This story was originally published in the Spring 2012 issue of Harker Quarterly
While pushing my son on a swing the other day I noticed that he did not know how to swing himself. It is one thing when your son needs help getting on the swing – some are pretty high – but it’s another when he needs you, once he is on the swing, to get going at all. I began talking him through how to swing himself when I noticed another thing: explaining to a child how to swing himself is not easy. What do you say? It is sort of like explaining how to tie your shoes. Where do you begin? To swing, you have to lean back, pull with your arms, project your legs into the air. By the end my son looked like a piece of dough.
I then realized a third thing (it was a day full of epiphanies). I had never been taught how to swing – I had just learned on my own. I am not even sure how or when I learned. I then began thinking about all of the skills I had learned on my own through playing with kids in the neighborhood. Swimming. Throwing and hitting a ball, any kind of ball. Riding a bike, skateboarding, ice skating. Even bowling. And we didn’t just learn these skills, but we internalized the rules of the games as well. We knew enough to argue ferociously about right and wrong.
As I thought about it, my friends and I learned all of these skills organically, without a single lesson, parent or adult to help. If we hadn’t learned these skills we would have been excluded from a load of play and none of us wanted that. My boys, on the other hand, will learn none of these skills without me or some structured program. In other words, they will require the direct intervention of adults to learn these skills. Most of the children I grew up with simply did not take private lessons of any sort. Today, almost all children take some kind of private lesson or are in some structured activity.
I am not judging the present or recalling the good old days of the past. In fact, there was nothing special about our learning these skills ourselves. We learned these skills like we learned how to walk and talk – naturally. There was actually no way we could not learn them. However, my sons most likely will not learn them without my direct intervention. Why the change? What does it mean, if anything, that some children are growing up in a community where learning skills like these will not happen naturally, without direct instruction? If this is a symptom, what is the disease?
After all, learning these kinds of physical skills organically, through neighborhood play, implies a whole set of conditions that support organic learning the way that rich soil supports plant growth. As for conditions, the neighborhood needs mixed age groups among its children so that the older kids pull up the younger ones. There needs to be extended family, like cousins, aunts, uncles. The kids need to have large amounts of unbroken, unsupervised time for play. They need a common set of goals, meaning that most of them have to find playing baseball or riding bikes fun. There needs to be a loose, mutual understanding between parents, almost like unspoken radar. The children need a neighborhood structure that supports them finding each other in these informal, unstructured, but safe environments. They need, well, a neighborhood.
I am not saying that neighborhoods with playing children do not exist today. They even have a name for them – “playborhoods.” There is a website called playborhood.com that is dedicated to promoting free, unstructured play in neighborhoods precisely because it is difficult to find. However, the facts that a website exists to promote free play and that neighborhoods with open play have a special name tell us something. As Kenneth Jackson says in “Crabgrass Frontier,” a history of American suburbs, “There are few places as desolate and lonely as a suburban street on a hot afternoon.”
What do children learn in unsupervised neighborhood play? They learn socialization, to use a common buzzword today. I am pretty sure my aunts and uncles never used that word. The kids were just doing what they were supposed to do, which was play. They also learn what we now term 21st-century skills, like collaboration, communication and creativity, though none of my friends ever used or even understood those terms. We had to collaborate, communicate and create, otherwise we wouldn’t have any fun.
I did teach my son to pull up and swing himself that day. I still think he prefers to have me push him, but at least he can now swing himself independently. I watch my son among the other kids, followed around by their parents who are instructing, encouraging and preparing them for an uncertain future, arming them with all of the skills they can possibly absorb during their fleeting childhoods. When I see him across the playground, pulling himself up on the swing, flanked by children he doesn’t know, looking across at me smiling with pride, I become a little wistful for the days when children learned these things on their own.
Compiled by William Cracraft, Igor Hiller and Zach Jones
This story was originally published in the Spring 2012 issue of Harker Quarterly
Medical Students Drop By with Advice
The Harker School had two medical students – who also happen to be Harker graduates – stop by upper school science chair Anita Chetty’s classroom in late November. They spoke to three different classes about what being in med school is really like, giving soon-to-be college students an insider’s look into both the course of study and the career it leads to. Alfred See and Geetanjali Vajapey, both Class of 2004, were home for Thanksgiving break when they decided to drop in and surprise Chetty, their former teacher. See, Chetty says, was also in the area interviewing for a residency. Chetty was pleased to see them both, especially considering they were only home for a few days. “It’s a nice reminder that Harker is truly a family, even after graduation, whose students are always willing to share their time and expertise,” she said.
Harker Academy Grad Publishes Timely Book on Muslim Americans
Ayesha Mattu ’86 was featured on the Sunday front page of the San Jose Mercury News Living section on Feb. 26. She co-edited a book titled “Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women.” In the book, 25 Muslim women share their search for love and speak openly for the first time about love, relationships, sexuality, gender, identity, homophobia and racism.
Mattu, who attended Harker Academy for grades 3-7, received Harker’s 2008 Alumni Community Service award. After graduating from Clark University, Mattu’s first job was as a public relations manager for Sahil, a Pakistani non-governmental organization addressing child abuse. Working on such a controversial and taboo subject in a conservative Islamic society proved challenging and rewarding.
After Sahil, Mattu worked for Hagler-Bailly, where she researched community initiatives connected to the Himalayan Brown Bear Conservation Project. She then moved to Boston, where she was the coordinator for institutional giving at Grassroots International, a human rights organization that works with social movements and progressive organizations to build a global movement for social justice. Mattu met her husband at Grassroots International, and the pair moved to San Francisco, where she worked as a development officer for the Global Fund for Women.
In addition to her book editing work, Mattu is currently self-employed as a philanthropy consultant, helping organizations and individuals formulate strategies and practices to foster a social-change grant-making model. Congratulations to Mattu on the publication of her book!
Tufts Grad Manages Campaign to Raise $500,000 for Nonprofit
Shawn Huda ’06 said he first discovered Let’s Get Ready (LGR) during his sophomore year at Tufts University. “As a product of a minority, single parent household, I was immediately drawn to the nonprofit’s mission: to help break the cycle of poverty by empowering students to attend college,” said Huda.
While at Tufts, Huda worked a semester as a verbal coach at LGR and three semesters as the director of the Tufts LGR program. After graduating from Tufts in 2010, Huda went on to work as a program associate in LGR’s Boston office, overseeing multiple programs.
“I discovered major benefits of the model that mirrored tenets of the Harker experience,” said Huda. “Classes were kept small (five students, on average) to ensure individualized attention and guidance; students both at the high school and college levels were empowered to take greater responsibility and ownership inside the classroom and out; and rather than focusing solely on one aspect, the SAT, the program took a holistic approach to preparing students for the college application process,” Huda said.
He was given the unique role of managing LGR’s campaign for the 2011 American Giving Awards Competition and, in December, under Huda’s management, LGR took second place, a ranking determined via the campaign’s Facebook voting drive, and won the group $500,000. Read the story on LGR’s website: http://bit. ly/ok6bc5.
Alumna Wong ‘05 Founds Theater Company
Kimberley Wong ’05 has co-founded a groundbreaking theater company in New York. Her group, called The Accidental Shakespeare Company, mixes theater with improvisation, with casting decisions made by the audience moments before curtain and random props thrown into the mix.
The theater company is dedicated to the idea of play. Wong says she realized the little moments of terror during a performance – when an actor forgets his line, or a set piece malfunctions, or a prop is missing – often spur the most exciting, interesting and real moments on stage. “Lately, I have become really tired of the kind of theater where they say: Stand here. Do this. Move your arm like that,” said Wong. “You start to feel like a set piece.”
Wong believes accidents are part of the joy of live theater, which is why her company purposefully incorporates elements of change into their productions.
Harker’s performing arts program played a significant role in Wong’s education. As a kindergartner, she was cast as a fairy princess in “Cinderella.” Every year thereafter Wong performed in Harker’s dance production. In grade 8, she performed in Harker Harmonics and played the lead role in “42nd Street” as a senior. She was also a musical theater certificate graduate in the Harker Conservatory. Said Wong, “I see how the work ethic, the professionalism and the passion that I learned at Harker set me apart from so many other actors. It is the reason … why I can develop and run my company!”
After graduation, Wong attended New York University, where she earned a BFA in drama. Her most recent theater credits include playing Juliet at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and Wong is currently in an apprenticeship at the Pearl Theater in New York, understudying Julia in George Bernard Shaw’s “The Philanderer.”
Alumna Accepted to Oxford Visiting Student Program
Maggie Woods ’10 was recently accepted to a visiting student program at Oxford University. Currently a history major at Santa Clara University, Woods plans to study medieval and early modern British history as well as Latin and Greek during her stay at Oxford. “Oxford has been the dream since sophomore year of high school, pretty much as soon as I decided that I wanted to continue studying history,” Woods said. She visited Oxford while on a trip to London the summer after her junior year at Harker. “The atmosphere is magical, and not just because it reminds me of Harry Potter,” she joked. “I felt an urge to study while I was there.”
Alumni Celebrations
Please join us in congratulating the following alumni:
Lisa Hall Hagen ’96 and Ross Hagen, who wed on June 5, 2011.
Rex Chung ’88 and his new wife, Miyako Hirai. The pair first met in high school, then reconnected in Asia. They now live in the Tokyo suburb of Chofu.
Congratulations are also in order for a new grandmother, Harker art aide Alice Schwartz, and proud parents Erin Schwartz ’04 and Benjamin Fox, on the arrival of Avery Akira Fox, born Jan. 14
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Since graduation, Grayson Hurd ’07 and Michael Keller ’07 have been busy carving out music careers with their band, Park Lane. Recently, they finished recording a new EP (“extended play” – a short album with two or three songs) with producer Ben Moody, a founding member of the Grammy winning, multimillion selling rock band Evanescence, and engineer Josh Newell, who has previously worked with Linkin Park and Lacuna Coil.
Hurd and Keller started Park Lane while in high school and continued pursuing music through their college years. Hurd graduated from Saint Mary’s College in 2011 with a split degree in business administration and music. Keller attended Santa Clara University. Last summer the band added vocalist Carley Coma, formerly of the seminal New York band Candiria, after sifting through nearly 2,000 applicants for the position. With producer Michael Rosen, whose credits include Papa Roach and AFI, Park Lane recorded and released their first album, “Letters From the Fire,” on iTunes and toured extensively throughout the United States.
“Now that the recording is complete, we are going to be signing with management in the coming months and should be signed by the end of the summer, fingers crossed!” Hurd said. The band has stated on their Facebook profile that, “if all goes as planned, there will be a full-length [album] after” the release of the EP. Currently, the band is deciding on a different name due to trademark restrictions, but for now they can be found under the name Park Lane on iTunes and at www.facebook.com/plband.
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
It’s an exciting life running social networking for the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., and Erika Gudmundson ’05 thrives on it.
Unlike so many how-did-I-get-here stories, Gudmundson found her niche like an arrow headed for the bulls-eye. Having worked on the newspaper and enjoyed political classes at Harker, she applied to a program at The George Washington University to study the intersection of politics and journalism. She interned for Congressman Mike Honda her first summer home, working every semester and summer thereafter in D.C., including a stint in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office.
Halfway through her junior year she took a leave of absence to work on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She secured a position as press aide in the campaign’s national headquarters, assisting campaign leadership with communications implementation. “One of the most exciting and nerve-racking things I got to do was help the staff of former President Bill Clinton on phone radio interviews on election days,” she recalled.
After the primary campaign ended, she went to Denver with Hillary Clinton’s staff for the Democratic National Convention. “Hearing then- Senator Clinton, former President Clinton and President Obama speak in front of those huge crowds on issues I care so much about was really moving,” she said, noting that she also assisted with media monitoring for Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings for Secretary of State.
Following that, Gudmundson went back to school to finish her studies while interning in the public affairs office at the Treasury Department. Upon graduating, she started officially working for them as a media coordinator. Soon after she was promoted to the position of new media specialist and charged with leading the redesign of their website, Treasury.gov, which hadn’t been updated in about a decade. She established and grew the Treasury’s first social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, as well as launched, managed, edited and blogged on the Treasury’s first official blog, “Treasury Notes.”
Noting what an honor it has been to work in D.C. during this historic time, she said, “I got to witness some of the most significant pieces of legislation get implemented – from the Affordable Care Act, to Wall Street Reform, to the Small Business Jobs Act. And while sometimes it kept me at work until well past midnight or required me to get in at 4 a.m., those were the most exciting and memorable experiences.”
Gudmundson is now ready for the next phase of her career; she has accepted a position at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City as their senior communications associate and will move to the Big Apple this summer.
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Students Bring Flair to Service Efforts Grade 10 Students Help Clients of InnVision Shelter
About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Sign-ups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the sign-ups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.
The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.
Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.
The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.
“The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors, but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.
The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s 10th grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime dropin center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”
Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a classroom and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.
Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.
“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.
Middle School Students Donate Placemats to Senior Center
In March, the middle school’s Service Club organized a project to make placemats for the Alma Senior Center, which serves meals to local seniors unable to buy or prepare meals on their own. Students made a total of about 50 placemats using crayons, markers and other supplies. The placemats will be put to use daily at the center, which serves 50-60 meals each day.
“The project was a pretty simple one, and it enlisted the help not only of the middle school Service Club students, but the efforts of kids throughout the middle school,” said Steven Hewitt, English teacher and the club’s advisor. “Many students even beyond the Service Club itself contributed to the collection drive.” Annual Toiletries Drive Exceeds Last Year’s
In May, middle school history teacher Pat White announced that her grade 7 advisory’s annual toiletries drive, which collects items that students acquired while on vacation and donates them to the Gloria Travis Center for Women and Children, collected a total of 462 bags of soap, shampoo, toothpaste and other items this year, shattering last year’s number of 322. Grade 1 Students Organize Donation Drive For Humane Society
Grade 1 students organized a donation drive that provided more than 60 bags filled with food, toys and other supplies to the Humane Society of Silicon Valley in March. More than $300 in cash was also donated. “Several children did small jobs at home to earn money that they then donated,” said Cindy Proctor, grade 1 homeroom teacher. “Children also made sock toys and braided toys and fleece blankets for the cats at the Humane Society.”
The students visited the Humane Society in Milpitas in February, where they learned about the organization and its goals, toured the facility and learned about how to better take care of animals. Later in the year, the students were visited by a representative from the Humane Society, who brought two rescue dogs and taught the students about how to safely approach dogs who aren’t familiar with them and how to understand what dogs are telling them based on their actions.
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Middle School Japanese Students Exchange Notes with Tamagawa Pen Pals Kumi Matsui’s Japanese students spent part of this semester exchanging notes with their pen pals from Tamagawa Gakuen in Tokyo. The purpose of the activity was to help Matsui’s students strengthen their skill with the language and learn more about Japanese culture, as well as to further develop their relationships with their Tamagawa friends. Students were required to write to their pen pals in Japanese, and although the activity officially concluded in March, when Tamagawa’s school year ended, the students are free to continue writing to their overseas friends.
Upper School Global Journalism Project Continues The Winged Post, the upper school student newspaper, continued its Global Journalism Project, an ongoing collaboration with international high school newspapers that began during the 2010-11 school year. Two recent editions of the paper, which hit stands in March and April, featured stories from students at Saint Stephen’s College in Australia and the Taipei American School in Taiwan. Topics discussed included the ways in which different countries approach teenage independence laws and recent efforts by schools to tackle environmental issues.
Middle School Math Teacher Visits China on Exchange Visit In April, Vandana Kadam, middle school mathematics chair, went on an exchange trip to Shanghai to visit and instruct at the World Foreign Language Middle School.
Kadam both observed and taught, including four sections of grade 6 classes. She also taught to students in grades 7-10. “The students have been extremely receptive and that curiosity I see in them makes it fun for me to teach,” said Kadam in an email from China. Her classes included a mix of Chinese students fairly proficient in English and those newer to English. She also had a Chinese co-teacher to translate her lessons if needed.
The language barrier, however, was mostly a non-issue. “[The Chinese students] were comfortable interacting with me as I used some manipulatives and played games with them,” said Kadam.
Australian Exchange Teacher Visits Harker For two weeks in April, Sam Cleary, a teacher at St. Stephen’s College in Australia, visited Harker to teach and observe classes as part of Harker’s eacher exchange with the school. Cleary observed classes in English, history and forensics, and taught a number of English and forensics classes himself.
Grade 4 Students Exchange Posters with Tamagawa Buddies
This semester, grade 4 English teacher Colin Goodwin’s students made posters to exchange with their buddies at Tamagawa Gakuen. Each student was asked to name his or her favorite season and a favorite seasonal tradition and make an artistic rendering of it. Seasonal traditions featured on the posters include Christmas, the Fourth of July and Halloween.
“I started the poster exchange about three years ago so that students at Harker and Tamagawa could learn about each other’s seasonal traditions,” Goodwin said. “It began as an exchange about spring traditions to tie into ‘The Secret Garden,’ a novel that has spring as one of the dominant themes.” In the last two years, the activity has expanded to include some of Harker’s other sister schools.
In January, upper school students from grades 10, 11 and 12 toured the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank to build on their classroom study of monetary policy. During their visit, they saw the vault and watched the process of cash being sorted, counted and prepared for transport. The students’ guide taught them about the function of the Federal Reserve, and the students also got to take part in a personal finance seminar.
Harker grade 6 singers dazzled the large crowd at the Blackford Theater on May 25 during the seventh annual Spring Sing concert. This year’s show had a story to go along with the singing and dancing. The priceless Harker Chalice had been stolen by the infamous Punk Panther, and the performers were on a globe-hopping adventure to capture the thief and return the chalice to Harker. In all, 190 students were involved in the show.
Patriotic numbers such as “Over There” by George Cohan and “This is the Army, Mr. Jones” by Irving Berlin were performed along with present-day hits (“Someone Like You” by Adele) and Broadway show tunes. One of the highlights of the show was their version of “Africa” by Toto. As an additional treat, the grade 7-8 show choir Harmonics emerged from the audience to sing “The Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” For the finale, the grade 6 boys were joined by the grade 8 Harmonics boys for the early 1950s hit “Hey Mambo.” The entire show was written, directed, choreographed and costumed by middle school performing arts teacher Roxann Hagemeyer, whose husband, Rolando Queyquep, designed the show’s props.
Rising seniors Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona were crowned national champions in public forum debate at the National Forensic League’s National Tournament on June 15. Recent graduates Akshay Jagadeesh and Aakash Jagadeesh (no relation) reached the top 30. The tournament featured more than 260 teams, and thousands of students across the country competed just to qualify for the tournament.
Harker also won a School of Excellence Award in the Debate category. These awards are given to schools with multiple successful teams.
Rising seniors Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona were crowned national champions in public forum debate at the National Forensic League’s National Tournament on June 15. Recent graduates Akshay Jagadeesh and Aakash Jagadeesh (no relation) reached the top 30. The tournament featured more than 260 teams, and thousands of students across the country competed just to qualify for the tournament.
Harker also won a School of Excellence Award in the Debate category. These awards are given to schools with multiple successful teams.