story and talk a little bit about why I love community service,” said Clark in he speech. “I joined NCL to be a more active member of my community even though at the age of 12 I never could have known exactly what that meant. My first experience was making flower pens and cookies to put in a gift basket for Meals on Wheels. I grew up feeling very lucky and thankful for everything I had. I can’t imagine not having everything that my parents have worked so hard to give me. So, I just want to help others feel as lucky as I have always felt.”
Clark went onto say that community service can be a great opportunity to spend time with friends and family while also helping others in need. “You get to see for a moment how the world is so much bigger than you and how you have the ability to help your fellow humans. I can’t imagine my life without all of the organizations I have volunteered with and I really encourage those of you who have not had the opportunity to get involved in the community to start now,” she concluded.
The Harker School is known for its unique student and teacher exchange programs with educational institutions around the world. But Harker’s rich global education doesn’t stop in between such visits. Throughout the school year, middle school students keep connected virtually with their foreign pals via interactive video conferences and online forums.
In grade 6, video conferences between students and their same-age buddies from Harker’s sister school in Tokyo, Tamagawa Academy K-12 & University, help build excitement for future visits. And in grades 7 and 8, two separate online forums fuel dynamic conversations between Harker students and their peers in both Kazakhstan and China. Below HNO takes a look at how Harker keeps globally connected through video conferencing in grade 6 and online forums in the older middle school grades:
Grade 6 Video Conferences
In mid-December, grade 6 students enjoyed connecting with their buddies from Tamagawa Academy during a series of interactive, game show-style videoconferences, held on the middle school campus.
“After emailing each other this past semester in their computer science class, students came face-to-face with their email buddies in a Family Feud-style game show!” reported Jennifer Walrod, director of Harker’s global education program.
“Questions (ranging from discovering favorite desserts to best after-school activities) were generated by students with a focus on interests of middle school students,” said Walrod, explaining that half of the grade 6 students participated in the conferences, with the remaining half slated for next semester.
“Designing an educational yet fun game was a very interesting task. I also had fun at the video conference talking to the Tamagawa students and playing Family Feud,” said grade 6 student Sejal Krishnan.
The video conferences set the stage for the grade 6 trip to Japan in the spring.
Grade 7 Online Poetry Forum
Last year grade 7 students in Mark Gelineau’s English class launched an online poetry forum with a school in Kazakhstan. Using the forum, Harker seventh graders connected with peers from the Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) in Kazakhstan to discuss selected poetic works.
Gelineau created the forum in conjunction with Harker alumna Lauren Gutstein, who works at the NIS school in Astana, one of seven state-funded selective schools for middle and high school age students spread throughout major cities in Kazakhstan.
Through their online postings, students from both Harker and NIS share insights and observations about posted poems. Using the forum, more than 100 students recently read and discussed both an American and a Kazakh poem about winter.
Grade 8 Online World Issues Forum
Where we live and how it affects our perspective on global issues was the topic of a recent grade 8 World Issues Forum with the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS) in Shanghai. Other topics covered have included personal choices and the global ecosystem; global perspectives; issues preventing access to the global community; and leadership in today’s society.
“This is not new as we’ve been doing it for numerous years. However, it has really strengthened over the past couple years and the forum now gets hundreds of posts throughout the semester,” Walrod said.
In fact, the middle school’s annual trip to China was originally based around the grade 8 computer science class’ global issues forum. Last year the trip also incorporated the grade 7 historical component of learning about ancient China. Including seventh graders on the China trip was such a success that it will be repeated again this year.
“I really enjoyed participating in the forum with the students from WFLMS. By talking to them, I learned totally different perspectives on some things that I had never even heard before. I also learned a lot about the cultures of China. Now, I have left the class with a greater knowledge of the world than I had before,” said Megan Huynh, grade 8.
“It is indeed exciting and interesting to communicate with people from the other side of the world and the discussions are supposed to be diverse and offering an insight on both sides’ point of view,” agreed Nastya Grebin, also grade 8.
“Adding the online forum discussions to my computer science curriculum has provided a great opportunity for students to combine their technical knowledge to global issues related to the world they live in. The student’s forum discussions have been compulsory to their studies of systems that are the basis for their computer science final project applications,” noted Abigail Jospeh, Harker’s middle school computer science instructor.
Grade 5 students got a preview of life as a middle schooler during Step-Up Day on Nov.19. That day, the eager fifth graders were given a tour of the middle school campus. While there, they were introduced to the faculty and staff, and learned about the various academic and extracurricular activities they will experience next year. The students also were treated to a special vocal performance by Dynamics, the grade 6 choir. Middle school mentors acted as hosts and hostesses to each grade 5 homeroom by leading the students on tours and answering questions about middle school. “Each year, the fifth graders revel in the new campus and expanded options, especially in the lunch line! This ‘taste’ of middle school sets the stage for the many decisions students will be making in the near future, such as elective and language options, and, most importantly, laptop platform for the one-to-one laptop program,” said Cindy Ellis, head of the middle school. Last month, in preparation for Step-Up Day, the grade 5 students were treated to a special visit by the middle school mentors, 6-8 graders who volunteer to help make the transition to middle school as smooth as possible. They also enjoyed a visit from middle school art instructor, Elizabeth Saltos, who spent the day with the students at lower school campus. “While there, she engaged with the students, doing some projects and generally ‘advertising’ for art in the middle school,” explained Gerry-louise Robinson, Harker’s lower school art instructor.
In the fall, Sidhart Krishnamurthi, grade 11, launched a fundraiser for The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, which raised more than $2,000 to help build a refugee shelter for a family living in Afghanistan.
He shared his fundraising success story by writing an article that was published in the foundation’s newsletter and is still showing on the foundation’s blog. In the article, Krishnamurthi said that he got the idea to do the fundraiser in April 2012 after reading the novel “The Kite Runner” by author Khaled Hosseini.
“The plight of the people in Afghanistan as described in the novel really touched me, and I wanted to somehow support the cause of rebuilding futures for families torn by war, poverty and unimaginable living conditions. This led me to the back cover, where I saw a link to The Khaled Hosseini Foundation website. On visiting the site, I got more information on various ongoing efforts to help the refugees,” wrote Krishnamurthi.
He then explained that he set a fundraising goal of $2,000 – enough to build a shelter for a refugee family of six. With assistance from the foundation, he was able to make a plan to accomplish the mission through fundraising efforts at Harker.
To attain his goal, he launched a “Family and Friends Campaign,” wherein he emailed various people (including members of the Harker community) about the foundation and urged them to donate a minimum of $25, which would help him achieve his goal. In turn, they received a signed copy of either “The Kite Runner” or “A Thousand Splendid Suns” (both by Hosseini) and a goodie-bag. This generated enough interest and money to build a shelter for a homeless family in Afghanistan.
To help purchase the books, Krishnamurthi’s parents generously donated funds and he also raised money through a club called Interact, a youth rotary club. He assembled the goodie-bags with candy and bookmarks handmade by Afghan women in refugee camps in Pakistan (provided by the foundation). His book sales then attracted the attention of the administrators at Harker, facilitating a visit from Hosseini to speak about his books and the foundation.
“Through this experience, I have learned that my life is privileged compared to most people in the world. It really changed me by helping and supporting families facing dire living situations. It also made me realize that people are genuinely kind-natured and willing to help others in difficult situations,” Krishnamurthi said.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
When I was a boy, my father used to sing the song “Que Sera, Sera.” He had a nice voice, though he didn’t take singing seriously. At least, he sounded nice to me, his son. I used to believe that all fathers sounded nice to their sons until my boys disproved this theory by protesting fiercely at my singing. Apparently a son loving his father’s voice is not a biological mandate.
“Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.” A beautiful, timeless song, with deep advice, the gravity of which is somewhat sweetened away by Doris Day’s voice in her 1956 recording. “The future’s not ours to see.” I don’t know that my father even fully believed this at the time, though this was one of his favorite songs. Who among us believes that the future is not ours in any capacity? We tend to live for the future.
Which brings me to the paradox of schooling. Schools are completely engineered for the future. Schools prepare students for the future and hope to shape the future in part through graduating great students. The class is a laboratory for the future, the school an altar to an anticipated better future for our children and society.
Not that this is bad – we have to plan and prepare for the future. But as the philosopher Alan Watts reminds us, the future is good only for those who know how to live in the present. It is no good to prepare for the future if, when it arrives, we do not know how to enjoy it. Those who are always preparing for tomorrow do not see or enjoy the present. Tomorrow never comes anyway, we are told.
There is a popular quote from computer scientist Alan Kay that says, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Not according to Doris Day. Nor Steve Jobs. He said as much in his now famous 2005 Stanford commencement address in which he advised the following: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” Though Jobs is often credited with inventing the future, by his account the future was not his to see.
If you don’t believe Doris Day or Steve Jobs, try the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He predated Steve Jobs’ sentiment by about a century and a half: “The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful.” Later in this passage Schopenhauer warns us that we inadvertently look into the future for an imagined joy that usually is right in front of us.
But I suppose it cannot be helped, especially for students. Kids today live in a competitive world, it is said, and they have to prepare for it. We have college and work readiness assessments now. The Berlin Wall has fallen and the Internet has flattened the world. However, the flatter earth has not made the horizon any easier to spot; the future’s not ours to see, so we are anxious about it. We are anxious for our children and they learn how to be anxious through us.
Perhaps we need only to teach children to live in the present and the future will take care of itself. Young children do not need this teaching; they can teach us. But older kids, say around late middle school on, typically begin to assume the anxiety worn by adults. In most fairy tales a child, usually around adolescence, loses something made of gold and has to find it again.
A December 2010 edition of The Economist has as its lead article a piece capturing how life really begins at age 46, the nadir of happiness, after which things look up. Adults after middle age, one theory goes, begin to drop old ambitions and accept what good they have in their lives. It might be the height of presumption to think that we can help our children avoid this trajectory and start enjoying their lives now. But shouldn’t we try? Their future – and their present – depend on it.
The first weekend of December, the middle school forensics program hosted its Second Annual Speech and Debate Tournament at the upper school campus, where 13 schools brought more than 300 competitors. The three teams recognized as being the top in the country, including Harker, were present.
Many Harker students, parents and coaches were in attendance to help the students and run the tournament. Several students did double duty as competitors and hosts. Despite the extra duties, the entire team had a great showing, with four first-place finishes and many students in the top five.
In Original Oratory, Ashley Duraiswamy, grade 6, took fourth place. Cynthia Chen, also grade 6, finished sixth and Katherine Zhang, grade 7, took seventh. In Dramatic Interpretation, grade 6 students Avi Gulati earned first place, Nikki Solanki took third and Sachin Shah finished in sixth.
Grade 7 students Akshay Ravoor and Anjay Saklecha netted second place for their Duo Interpretation speech on surviving a zombie apocalypse. In Storytelling, Amla Rashingkar and Maya Shukla, both grade 6, took first and third place, respectively. Sanjay Rajasekharan, grade 6, also finished in second place in Humorous Interpretation, in which Rashingkar took fifth place and Saklecha took seventh.
Harker saw continued success in the debate events, with Praveen Batra, grade 8, winning first place in Congressional Debate. Eighth grader Alan Hughes was undefeated in the preliminary rounds, winning all five of his debates. He was also recognized as the Top Speaker of the tournament. He advanced to the top 16 in the elimination rounds of the tournament. Matthew Lee, grade 8, won four of his five debates in the preliminary rounds and advanced to the elimination rounds and placed in the top 8 of the tournament. Sagar Rao, grade 8, won four of his five debates in the preliminary rounds and advanced to the top 16 in the elimination rounds of the tournament.
The team of Anusha Kuppahally, grade 7, and Megan Huynh, grade 8, won four of their five preliminary rounds in Policy Debate. Huynh was named the second-best speaker of the tournament. Aliesa Bahri and Millie Lin, both grade 8, won three of their preliminary debates. Both teams advanced to the elimination rounds and closed out the tournament winning first and second place in the division.
In Public Forum, eighth graders Derek Kuo and Kevin Xu were undefeated in the preliminary rounds, winning all five of their debates. They advanced to the elimination rounds and finished in the top eight of the tournament. The teams of Solanki and Amanda Cheung, both grade 6, and seventh graders Cindy Wang and Clarissa Wang each won four of their five preliminary debates and advanced to the top 16 in the elimination rounds.
If it wasn’t already obvious from the promotional copy on their website, PROJECT Trio’s version of Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” their set opener at the second Harker Concert Series event of the season, drove the point home. For them, chamber music is the province of the classicists with season tickets to the local symphony, the vinyl hunters keeping brick-and-mortar record stores afloat, the knit cap-wearing cafe denizens, the college-aged millennials combing the depths of Bandcamp well into the night and every type of enthusiast in between.
They reach for the most improbable of goals: To be adventurous, true to themselves and inclusive all at the same time. And they have a ton of fun doing it.
Best known for the percussive “beatbox flute” style of Greg Pattillo, whose videos have been viewed tens of millions of times, PROJECT Trio is as lively as any jazz combo. With their constant swaying, stomping and an eclectic range of influences, it would be easy for a new listener to call them one, were it not for their self-billing as a chamber music group. Their rendition of “Faubus,” led by Pattillo’s flute and anchored by the heavy warbling of double bassist Peter Seymour and cellist Eric Stephenson, even recalls the hip-hop pedigree referenced in Pattillo’s technique, which they carried into a playful revision of that familiar theme from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
As can be expected, their bag of tricks is full of neat surprises, such as their half-classical, half-bluegrass interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and the serpentine melodies of “Raga Raja,” an original piece inspired by Indian classical music, punctuated by Stephenson’s slinky portamentos. On “Slowberry Jam,” another original, Stephenson switched to finger style, whipping his bowing hand across the strings of his cello like a flamenco guitarist.
Moe Zoyari of San Francisco, who had seen Pattillo’s videos prior to attending and plays the flute himself, called the concert “awesome” and was so excited about it that he made a last-minute attempt get his friends to attend as well, “telling them that, if you can come, just come over right now.”
“I had no idea who they were or what to expect,” said Ann Gazenbeek from Los Altos, “so I just came with an open mind and I’m very pleasantly surprised.”
After the customary intermission, the trio introduced their unsurprisingly non-traditional take on Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” relocating the action to a neighborhood in Brooklyn and providing their own amusing narration and unique musical signatures. Though long, the group’s keen sense of dynamics kept things fresh, and the tune didn’t overstay its welcome.
PROJECT later shifted several decades forward to pay tribute to perhaps one of the first rock bands to make classical instruments cool (to the extent that progressive rock was ever considered cool), performing what Pattillo called “The PROJECT Trio version of Jethro Tull’s version of J.S. Bach’s version of ‘Bouree,’” during which the flautist stood on one leg as a shout out to Tull’s Ian Anderson.
The show’s ender, appropriately titled “The Random Roads Suite,” was a sweeping summary of the band’s approach, starting with the busy and sophisticated “The Puzzle” before slowing the tempo and slightly darkening the mood for the contemplative “Adagio,” highlighted by delicate trade offs between Seymour and Stephenson. So as not to leave the crowd on a somber note, they finished with the Latin-flavored “Pelea De Gallos,” as Seymour and Stephenson again took the spotlight as the two combative chickens mentioned in the title, succeeding in bringing up both the tempo and the mood.