This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Middle school science teachers Ben Morgensen and Daniel Sommer accompanied 18 students from grades 6-8 on a trip across the bay to Point Reyes National Seashore for a five-day trip of hiking, camping and cooking. All of the students were required to bring and carry their own supplies as well as make their own food.
“That is the only way to get stuff into the wilderness,” Sommer said, pointing out that roughing it had the added benefit of teaching the students to be independent and gave them a glimpse of what it was like to be an experienced outdoor explorer. During the course of the 16-mile hike, the students worked on their camping skills, learned how to navigate through their surroundings by reading maps, set up their own tents, worked on their communication skills and prepared food such as quesadillas and pasta. Some additional excitement arrived in the form of a wind storm that damaged two tents!
The students of course also enjoyed playing on the beach at Point Reyes, experiencing the great outdoors with their friends and taking on new challenges that taught new ways of collaboration.
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
On June 7, Harker hosted its ninth annual Teacher Institute, inviting teachers from schools all over the Bay Area to attend a wide variety of workshops intended to improve their teaching methods and their understanding of instructional technologies.
The event was organized by Harker’s instructional technology department and sponsored by Silicon Valley Computer-Using Educators (SVCUE). Each of the Teacher Institute’s three sessions consisted of a number of classes that visiting teachers were free to attend. “There were so many things we are going to take back to our school,” said Julia Maynard, a language arts and social studies teacher at Parkside Middle School in San Bruno. “I have been to several tech conferences, and this was by far the most beneficial!”
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
This past summer 11 biology Harker history by embarking on an educational first for the school: a trip to Tanzania. Armed with a “world as their classroom” mentality, the group set off for the 10-day groundbreaking trip, called “One Health in Tanzania,” on July 24.
The Tanzanian adventure was the brainchild of upper school science department chair Anita Chetty, who had spent years planning and researching the trip. Head of School Chris Nikoloff joined Chetty in supervising the group of students.
Also serving as chaperones were Dr. Murali Daran and Dr. Alexandra Kamins. Daran (Lea, grade 12; Rohan, grade 10) is a cardiologist and has done extensive medical charitable work in places like the Dominican Republic. Besides serving as the group’s “doctor- on-call,” he inspired the students with a talk on his charitable work. Kamins is a recent graduate from the University of Cambridge whose doctoral work was in Ghana. She has also been on several study programs in Africa; her experiences provided essential support when collaborating on the curriculum with Chetty.
“I designed the trip as though it were a short, college-level type course,” said Chetty, explaining that the trip, while filled with great sights, was not primarily about sightseeing. “The focus was on the educational curriculum … and I was so impressed at how the students rose to that challenge.”
In fact, every aspect of the trip was infused with an opportunity for learning, from game-drives filled with biology lessons to visiting reserves and meeting with health professionals. One highlight was learning firsthand about the current AIDS epidemic in Tanzania. The situation became real to students as they met with health professionals, including a gynecologist and nurse at an AIDS clinic.
Another trip highlight was visiting with the Masai tribe, when the students had the opportunity to personally donate toys to a local village school. It was an eye-opening experience for journalism student Jonathan Dai, grade 10.
“The tribe treated us like family and welcomed us into their homes and daily lives. We played games with their kids, herded goats and cattle, and even played a soccer game against the adult male tribe members,” he recalled.
While visiting with the Masai, students set up an eye clinic, testing tribe members’ eyes and handing out prescription eye glasses they had brought over with them for that purpose.
“One of the most influential moments for me was visiting the Masai. On a walk to and from the lake they tried to teach us some of their native language. For example, they taught us how to count and some basic phrases. Regardless of the fact that neither of us spoke the others’ languages we managed to communicate and bonded really quickly, which was an amazing experience,” recalled Alyssa Amick, grade 11.
Namrata Vakkalagadda, grade 12, said that a very personal memory for her was learning beading from a village tribe healer. “Even though we had an obvious language barrier, the connection between us was almost immediate. She welcomed my curiosity with open arms and continued to patiently guide my hands and hand me beads, until I created a bracelet which I was able to keep for myself. This memento of mine I think might be one that is dearest to me, because I created it with a member of the Masai community and it was a connection that was personal between the two of us.”
The Tanzania trip was such a success that plans are already in the works for another one next summer. In addition to giving the gift of sight by providing eyeglasses, Chetty is also collecting money to buy and bring desperately needed textbooks to the Tanzanian public schools.
“There is nothing like learning that is directly experienced, whether educational or philanthropic,” said Chetty.
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Upper school registrar Derek Kameda was invited to present at the Advanced Placement Summer Institute for Administrators in June in Jacksonville, Fla. There, he gave presentations on how to improve testing performance and AP score reports. Kameda has previously lent his skills as an AP coordinator consultant to test coordinators so that they might more effectively administer AP exams.
At the National Junior Classical League Convention held at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas this July, upper school Latin teacher John Hawley received a silver bowl for attending 20 NJCL conventions. The bowl was presented by Harker alumni and former JCLers Richard Kwant ‘07 and Ruchi Srivastava ’08, who gave moving speeches about Hawley’s influence as their teacher and JCL sponsor.
In July, middle school science teacher Daniel Sommer went on a professional development trip to Hawaii’s Big Island for a five-day field course, Geosciences of the Big Island. “Fantastic class!” he noted.
The expedition, including exploration of the island’s geologic wonders, is designed especially for educators. In a range of activities, class members climbed the famous Kilauea volcano to view the summit caldera and lava flows and to the summit of Mauna Kea (the highest volcanic mountain in Hawaii) to view glacial deposits, and explored Hawaiian reef formations by snorkel.
Middle school history teacher Jonathan Brusco spent part of his summer attending a three-day, invitation-only conference at Stanford University. The event, sponsored by SPICE, an international studies program at Stanford, and the Hana Financial Group, a Korean investment company, was about incorporating Korean history into school curriculum.
“The conference was extremely beneficial and featured guest speakers and curriculum ideas,” recalled Brusco, adding that it vastly expanded his knowledge of both Korean history and culture. He said he plans to utilize many of the things he learned during the conference with his Harker students this year.
In other news, Brusco serves on the board of trustees at Gavilan College in Gilroy and recently started a new subcommittee that is going to include board members of all the college’s feeder high school districts.
“We will be tackling student success at the college with the hope that we can lower remediation rates and thus be able to offer more career-oriented programs to our students and better serve the district as a whole,” said Brusco, who was recently featured in an article about this subject in the Morgan Hill Times.
Sue Smith, library director, and Lauri Vaughan, upper school librarian, contributed an article to the journal of the California School Library Association. In the article, they detail how they have used LibGuides software to promote information literacy among students and how they have worked with teachers to provide quality resources for student research.
At press time, Harker Quarterly learned that “Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers,” a book Smith had previously contributed a chapter to, has just been added to the recommended reading list of the U.S. Department of Education.
Abigail Joseph, middle school computer science teacher, ran a one- week Mobile App Entrepreneurship Camp in Oakland under the auspices of Black Girls Code, an organization dedicated to providing young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming at a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up.
“The camp focused on mobile app creation from concept to development,” said Joseph. “Students learned to use MIT App Inventor and were able test the app out on mobile phones. The camp ended with a field trip to the Facebook campus, where students pulled together their final app prototypes and a business plan for their ideas with Facebook employees. Of course the highlight was getting to meet Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.”
Her group was 21 girls strong and Joseph noted, “The most rewarding part was seeing the girls leave the camp with a desire to learn more and continue working on their projects on their own.”
Joseph has been involved with opening technology up to girls for some time. “I have been actively involved in Black Girls Code since the spring of this year,” she said. “In addition to the summer camp, I have been the technical lead for a build-a-webpage-in-a-day workshop in the Mission in San Francisco.”
Now successful in the technology field, Joseph is committed to giving back. “As a child, I benefited from a similar program that sparked my interest in computer science, and kept me in the pipeline to pursue it and get my Ph.D. It has always been my dream to create or be a part of a program that provides the same opportunities for young people of color to know that they have choices when choosing careers, and that computer science and engineering can be among them. I am happy to provide young girls of color opportunities and paths to walk in my footsteps and the footsteps of other black female computer scientists.”
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Jason Berry, English teacher and athletics coach at The Harker School, died suddenly on Sat., Aug. 24 of a pulmonary embolism resulting from a blood clot in his leg. A memorial was held Aug. 29 and family and friends nearly filled nearby WestGate Church to say goodbye. Heartfelt memories of his childhood and early years as a teacher were shared; the loss to his family and the community was mourned.
A large group, many of whom were alumni, then moved to Harker’s Saratoga campus for a reception. Family members joined the group shortly after it started, and Head of School Chris Nikoloff as well as two of Berry’s colleagues addressed the group very briefly, followed by more memories exchanged, and more tears shed for the life cut short.
Born in New Hampshire and highly regarded as a teacher by his students during his five-year run at Harker, Berry wrote as a critic during his time as a member of the American College Theatre Festival and was honored for Excellence in Teaching by the Clemson University PanHellenic Council. The Harker Class of 2012 selected him as the faculty speaker for the 2012 baccalaureate ceremony, during which he said to the soon-to-be graduates, “Be who you want to be, and if that doesn’t agree with you, then find, once again, your center, your inner voice; don’t settle for an imitation of yourself. Bend the rules, but try not to break them.”
During his high school years, Berry was a decorated All-American soccer player, an experience he later applied at Harker as a head coach of the girls soccer team, leading the team to record seasons during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years.
As a New England native, Berry described himself as a “rabid” follower of the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins sports teams.
“Jason’s life reflected his wise counsel, and he was always, authentically, himself,” said Nikoloff. “He impacted many with his wisdom, wit and warmth, and will be deeply missed.”
In the Harker community, Berry is survived by his wife, MaryEllis Deacon, whom he married in June, and his in-laws, Butch and Jane Keller.
Add your thoughts to others’ at Jason Berry’s memorial page: http://berrymemories.com/; read more about the memorial at the Winged Post: http://bit.ly/146UUaj; and see more photos at Harker News Online: http://bit.ly/1foRmQr.
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Thinking outside the box comes naturally to many of Harker’s alumni. Harker Quarterly recently caught up with several alumni who have chosen to chart their own career courses. From a winemaker to a mobile app builder and a sister/brother glow-in-the-dark apparel designing team, these forward thinking alumni all share one thing: the ability to make things happen.
Ryan Moreland ’98, Owner of Corvalle Winery
Ryan Moreland ’98 spent a great deal of time in his parent’s vineyard growing up in St. Helena. Among his favorite memories is sharing a glass of wine with family and friends seated around an old redwood plank table, surrounded by a canopy of trees. It was the memories he made in this spot, he said, that impacted his decision to become a winemaker.
While his family originally planted their vineyard as a hobby, Moreland turned it into a career and has made every single vintage from their vineyard since it first began producing fruit in 2007. He started Corvalle Winery the following year, when he was just 25 years old, after attending college at the University of California, San Diego, and obtaining a degree in environmental chemistry. Success followed soon after, and Corvalle today is a known competitor in the wine market.
“My parents had planted an acre of sauvignon blanc. I immediately was hooked, walking up and down the rows pruning the young vines as they stretched out onto the trellises,” recalled Moreland, who went on to work entry level positions at nearby wineries before deciding to focus solely on developing his own label.
The name Corvalle is derived from Latin, meaning “Soul of the Valley,” and is intended as a tribute to the community of Napa and its legacy of farming.
“I learned so many valuable skills that have helped me both as an entrepreneur and in my professional life. When I look back on my time at Harker, the first thing that comes to mind is my strong belief that, given adequate drive, an individual can accomplish any goal he or she dreams up. This belief is a product of the culture at Harker,” he said.
Moreland also believes in giving back. In addition to generously donating wine to Harker’s advancement events, he also is a supporter of the Danville D’Elegance foundation supporting Alzheimer’s research and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund.
Moreland has recently relocated to attend the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania while simultaneously expanding his business to the East Coast market. Having just begun pre-term events at Wharton, Moreland is enjoying getting to know his fellow classmates. “I feel genuinely lucky to be able to participate in such an amazing program surrounded by this caliber of staff and fellow students. As one could imagine, my background is a bit unique here.”
Moreland said he is also enjoying sharing his love for wine in his new community and regularly returns to Napa to oversee winemaking activities at Corvalle.
Working on developing sales in both New York and Pennsylvania has proven a much different endeavor than in California due to the states’ specific legal framework regarding wine importation and distribution, but Moreland said he likes the challenge and opportunity to engage with so many eager and curious wine consumers outside of the Bay Area.
Moreland advises other alumni not to be afraid to follow their own interests. “If something sounds enjoyable and gets you excited then take the time to learn more about your passion!” he said.
Ilya Sukhar ’03, Co-Founder and CEO of Parse
Ilya Sukhar ’03 recently made the news when it was announced that Facebook acquired his company, Parse, of which he served as co-founder and CEO. Currently, Sukhar runs the Parse business at Facebook and also works on Facebook platform products.
“Parse helps companies of all kinds build mobile apps. When we were getting started in 2011, Facebook itself was undergoing a large internal shift to mobile. They took notice of what we were doing very early on and we started talking about how the two companies might work together. Those talks dragged on for a while so over the course of a couple years I got to know everyone there pretty well. Finally, when we were set to close our third round of funding, they came to us with a very compelling offer to join forces,” explained Sukhar.
Parse, a startup that developed a mobile platform for cloud integration, had been gaining an increasing amount of traction in its field even before the Facebook acquisition. The backend service for mobile users should help make Facebook more attractive to developers looking for a social networking site with whom to advertise. Sukhar said he is all about creating products that people love to use. Before his current headline-making endeavor, he was the first employee at Etacts (acquired by Salesforce), where he worked on all things product and engineering. Before that he was an early engineer at Ooyala and holds a B.S. and master’s degree in computer science from Cornell, where he did distributed systems research and graduated with honors.
“Harker’s competitive academic environment instilled in me the value of surrounding myself with smart and ambitious people. Optimizing my career for continuously learning from people smarter than myself has proven to be a good life strategy. I’d recommend it to anyone,” said Sukhar, adding that there is no safe path to success.
“You have to take risks, fail a lot, and keep going. Don’t get comfortable in your cushy job,” he concluded. “It’s tremendously rewarding to create a product that people love.”
Aamir ’11 and Elissa Patel ’08, co-founders of LUM Apparel
Brother and sister team Aamir and Elissa Patel took a surprisingly simple idea (glow-in-the-dark apparel) and turned it into a business with their launching of LUM Apparel.
Aamir Patel attended Harker until grade 6 and Elissa Patel graduated in ’08. They went into business together by breaking into the fashion industry with customizable glow-in-the-dark clothing where unique temporary designs can be “printed” onto tank tops or T-shirts using the light from cellphones and other devices.
The tanks and tees are treated with a special type of paint, allowing designs to be brightest during the first five minutes of being applied. They don’t fully fade until about 15 minutes later.
The Patels explained that customers can use the LED light from smartphones or a laser to draw messages on their shirts. They can even take photos from their phones or tablets and print them onto the LUM apparel.
“All you need to do is take your light source, press it up against the shirt, and then get creative. Designs can even be erased by swiping your hand across them while your light source is a few inches away,” they said, explaining that LUM was launched with help from Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative ideas.
“When we first started LUM we had the door shut 100 times before one person finally agreed to help us out. We started out with $500 and turned it into $22,000 in 35 days. By the end of the year we should be on track to have a quarter million dollar evaluation. It doesn’t matter where you start or what happened in the past, it’s all about where you want to go,” said Aamir.
The Patels concede that working with a sibling can sometimes be hard. “We naturally get on each other’s nerves, but the great thing is we can always give it to each other straight. My sister has been supportive by guiding me with marketing advice. It’s great to have someone you can bounce ideas off of and get real feedback in return,” said Aamir.
The two are aspiring to become a high tech clothing line. As technology continues to get smaller, most devices are going to become wearable. Hence, their vision is to fully integrate existing and up-and-coming technologies into apparel. Their ultimate goal is to create fully customizable clothing where designs can be downloaded off a smart phone and displayed directly onto clothing.
“As long as you believe in yourself you will be successful,” they advised.
The cross country season is starting up again, which means that Corey Gonzales, grade 11, is right back where he left off last year, setting new school records. His mark in the junior boys race at Toro Park beat his own mark at the CCS finals last year, a time that sent him to the state meet.
Tennis
In their first game of the new season, the girls won 5-2 over Santa Catalina, losing on four of the seven courts before coming back to win five second sets and the only third set tiebreaker. Dora Tzeng, grade 12, Isabelle Gross, grade 10, and Arden Hu, grade 11, all won singles matches and the teams of sophomores Stephanie Huang and Nadia Palte as well as Meghana Appalaraju, grade 11, and Era Iyer, grade 9, won doubles matches. Gross’ singles match was the high- light thriller: she lost the first set 1-6 in a blowout, but came back to win the second set before finally pulling out a dead-even third set 12-10.
Football
In the opening game, Harker varsity football blew out the Faith Christian Warriors 41-0 in Coalinga. Defense back Samir Chaudhry, grade 12, had two pivotal interceptions in the shut- out. Running back Kevin Moss, grade 12, ran for two touchdowns and kicker Alyssa Amick, grade 11, racked up 11 points. Chaudhry, Adarsh Battu, grade 12, and Sid Krishnamurthi, grade 11, also scored touchdowns.
GirlsVolleyball
Both girls junior varsity and varsity teams won their season openers against the West Catholic League’s Notre Dame-Belmont in straight games. For the varsity, Shannon Richardson, grade 10, had 12 kills; Divya Kalidindi, grade 12, had 11; and Shreya Dixit, grade 11, had 10.
Water Polo
Juniors Billy Bloomquist and Eric Holt racked up seven goals apiece in early play at the Wilcox Tournament, where Harker’s varsity team defeated league rival Santa Clara on their way to a 1-2 tournament. JV also went 1-2 at the San Benito Tournament in early September.
Summer Sports
Summer’s ending, and that means athletes will be leaping into the fall season soon! But even during the time away from school, Harker’s sportsmen and sportswomen have been training, winning and earning honors. Harker has individual students snatching
up medals, teams being recognized for academic achievement, coaches winning awards, and alumni joining university teams. To the update!
Basketball
Harker athletes competed in and won the Varsity Summer League at Evergreen Valley High School. The team finished the regular season of the summer league second in their division, losing only one game to a team that finished with an undefeated record. In the playoffs, Harker defeated the third-seated team in the other division, moving on to face an undefeated team from the other division at Evergreen, beating them by six points after taking the lead in the final minutes. That pushed Harker into the championship game, where Harker won by a large margin.
The summer league represents an opportunity for players to work on individual skills but grow as a team, as well as for rising players to step up and prove themselves going into the following year.
Soccer
A hearty congratulations is in order for the boys soccer team, who posted the highest GPA of any high school male soccer team in California. This August, the California Interscholastic Federation, which was founded nearly a century ago in 1914, announced its 2012-13 state academic team champions, an honor bestowed upon teams with the highest overall grade point average in each sport.
For the victory, the California Interscholastic Federation will bestow upon Harker a banner, which Harker can display in a gym or other prominent space. Boys soccer finished their 2013 season with a 7-8-2 record overall and a 5-7-2 record in league play, landing them with a fourth-place overall finish.
While Harker’s athletes were being re- warded for their academic achievement, varsity coach Shaun Tsakiris gained some recognition as well. In July, U.S. Soccer’s Development Academy voted Tsakiris national coach of the year.
In alumni news, Siobhan Cox ’13 has already started playing for Stanford! So far, she’s started two out of three games and has an assist. Stanford is off to a 2-0-1 start.
Football
Indraneel “Neel” Salukhe ’12 will be playing football for the University of Washington in Seattle this year. Salukhe played football all four years at Harker. A wide receiver, he walked on for spring football last season and was invited to join the regular football camp to train with and play for U.W.
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly. Harker’s ongoing commitment to improving its environmental standards has led to the formation of the Green Committee, a group of faculty and staff working to formulate and execute a strategy toward making Harker a greener school both practically and culturally.
“The committee’s a way to … get people together to share ideas in terms of projects we want to do and how to carry out those projects,” said Jeff Sutton, the upper school science teacher who leads the committee along with fellow science teacher Kate Schafer.
The people who would eventually form the committee, which is made up of people from all of Harker’s divisions, first met in late 2012 to discuss a long-term plan for furthering Harker’s green efforts. The committee came up with seven areas in which Harker could improve: energy conservation, waste reduction, reducing the use of toxic chemicals, instituting more shuttles and encouraging carpooling to reduce pollution, improving water quality, creating greener schoolyards and improving student food choices in order to offer more healthy foods.
Prior to the forming of the committee, there were initiatives in place across Harker’s three campuses. “We wanted to bring all those initiatives together and really collect and collate our ideas and our efforts and make them unified across pre-K through 12,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school. “It was really more of a way of honoring a lot of good work and just trying to bring it all together to take it to the next level.”
The committee is currently working to establish a baseline that will offer them a better picture of what needs to be done going forward, with a focus on energy usage and waste reduction. “One of the things that we have realized that we need to do is get more details than we did in our initial research,” said Schafer. “One of things that we’re going to be working on, with the help of other Green Committee members, is conducting some of those audits.”
In the coming year, the committee hopes to conduct an audit of all the waste that is created on the three K-12 campuses over a period of 24 hours and determine 1) how much of it could have avoided being sent to a landfill; 2) how much could have been recycled or composted; and 3) what portion did not need to be created at all. One future goal is to purchase an industrial composter and start a pilot composting program at the upper school. This would allow the campus to reduce all biodegradable food waste, including all paper cups and paper products, and quickly break them down into compost instead of discarding them as landfill fodder. At a meeting in January, the committee decided to launch an energy reduction campaign in the spring of 2013 to encourage stu- dents, faculty and staff to turn off lights and close laptops in order to reduce energy usage across all campuses. According to Sutton, the campaign yielded “mixed results,” as the energy bills from those months were roughly the same as previous months. “From our little experiment, it’s not people having their laptops plugged in so much,” said Sutton. “I’m sure that makes a difference, but there’s something bigger, like an air conditioner or a refrigerant or a heater that’s causing the draw.” The committee is looking into software that will assist in discovering where Harker has opportunities to become more energy efficient. Some progress has already been made in the form of lighting upgrades at the upper school and preschool campuses. “Over the course of the summer and into the coming year, all four of our campuses will have gone through a lighting energy efficiency audit by an independent PG&E vendor,” said Mike Bassoni, the school’s facility manager. “Through grant monies made available by PG&E, we have to date received more than $40,000 in energy-efficient lighting upgrades.”
Similar upgrades are also in store for the middle and lower school campuses, pending review. The upgrades to the upper school and preschool campuses alone are expected to save the school more than $33,000 a year in energy costs. Another crucial part of the Green Committee’s plans is to get student buy-in and involvement for the initiatives. “Once we figure out as a committee what our goals are, then I’m going to be the one that goes to the kids and says, ‘OK, we want to realize some goals, would you like to join us?’” said Diana Moss, upper school Spanish teacher and dean of the Class of 2015. Moss is being joined by upper school math teacher and Class of 2014 dean Victor Adler in this effort. Representatives from other campuses, including middle school math teacher Margaret Huntley, middle school history teacher Andy Keller, lower school math and science teacher Enni Chen and lower school art teacher Gerry-louise Robinson, all plan to get students on their respective campuses involved. During the spring 2013 semester, new water fountains were installed at the upper school that dispense filtered water and have replaced traditional bottled water dispensers. These are also part of an ongoing effort to reduce paper waste by encouraging students and staff to bring water bottles to use instead of paper cups, which will supplement other waste reduction efforts such as paper recycling and cell phone and battery drop-off stations. Faculty and staff are also being encouraged to get into the habit of bringing coffee mugs to work. In addition, a new student group called Brilliant Organizers of Students Sustainability (BOSS) has been formed and will be working with the Green Committee on student-led sustainability projects.
Over the summer, Moss had the opportunity to research how students at other schools participated in their schools’ green efforts. “They’re doing some amazing things. Kids are fired up and they’re actually leading these initiatives,” she said. Part of her plan to increase student involvement is to have them network and share ideas with students at other schools. “Eventually I see the Green Committee as being a mixed group of student leaders and faculty and staff who are also interested in sustainability,” she said. The committee hopes that one day Harker can be certified as both a California Green Business and a Green Ribbon school. To do so will require fulfilling requirements set by both programs. “Schools are particularly challenging because they do so many different things,” Schafer said. “We have pools, we have food service, we have all of these different components. We’re almost a like a little mini-city in and of ourselves.” Even though their goals may be lofty, Sutton said that having “big goals” can offer a point of inspiration necessary to motivate the Harker community into making a big push to make the school more environmentally responsible. “That’s one of our major goals going forward, too: to make this Green Committee not a committee but an ideology, where it lives beyond the life of the people who are here now.”
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s ever-evolving food services program is set to undergo more exciting changes in the coming year, with more menu options, healthier food choices and more themed varieties. Patrons may have
already noticed some of the many changes food service manager Stephen Martin – or “Chef Steve,” as he has come to be known in his nearly 25 years at Harker – has made in the last two years.
“We’re trying to stay on the cutting edge and add new things, healthy choices,” said Martin. “We use a lot less mayonnaise now. We don’t use a lot of mayonnaise-based dressings and when we make salads we use a lot of extra virgin olive oil and vinegars.”
Dessert portions were also made smaller overall, but not to discourage people from partaking of cake or brownies after lunch. “A taste can go a long way,” Martin said. In other words, a smaller portion can satisfy the hunger for confections without making patrons feel too guilty about grabbing something sweet. This enables dieters to enjoy smaller desserts while others can have more if they so choose. “By cutting [desserts] smaller,” Martin said, “we were able to give people more variety.”
New to the upper school this year is the addition of an area dedicated to international foods, where cuisine from different parts of the world will be featured on a regular basis. “We may do Asian for two weeks, we may do German, we may do French,” Martin said. A new station featuring Mexican dishes and a salsa bar has also been added at the gym.
Several new stations have been added to offer a greater diversity of dishes and to make upper school lunchtime crowds more manageable. Among these are the outdoor barbecue station, the sidewalk café (where to-go wraps and other items are served via cart) and a window in the Bistro serving sushi, quiches and other appetizers.
“We needed more stations because so many students were forced into an area,” said Martin. “We really were trying to spread out the crowd. That’s why we added a window in the Bistro.”
At the middle school, where a bistro and barbecue station have also been added, there will be an increased emphasis on vegetarian options in response to increased demand from middle school families. “We designated a whole section of the station to vegetarian choices,” Martin noted.
Changes are also in store for the lower school, where Martin hopes to educate children on foods featuring whole grains and whole wheat. “They can’t be intimidated by food,” he said. “So we’re going to try to … educate the little ones on eating certain things that make it so that the menu is very healthy but appealing.”
In order to make the food more “exciting” for the entire Harker community as well as its younger students, Martin plans to feature a type of fruit each month: “We’ll do different salads, incorporate it into the entrée, incorporate it into desserts, just to get kids to try to eat more fruit.”
The lower, middle and upper schools are not the only places where Martin has big plans, however. The newly launched preschool will also focus on providing healthy foods that students will enjoy, such as mini whole-grain bagel sandwiches, whole-wheat English muffin pizzas and items featuring chicken and turkey. In an effort to “try to keep it low in fat and high in nutritional value,” as Martin put it, no fried food will be served.
“A lot of stuff is going to be from scratch,” added preschool kitchen manager Lisa Machuca.
Machuca also noted that food at the preschool will be served differently than at other campuses. Instead of eating at a designated lunch area, preschool students will have food brought to them in their classrooms and the students will serve themselves.
Students will also be served snacks three times a day, including fruit smoothies, cottage cheese, apple slices and other health-minded and age-appropriate foods.
Schoolwide gluten-free options are also being considered, but Martin and the food service department want to make sure that they can meet their own high standards when offering these options. “We’re trying to work with gluten-free, but it’s unfortunate that gluten’s in almost everything,” Martin said, also noting that gluten-free bread tends to fall apart easily. “We’re going to start simple, but we’re going to try to get the best of the best and then we’re going to feature it.”
Aside from finding ways to keep food options interesting for the Harker community, Martin is also passionate about informing the community about what they eat and his philosophy on keeping Harker students, faculty and staff healthy and fulfilled. “I really want to establish a rapport with the whole community, with the teachers and the staff and the kids, about a balanced diet,” he said. To this end, he hopes to publish nutritional information in the Harker online portals that will provide the community with information about what they eat and “give them the tools to work with so they can have a healthy diet.”
By doing this, he hopes that some misconceptions people have about the food they eat can be quelled. “It’s not bad to eat pizza. It’s bad to eat pizza every day.” In the end, Martin said, food service’s mission is to offer a wide variety of choices to the Harker community that will allow them to make the choices they need for a proper diet. “You can go to every station and get a well-balanced meal,” he said.
This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
For the last five years, Jaap Bongers, Harker’s upper school art department instructor and chair, has used the summer break as a unique opportunity to personally donate items to needy children in the Republic of Zambia, a landlocked country in Southern Africa. This past summer he also spent time in Tanzania.
“I have been going there every summer and one time I even went during the Christmas break,” said Bongers, explaining that, in preparation for the annual sojourn, he uses the school year to collect toys, children’s clothes and children’s books (many of which have been donated by Harker students) for the African children.
Come summer, he fills a big plastic storage box with the donated items, which he takes with him to Africa. There, he donates the toys, books and clothes to the neediest children he encounters.
“I do this while traveling to very remote villages where there is still wonderful ages-old original culture. Initiation rituals, traditional dances by masked actors and healing ceremonies by witch doctors can still be found although it is getting harder to locate them.”
After handing out and emptying the storage box of donated toys, Bongers then refills it with ancient traditional artifacts he discovers and buys on his travels. “I note down their use, meaning and age. I have found objects and heard about customs that were not yet known. Once I return to Harker I use this information, the items and the pictures for my Study of Visual Art class,” he said, noting that his house is filling up with an impressive collection of ancient traditional African art.
The remote villages that Bongers visits are reminiscent of the hunter-gatherers and migrating tribes who inhabited the country for thousands of years.