In December, The Harker School learned that executive chef Steve Martin and his team were being recognized by Ledyard Foods, Inc. for the outstanding food service program they run here at the school.
Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement, made the announcement to the school via email, noting that at a recognition dinner in Martin’s honor, Steve Rebottaro, Ledyard Foods, Inc.’s president, said Harker was very lucky to have one of the best food service directors and teams that he and his company have ever been associated with. In addition to the award, Martin was presented with a check to Harker in the amount of $1,600.
According to Rosenthal, the money is to be used to sponsor a student program. Rosenthal ended the email with a sentiment the entire Harker community echoes: “Congratulations, Chef Steve and team for all you do for our students and staff.”
On Wed., Feb. 1, 2012, student-organized Kicks Against Cancer will again take place at Davis Field. At 3:30 p.m., The Harker School’s girls varsity soccer team will be facing off against Immaculate Conception Academy, followed by the varsity boys soccer game against Eastside College Prep. The event will once again help raise money for Camp Okizu, the camp program for young cancer patients and survivors. Last year’s event raised nearly $8,000, an amount that organizers hope to surpass this year.
Starting mid-January, T-shirts and wristbands will be sold during lunchtime to raise money for the event. Donations are also being accepted, and can be arranged by contacting girls soccer coach Jason Berry at jasonb@harker.org.
Returning this year is the popular halftime activity “Butts Up,” in which attendees can donate money for a chance to hit a teacher in the posterior with a soccer ball. Prizes will also be raffled during both games.
As we reach the end of the holiday season, we look back at the highlights of it, and of our favorite holiday traditions here at The Harker School; not least of those is Downbeat’s annual holiday tour. Downbeat is a group of theatrically gifted sophomores, juniors, and seniors who incorporate dance and vocal interpretations into jazz and pop songs. In early December, Downbeat departed Harker at 8:45am for their tour day – a day when they perform festive, fun, and beautiful music all over the Bay Area. “We’ve gone to same places for several years now,” said Cathy Snider, one of Downbeats directors. It starts at the Lucile Packard Children’s hospital, where students sing throughout oncology wards, as well as bedside for childhood cancer patients. From there, they travel to Filoli Gardens, where they sing at a historical home that opens to the public during the holidays. Then the students hop back on the bus, and travel up to Pier 39 in San Francisco, where they perform right under the big Christmas tree, a stop on the tour that was added “just a few years ago so we could get them up to the City,” Snider said. After a quick stop for sundaes in Ghiradelli Square, the students are off once more, this time to The Forum, Assisted Living, where students perform both bedside and in the hallways for Alzheimer’s patients. It’s a quick jump from there to The Forum, a retirement community where residents live on their own and love to join in the singing. Finally, the group goes to The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. “This is the most important part of the tradition for the families, because all the parents, and some teachers/admin take over the lounge and cheer us on!” Snider said.
Snider’s favorite part of the tour is not any one stop, though. “My favorite part of the day is watching the group really fuse as an ensemble,” she said. “Touring can be stressful, with the need for constant good cheer and adaptability, and on this tour they really become a unit, all while giving so freely of their compassion and energy.”
The grade 5 boys basketball team just finished a spectacular season, winning the WBAL tournament with a 33-16 victory over Sacred Heart. The team went 7-0 in league as league champs, and had an overall record of 9-0.
The Harker School’s boys varsity basketball team started the season strong, defeating Del Mar 62-46, and then defeating Santa Clara in what Dan Molin, upper school athletics director, called “a nail-biter,” with a final score of 59-57. Nikhil Panu, grade 11, led the charge against Santa Clara, scoring 14 points, with Nick Nguyen, grade 9, adding another 12. The team then went 1-2 at the Lynbrook Tournament, narrowly losing to the host school 60-57 on the first night. Among the highlights, Molin said, “was a victory over Sobrato 66-27, and Panu earning All-Tournament recognition.” The team now stands at 3-2. The JV squad also played in the tournament, and took home third with a 2-1 record. Huck Vaughan, grade 10, “had an outstanding tournament,” said Molin.
The girls basketball team also started the season off with wins, going 2-1 at the Pescadero Tournament last week, where they defeated Geyserville and Kirby, and suffered a loss to Pacific Collegiate. In all three games, Daniza Rodriguez, grade 11, scored scored an impressive 62 points total! Following the tournament, the team went 2-0 in their next games, with victories over San Jose 62-46 and Cupertino 45-23 to improve to 4-1 overall. Rodriguez scored 19 points, and sophomore Nithya Vemireddy scored another 10, along with 11 rebounds, in the game against Cupertino.
Soccer:
The boys varsity soccer team also opened their season with a victory, defeating Mills High 3-1. Proteek Biswas, grade 12, had two of those goals, along with assists from Jeffrey Hanke, grade 10, and Avinas Patel, grade 12. Patel scored the third, which was assisted by Biswas. The team then suffered a defeat to Wilcox 4-0 to drop to 1-1.
Girls soccer started their season at Redwood Christian with a 2-2 tie. Gabriela Gupta, grade 9, scored both Harker goals, which were assisted by Alyssa Amick, grade 9, and Julia Fink, grade 10. The team then hosted three games here at Harker, going 2-1 with victories over DCP 10-1 and ECP 4-0. Safia Khouja, grade 9, scored twice against ECP, with assists by Diba Massihpour, grade 9, and Gupta. Gupta scored twice herself, assisted by Samar Malik, grade 10, and Massihpour. The final match, Crystal Springs, saw our opponents score two goals late in the game to defeat the Harker team 2-0. The girls are now 2-1-1 as they go into the Bakersfield Tournament.
Wrestling:
The Harker School wrestlers competed in the Webber Lawson Tournament at Fremont High. Corey Gonzales, grade 9, finished fifth in what Molin said was his first-ever varsity competition, losing to the eventual winner of the 106 lb. class. Sophomore Darian Edvalson earned his first varsity victory in the 182 lb. class.
Football:
As seen on our website, quarterback Spenser Quash, grade 11, was recognized by the San Francisco 49ers as their player of the week for his homecoming game performance. Quash earned this honor by completing 12 of 15 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed for three more touchdowns, Molin said, to account for all 35 of Harker’s points in the game.
Water Polo:
Senior Akshay Ramachandran was named to the boys water polo division II All-CCS team. Akshay joins past year’s honorees Michael Clifford ’10 and Chris Ng ’11 in this elite category.
The “parent reads” program at The Harker School gives parents of kindergartners an opportunity to come to the homeroom class and read a story to the students. In late November, Gerry-louise Robinson, a kindergarten teacher, and her students got more than just a Leo Lionni story – they got an entire performance, complete with puppets. “The parent (Wayne Liu, father of Nathan Liu, K) brought in two Sesame Street puppets, which he used first to introduce himself and the story, and then to comment/ask questions about the book. It was fantastic and the children just could not get enough! They laughed and talked with the puppets,” said Robinson. The puppets were a surprise to her as well, and a novelty so far in the “parent reads” program. The creative approach had a strong, positive reaction on the students. “It was just magical and so appropriate for this level! Truly wonderful,” Robinson said.
The Winged Post recently received the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with Stephen McCue, College Board educational manager for K-12 services, regarding the college exam company. McCue has been with the College Board for about four years. The work he does primarily serves schools and districts across California, Colorado and Wyoming, that are using College Board programs or who are thinking about using those programs.
Q: What exactly are you doing here at Harker?
A: Well, Derek [Kameda, upper school registrar,] contacted the office. I know he’s been involved with College Board for some time [as a member of the College Board’s Consultant Advisory Panel], and he just wanted to highlight some of the good things going on here [and] I brought a little bit [of internal data] to share with Derek […] to see if there’s anything we can do to really support what’s been happening here.
Q: As seniors, we’ve seen that a lot of colleges don’t consider the writing score. What does this indicate, in terms of importance to the colleges? Will it be phased out in the future?
A: I’m not speaking on behalf of our senior leadership, but for myself, I don’t anticipate that writing will be phased out at all. I think we, in 2005, made a real decisive action here to make sure that writing is featured prominently in the test, so that we would encourage the schools to focus more on writing as more of the curriculum. And that’s exactly what seems to have been happening to schools all across the country …. Actually when we introduced the section, we were a little concerned that it may not possibly be as much of a predictor of freshman year success as some of the other tried and true sections. Quite honestly, the opposite was true however – that the writing section was the most predictive of the three sections in terms of freshman year GPA in college. So, actually it’s a very useful part of the test for college admissions officers; some have just not yet changed their policies and embraced writing.
Q: How do you justify that the College Board tests have an accurate measurement of education or mental aptitude?
A: Well, we don’t really call them aptitude tests, but we do, through our standardized tests, have a clear objective, and that is to try to identify the specific college readiness skills that students need to know and do when they’re incoming freshmen. So what we’re trying to do throughout those assessments and [the College Readiness Pathway] is we try to introduce those skills that students should be responsible for, and when they’re struggling on a particular skill we try to identify opportunities for them to grow, to master those skills through practice material …. Our research shows that students who do prepare through the PSAT [and other early assessments] have a better average overall than those who don’t. [That’s] why when Derek mentioned that the policy was that all sophomores and juniors take the PSAT, I noticed that there were some who only took the PSAT as juniors. [For those] who took the PSAT as juniors only compared to those who took it as sophomores and juniors, there was about a 90 point difference on the SAT scores … that could certainly put you over a threshold at certain schools.
Q: For some of the tests you charge from $45 to $50; where does all the money go?
A: It goes … to the development of the program …. There’s quite a lot of research that goes into it, there’s quite a lot of overhead that’s involved, so there’s quite a lot of expense in just administering the SAT on a national basis, like it’s done several times a year. It’s my understanding that the SAT is not a real revenue generator for the company. It’s something that’s quite expensive to operate, and that’s why the cost is as it is. It’s a necessity. I think if we could lower that cost, we’ll be much inclined to do so. We’re a not-for-profit organization and … we try to take into account the struggling families that are out there that want to have access to these resources but have trouble dealing with them, and we try to be cognizant of the fact that we’re setting price for a year that we try to keep it as reasonable as we can.
Q: What would happen if there wasn’t a College Board and its standardized tests?
A: Well, we had that once actually, prior to the establishment of the College Board back in the late 1800s. The College Board was started in 1900, believe it or not; we’ve been around for a very long time. But back in the late 1800s, we had different entrance exams in for different colleges and it was that process which led to the establishment of the College Board, which was founded by leaders at various universities who decided that having students sit down and take [several entrance exams] was really not the best process or the best use of peoples’ time. They tried to come up with a streamlined or standardized test for those students to take to be utilized by more than one school, and that’s what led to the establishment of the College Board. So I think if we didn’t have this sort of standardized opportunity, it would be very difficult for students to have a true representation of themselves when applying to multiple schools, because each individual school would have its own standard that would have to be met. That’s a very expensive proposition, and also a very [time-consuming] proposition as well …. I think we recognized at the time that there was a need for such a service and I think we’ve tried to fill that need in every sense.
In early December, The Harker School’s lower school music students gathered for their annual concert. The concert featured six groups total, including the choir (directed by Jennifer Cowgill, a grade 4-5 performing arts teacher), the orchestra and the jazz ensemble. Technically, practice for the concert began on the first day of class. As Louis Hoffman, a K-5 music teacher, said, preparing for the concert is a “whole learning process.” Class and practice are one and the same, and the concert allows students to showcase the broad range of style they’ve learned by singing and playing in various pieces.
Closer to the concert date, Hoffman brought a selection of songs to his students and let them pick what they’d play. The wide range of songs performed was capped off by a unique, energetic song choice. As the finale for the event, the students chose the theme song to the popular game Angry Birds. The students wore Angry Birds hats, and Hoffman conducted the piece with a slingshot (an item any Angry Birds fan will recognize as the tool the birds use to launch themselves at their enemies). Conducting the piece and hearing it performed tied for first for Hoffman’s favorite moment in the concert. His other was hearing the choir sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with sound effects for each day’s calling birds or pipers piping or swans a-swimming. “It was very funny,” Hoffman said.
At the end of each year, the three campuses have a joint performance. So as Hoffman said, “It’s nice to highlight the accomplishments of our youngest students. It’s different at this level than it is at a high school level. Rather than instilling a sense of competition, we focus on learning to play together, learning to hear yourself, and learning to follow a conductor. We give them the opportunity to explore and to be successful.”
The concert provided the students with the chance to let everyone participate equally. Even in the jazz ensemble, where each student had a short solo piece, no one solo was focused on over the other. This way, Hoffman said, “The real star of the show is the music itself.”
That does not mean there isn’t room for special recognition for those who help make the concerts happen, though! Hoffman noted Toni and Paul Woodruff, both from the performing arts department, for playing violin and piano, respectively, and “for all their support and willingness to participate. They’re really remarkable people.”
In mid-December, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) at Stanford University sent over an art curation and interior design team to select art to display in different parts of the hospital.
The Harker School’s lower school art department has had students involved in displaying art at the hospital for several years, ever since Eric Hoffman, lower school art department chair K-5, asked his students for suggestions on where their art could be displayed back in 2008. Hoffman contacted LPCH on a student’s suggestion, and after months of planning with Susan Gray, administrative project manager at the hospital, and display specialist Ted Cohen, student works premiered in spring 2009.
The art is switched out occasionally, and the team from LPCH came to Harker to select the newest pieces. “We had displayed everything in the conference room at the lower school campus, and when they came in, they were truly surprised, and very, very happy,” said Hoffman of the team’s visit. “This particular ceramics project is one we’ve been developing for about a year.”
The grade 4 art students made ceramic desserts as part of this year’s art curriculum, and the LPCH team thought they looked good enough to eat. The students did, too. According to Hoffman, his morning classes had been working on decorating their ceramic pieces, and there was a whole table full of them when the afternoon class came in.
“They thought it was the best thing they’d ever seen,” Hoffman said. They even asked who had done the pieces, and Hoffman told them that they had – this was the work of their classmates, and their pieces were looking just as great. Part of the LPCH’s team’s visit also involved a discussion of LPCH’s expansion – the hospital is going to have more wall space, and the team is rethinking where and how to display artwork.
The ceramics dessert project the grade 4 students did inspired some spur-of-the-moment brainstorming. “Normally we display our 3-D work there for a year or so, and when they saw this dessert project, they started playing with the idea of taking it and putting it on permanent display in the cafeteria,” Hoffman said, something the team had not intended on when they first arrived at the school.
For the new wall space in LPCH’s clinic, the team also selected about 45 pieces of flatwork. Looking toward the future, Hoffman believes they will “absolutely be involved” with the project five years from now and beyond. “Giving to our community is so important,” he said. “I don’t know a better way to do that than to make people laugh and smile. Especially in a hospital situation.”
Harker’s upper school orchestra has just returned from London, where they performed during the New Year’s celebration and participated in the city’s New Year’s Day Parade. During their performance at Cadogan Hall on Dec. 31, the orchestra, directed by upper school music teacher Chris Florio, performed “Overture to Candide” by Leonard Bernstein, “Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1” by Ralph Vaughan Williams and the famous “Overture to William Tell” by Gioachino Rossini. During their stay, the students also had the opportunity to see many of England’s most famous locations and landmarks, including the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, Stratford-upon-Avon and the City University of Oxford.
Watch this space for more information and photos in the near future!
Harker will once again hold a series of Cookies and Kindergarten events in January, where prospective parents will have the opportunity to tour the lower school campus, meet with admissions staff and view a kindergarten class session while enjoying warm cookies. The dates for these events are as follows (all tours start at 9 a.m.): Jan. 6, Jan. 10, Jan. 19 and Jan. 24. An RSVP is required for those planning to attend.