Upper school music students received a special visit from New York City jazz ensemble the Wee Trio. The visit was arranged by music teacher Dave Hart, who played with the group during a visit to New York. Students were treated to some performances from the trio’s repertoire and had the opportunity to have their questions answered by the seasoned, talented musicians, who gave them their insights on the composition process, their history as a band and how they send and receive cues to one another while performing.
Lower school musicians welcomed winter on Dec. 6 during their 2012 Winter Concert at the Bucknall Theater, directed by music teacher Louis Hoffman.
Hoffman conducted several of the performances that evening, including the lower school orchestra and string ensemble’s opening performance of “A Christmas Canon,” the Jazz Ensemble’s renditions of “Blues in the Closet” by Oscar Pettiford and the traditional American folk song “St. James Infirmary” and a performance of Henry Purcell’s “Rigaudon” by the lower school orchestra.
The night also included a pair of impressive solo performances. Kailash Ranganathan, grade 3, offered a stirring performance of “Raag Kalavati” on the sitar, and violinist Jun Lin, grade 5, wowed the audience with her version of Heindrich Ernst Kayser’s “Etude No. 30.”
Another interesting detour during the evening was the performance by the lower school’s fiddle group, conducted by Kevin Rogers, who played a 12-bar blues piece they composed themselves, as well as the Irish tune “Devil’s Dream.”
To the delight of the audience, the concert also included special performances by groups from the middle and upper schools. Music teacher Dave Hart led the middle school’s jazz band through Charlie Parker’s “Little Suede Shoes,” while the upper school wind ensemble performed a piece written by young composer Paul Kratter, grade 4, titled “The Green Things,” and Paul de Wailly’s “Aubade.”
Basketball The grade 5 junior varsity B1 boys basketball team beat Sacred Heart in the Championship game of the WBAL tournament 26-21 Wednesday. They won the league with a 7-0 record and also won the championship tournament to finish at 9-0 overall.
The JVA boys basketball team took second in their WBAL bracket, losing to Sacred Heart in the Championship game 10-18. They finished 8-1 in league play and second in the tournament to finish at 9-2.
Basketball Boys varsity basketball went 1-2 in the Lynbrook Tournament last week, scoring a blowout 72-28 victory over Lynbrook to salve the pain of two nail-biter losses to Mills and Santa Teresa; the boys fell to Santa Teresa 41-40 on a last-minute shot as time expired.
Girls varsity basketball opened their season by cruising to the finals of the King’s Academy Tournament with victories over Prospect 48-32 and Lincoln 61-31. In the final round, the girls fell to Burlingame High 85-52 despite senior Priscilla Auyeung’s 21 points.
Soccer Boys varsity soccer blanked Gunderson in their season opener last week, 3-0, behind goals from Omar Hamade, Oisin Coveney, both grade 9, and Sumit Minocha, grade 12. The JV squad defeated SLV 6-1 to even their record at 1-1, as Neil Kishore, grade 10, scored a goal and had four assists.
Girls soccer went 1-1 last week after picking up a 2-0 shutout victory over Pacific Collegiate, with goals by Nikita Parulkar, grade 10, and Sondra Leal Da Costa, grade 12. Days before, the girls had dropped their season opener by a margin of 2-1 against Notre Dame, with Parulkar scoring the lone goal for the Eagles on a Leal Da Costa assist. Next, the team faces Mills High this Saturday in the Burlingame Tournament.
Wrestling
At the Fremont High Tournament on Saturday, wrestlers Danny Wang, grade 12, and Darian Edvalson, grade 11, earned a victory and two losses apiece. They face Milpitas High next week.
Water Polo
Congratulations to water polo players Keri Clifford and Karan Das-Grande, both seniors. Clifford was selected as a first team, division II All-CCS honoree and a second team division I honoree. Das-Grande recieved honorable mention on the second team for the boys, division II. This is a tremendous honor and excellent way to cap off their Harker water polo careers.
Rohan Chandra, grade 12, was recently named the first-place winner of the Kids Who Give contest for the period ending Sept. 30. The Kids Who Give program, sponsored by Farm Rich, recognizes young citizens who devise solutions to help their local communities. Chandra created the Earthquake Preparedness for Seniors project for the senior citizens of his Fremont neighborhood, whom he felt would be particularly vulnerable in the event of a major earthquake. He even created an instructional safety guide in no fewer than six languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, Farsi and Tagalog, which are also the most commonly used languages in the Bay Area. In order to fund the project, Chandra raised more than $10,000. To date, more than 1,000 copies of the guide and more than 250 earthquake kits have been distributed.
As a quarterly winner, Chandra will be awarded $3,500 and has been entered into a voting competition that will take place in early 2013, the winner of which will be awarded a grand prize of $10,000.
College applications. With so many schools to choose from, career paths to take and requirements to meet, it is easy for juniors to feel overwhelmed, so Harker’s college counseling department offers them a wealth of advice and guidance. Alumni and others augment that process.
College application preparation also begins in some measure right as students enter the upper school. “I meet with every freshman student. I meet with his or her advisory and set up a course plan,” said Evan Barth, dean of studies at the upper school. “I like the focus to be on that so that the students are taking classes that they’re interested in, which means they’re going to be doing better.”
In addition to making them more attractive to colleges to which they may later apply, the course plan also makes them more well-rounded students, a goal central to Harker’s overall mission.
“In high school you don’t need to specialize. You don’t need to be a math person or a science person. Just be a student,” Barth said. “CalTech is going to want to see that you’re in good English classes getting good grades. It’s not like they only care about math and science.” Counselors help drive that point home.
Process
The quality of counseling is often about case load, and “we have very manageable loads,” said Sandy Padgett, co-director of the college counseling department. Juniors meet with their counselors dozens of times from their second semester until applications are filed at the end of their first semester as seniors, and a lot of preparation goes into the applications.
“Almost every college has a different set of questions that need to be answered and they can sometimes be confusing,” said Lori Berenberg, grade 12. “I can always count on someone to be in the college counseling office who can help me navigate through the seemingly impossible college application process. Even if my own college counselor is busy with a meeting, every single counselor is available to answer general questions regarding applications.”
“When you’re working with students, you’re going over their interests and what kind of environment they are looking for,” said counselor Kevin Lum Lung. “Large school, small school, are they willing to go out of state, in state, suburban, urban – those are big factors that can narrow it down.” Counselors also strongly encourage families to visit college campuses to help gauge the student experience at the campus level.
Students can narrow down choices through visits to college campuses, via their own research or hearing impressions from students attending prospective schools. Counselors then help students gauge their career interests and look at the admissions requirements of some of those schools to construct a list of possible universities.
Counselors find students eager to apply to prestigious schools but are quick to encourage them to research which school would best suit them rather than look best on a résumé. “We really encourage the research, as opposed to just going to the U.S. News & World Report and picking from a list,” said Nicole Burrell, college counseling co-director.
“I think sometimes you can bypass a school that would be a perfect match for you,” Lum Lung said, “because perhaps it’s not going to show up on a U.S. News & World Report ranking in the top 10. And there are many schools overlooked just because you haven’t heard about them or your relatives haven’t heard about them.”
College Visits to Harker
Every year approximately 80 college and university representatives visit Harker seeking applicants, providing an invaluable opportunity for students to learn more about the schools along with admission requirements. “I think a number of [students] haven’t had the chance to visit or know very little about a particular school,” said Padgett, “and the representative visits give a little bit more of a face and a name to the person who might be reading their eventual application.”
These visits have resulted in many students finding their school of choice. “Every year I usually have one or two students who go to an information session, they get intrigued by the school, they apply, they’re admitted, maybe they go out for a visit and then they end up at this school,” said counselor Martin Walsh. On the flipside, many students also find out that schools they were interested in are actually not right for them.
“The college counseling office actually scheduled representatives to come speak from nearly every college that I was thinking about, and this helped me narrow my list,” said Rohan Chandra, grade 12.
College Counseling Classes
Harker’s college counselors hold classes to help students get up to speed in the application process, just one unique way Harker prepares its students for this busy time.
“The course begins with, ‘Here’s where you should be at right now,’ and then, ‘Here’s what you should be doing in the coming week,’” Walsh said. Later on, the classes cover more specific parts of the application procedure, such as how to write personal statements or what types of questions will be asked at an interview.
“Through presentations, guest speakers and various paper resources, we were given everything we’d need to be effective applicants,” said Berenberg.
“I find myself infinitely more prepared than I was in the spring, and I credit all of my growth to the college counseling department and my college counselor.”
Guest speakers at these sessions include teachers who discuss their experiences at college, perhaps also informing students of schools they previously weren’t familiar with. grade 12 students who have gone through the application process also appear to give the juniors advice and answer their questions.
“They not only see us dozens of times over the year, but they’re in class with us once a week, so we’re working with them all the time,” said Padgett.
“Those classes are also designed to disseminate broad information,” Lum Lung noted, “and then in their individual meetings, you can kind of tailor it specifically to a student and address the individual needs.”
The Alumni Connection
Soon-to-be applicants are also encouraged to contact Harker alumni currently studying at schools they may want to attend. “We have a really good alumni network,” Burrell said, “and a lot of our students will go visit colleges and stay with or meet up with Harker alums, or visit classes with Harker alums.”
The college counseling department compiles a list of alumni who can be contacted by students looking to visit their schools. Alumni then give them a firsthand account of their experiences and show them around. “Our kids have reported back that the alumni have been really great about giving them that inside view of what it’s like to go to that school, and what it’s like to be transitioning particularly from Harker to that school,” Burrell said.
Giving Seniors Time
Another intriguing aspect of the college application process is the Harker approach of not administering final exams to seniors, to allow them more time in December for applications. “The seniors make appointments and we’re here with dedicated time to help them finalize their applications and send everything out before winter break,” Walsh said.
The practice helps lower student stress. “You can imagine trying to finish all your college applications and study for your final exams at the same time,” said Lum Lung. “So the school and the administration did such a great job in making that decision for student stress reduction and to really help the seniors.”
To further ensure that students can both dedicate the right amount of time to their applications and finish them in a timely manner, students are also required to begin working on their applications in the summer prior to senior year. “Without this counseling, I likely would not have started my apps until much more recently, at which point I now would have been extremely stressed out and would have probably written subpar essays,” Chandra said.
“College counseling helped ease me into the college application process quite well, as I was consistently given information on college applications, as well as personalized attention through counselor meetings,” Berenberg said. “Once I began my applications, I was eager to come to each of my meetings because I had something new to show every time.”
Counselors also make sure to let students know when to take a break from something. “One of the things I’m saying most frequently is, ‘You’re working too hard on this essay. Let’s step back. You don’t need to do all that. There’s a much easier way to do that,’” Padgett said.
Added Lum Lung: “The structure of [our process] is designed to prevent stress and anxiety. We’re trying to keep people organized, and I think stress can develop when people don’t know where they should be; and we’re debunking the myths and rumors out there.”
Harker students Richard Yi, grade 9, and Rahul Sridhar, grade 11, placed eighth and ninth, respectively, out of 276 participants at the CalTech Harvey Mudd Math Competition, held in mid-November at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. Additionally, Sridhar and Ashwath Thirumalai, grade 10, took third in the team competition, while Yi and sophomore David Lin’s team took fifth out of a total of 47 teams.
Harker was also among the top-performing schools in the California Mathematics League in November and December. The upper school tied for first place with 60 points and scored 54 points with the middle school students’ scores included. A total of 13 students earned a perfect score: Shaya Zarkesh, grade 7; David Zhu, grade 8; Michael Zhao, grade 9; Patrick Lin, Cindy Liu, Suzy Lou, Nitya Mani and Sachin Peddada, all grade 10; Varun Mohan, Alex Pei, Rahul Sridhar and Vikram Sundar, all grade 11; and Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 12.
At the Mexican Mathematical Olympiad in November, Varun Mohan, grade 11, was one of four members the United States team that was one of 200 teams at the event. Mohan won silver, just a few points shy of the gold medal award.
In the Mandelbrot Competition, which takes place in five rounds occurring over the course of the school year, Harker currently sits at fourth place among the 55 schools in the Redwood Region, and seventh place nationally. Sophomores Patrick Lin, Cindy Liu and Andrew Zhang are among the top individual contests in the Redwood Region, tied with the other top scorers at 14 points. At the national level, Varun Mohan, grade 11, has 12 points and David Lin has 11.
At the fourth annual Math Prize for Girls Contest in September, held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cindy Liu, Nitya Mani and Suzy Lou, all grade 10, received Honorable Mentions for their performance. As they were among the top 44 students in the contest, all three students were later invited to compete in the 2012 Math Prize for Girls Olympiad.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s youngest students are using the holiday season to learn about being thankful, giving back to their local communities, and the joy that comes from helping those less fortunate.
Kicking off the first of their community service projects in late October, the kindergarten students helped care for their lower school campus by picking fallen pomegranates from the school grounds to prevent the fruit from becoming an eyesore and hazard. This campus beautification project began in 2009 and is part of the youngsters’ overall service projects; they also participate in tree-planting each year.
The annual kindergarten tree planting at the Bucknall campus is a beloved tradition that began on the Saratoga campus. According to Sarah Leonard, primary division head, tree planting gives the children the opportunity to leave kindergarten with something that “serves as a living memory of their first year at Harker.”
Additionally, every winter, the lower school sponsors a canned food and toy drive, in which kindergartners take part. The importance of giving back and feeding the hungry is a lesson that many kindergarten teachers further tied into curriculum surrounding the holiday season.
The toy drive affords kindergartners the chance to learn, early on, the value of helping to get presents under the trees of many families who would not have otherwise been able to afford them.
In fact, last year’s drive resulted in hundreds of toys being delivered to Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose. Including Harker’s donation, more than 16,000 toys were donated, then set up and organized like a toy store for parents of children in need to choose from, resulting in a very merry Christmas day.
In November, kindergarten teacher Katherine Chi hosted a Thanksgiving feast with students and their families during her afternoon homeroom period. Held on Nov. 16, families each brought a favorite dish to share with the class, even including a bowl of macaroni and cheese for youngsters with hard-to-please palettes!
For those who wanted more traditional holiday fixings, there were also plenty of mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes and roasted turkey to choose from. And, to the delight of students, a plethora of yummy desserts, including homemade pumpkin cookies, were served as well.
However, it wasn’t the desserts that made kindergarten student Lindsey Tuckey’s mouth water. The five-year-old said what she is really thankful for is “the healthy stuff.” When asked to elaborate she noted she is especially grateful for having so much food to eat, particularly “broccoli and celery.”
Sitting next to her at a table set with colorful paper plates with turkeys on them was her father, Jeff Tuckey. He said he enjoyed being a part of the in-class celebration, sitting down with the youngsters as they enjoyed their mock Thanksgiving meal.
But it wasn’t all about the food. In addition to enjoying the sumptuous feast, Chi also had her class of 22 students take time out to discuss what they are thankful for. Previously, as part of their language arts curriculum, the kindergartners had created a journal about non-material things they are grateful for. Answers ranged from having clothes to wear and food to eat, to spending time with their family and pets.
From enjoying class holiday-themed celebrations to participating in community service projects and toy and canned food drives, kindergartners used the holiday season to its fullest – by uniting as a class, as well as helping to make the world a better place.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
Harker hosted two exciting visits from exchange teachers in September, one from Japan and the other from China. Both Yu Sasaki of Japan and Zhang Tao of China came to Harker to absorb the culture and learn new teaching practices.
On Sept. 6 Sasaki, who lives in Sendai, Japan, visited the upper school campus to talk to students about her work with Save the Children, a leading nonprofit organization devoted to promoting children’s welfare. Sasaki is currently involved in Japan’s post-tsunami relief efforts and used her Harker visit as an opportunity to inform the upper school students about it.
“It was a wonderful experience to discuss our post-tsunami relief efforts with five Japanese classes at Harker. In each class, I got interesting questions from students and was happy to know that they still care about what happens on the other side of the earth. I was also amazed by the charity work some of the students did after the tsunami,” she said.
Zhang Tao (who goes by the name Ruth) visited in mid-September from the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS) in Shanghai, China. In recent years the WFLMS has added a high school, where Zhang teaches English to sophomores and juniors. During her time at Harker she observed and taught classes on all three campuses, spending the bulk of her time at the middle school. Highlights of her visit included teaching such subjects as Chinese poetry, Mandarin, calligraphy and tai chi.
The teacher exchange program is an example of Harker’s ongoing effort to build progressive academic and cultural partnerships between institutions around the world, providing meaningful experiences for students at all grade levels – preparing them to be true global citizens.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
The Harker School’s global education and performing arts departments were thrilled to warmly welcome more than two dozen students who recently visited from Saint Stephen’s College, a college preparatory independent school located on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.
Accompanied by three chaperones, the group of 25 performing arts students were at Harker from Sept. 22-26. The group’s packed performing arts itinerary included visits to Harker’s theater, music, choreography and acting classes, as well as a special observation of a rehearsal of the fall play, “Hamlet,” followed by dinner.
According to Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education, the visit went extremely well and was part of a larger performing arts tour of the United States that the Australian exchange students and their chaperones were taking.
Especially gratifying to Walrod was the fact that numerous performing arts students at Harker helped out with the visit, accompanying Saint Stephen’s students for breakfast and lunch, escorting them to and from classes, and even joining them for a fun night out shopping and dining at Santana Row.
“We have also hosted two previous summer upper school trips where students visited Saint Stephen’s, attended their weeklong leadership retreat, and stayed in homestays. Plus, their exchange students and teachers always visit our middle and lower schools to read stories and talk about Australian history,” added Walrod.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
Excited grade 6 students met their buddies from Harker’s sister school in Tokyo in mid-October. The meeting, between Harker’s 27 middle school students and the Tamagawa K-12 School & University students, was preceded by a get-acquainted video chat.
“The video conferences are fun events held on the Blackford campus where each Harker family is scheduled for 10 minutes to meet their child’s Japanese buddy and family. We have a translator present to assist with communication,” explained Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education.
The video conferences began with Harker students introducing their families and asking questions about what their buddies will want to see, do or eat while they are visiting at the end of October. The Japanese buddies also got to ask questions about their fast-approaching visit.
The Tamagawa students were at Harker for several days before heading off to Yosemite on Oct. 22 after a farewell party hosted on their behalf in the middle school’s multipurpose room. They stayed in homestays with their Harker buddies, sightseeing around the Bay Area, visiting special classes, observing middle school classes, and reading stories and doing origami projects with K-3 kids.
While participating in a special dance class held in the gym, the students said they were having fun getting to know one another and were still excited about an outing they had the day before, which included a visit to a pumpkin patch and haunted house.
The popular student exchange program between the Tamagawa and Harker schools is just one example of Harker’s rich global education program, which strives to weave global activities into its students’ daily lives. In the spring, Harker students will head to Japan as part of the reciprocal exchange program.