In late September, upper school statistics students attended the San Francisco Giants’ final regular-season game to gather information that they will be using for statistics projects throughout the year. “The statistics curriculum is designed to teach students how to address a question of interest through data,” said Troy Thiele, upper school statistics teacher, who accompanied the students along with colleague Mary Mortlock. “They need to formulate a method to obtain useful data, then analyze it and use probability to make conclusions about their question of interest.”
For the rest of the school year, statistics teachers will have students return to the data they’ve collected as they learn the various principles of statistical problem-solving. “In this way, the concepts we teach in class will hopefully have greater relevance to students as they apply them to data that they have collected to answer questions they have formulated themselves,” Thiele said.
Thiele also hopes that the trip will help students enjoy the study of statistics. “The hope is that through a positive and fun learning experience, students will think fondly of statistics, rather than as just another class,” he said. “This positive experience will hopefully motivate students to recognize how statistics can be applied in all facets of their lives.”
Parents were welcomed to the Harker campuses in September for a series of Back-to-School events. The upper school held its event on Sept. 10, allowing parents to tour the upper school campus, visit classrooms and hear upper school teachers talk about their classes and teaching methods. Student club representatives also set up tables in Nichols Hall to give parents a look at the different clubs their students can join.
The lower school held two Back-to-School Nights, one for grades 4-5 on Sept. 12, and another for grades 1-3 on Sept. 13. Both had parents touring the Bucknall gym, where teachers had tables and displays set up containing information about their classes. They also toured the campus and attended demonstrations by Harker teachers in their classrooms.
Finally, the middle school Back-to-School Night on Sept. 15 also took parents to presentations in classrooms, and science teacher Daniel Sommer even got the parents involved in a basic science project. Middle school art teacher Elizabeth Saltos entertained her audience with some very creative hat designs.
Video of this event is available on The Harker School’s YouTube channel: Part 1, Part 2
Right on the heels of astronaut Greg Chamitoff’s appearance, the Harker Speaker Series hosted another fascinating space-themed talk by Dr. Jill Tarter, director of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. A well-known figure in the search for life on other worlds, Tarter’s research formed the basis for Jodie Foster’s character in the popular science fiction film “Contact.”
After introductions by Chris Nikoloff, head of school, and Harker student Govi Dasu, grade 12, an astrophysics enthusiast, Tarter jumped right into her presentation, titled, “Citizen Science and the Search for E.T.”
She explained that she and her team use radio telescopes to search for evidence of extraterrestrial (ET) intelligence, juxtaposing a photo of herself at a computer with a photo of Jodie Foster in “Contact” listening for signals with a pair of headphones. “I’m the one that doesn’t wear headphones,” Tarter quipped.
Tarter’s entire career as a scientist has been spent on SETI research, having served as a SETI project scientist with NASA, and then becoming the first employee at SETI when it incorporated in 1984. “I’ve only actually had two jobs in my life,” she said. Her current project is being the self-described “chief cheerleader” of setiQuest, an effort to engage the open community in SETI’s mission.
“We’re all transitioning,” said Tarter
. “At my ripe old age, I’m trying to learn how to do my business in a different way.” She used the language of the open-source computing community in saying that SETI was “moving away from the cathedral” of doing research on their own using large instruments, and moving toward “the bazaar,” a rich source of ideas and innovation.
“But it’s a little bit rough and tumble, too,” she explained. “You’ve got to have some sharp elbows and a thick skin to do well in this environment, and that’s what we’re trying to learn how to do, because we realize that not all smart people who are interested and passionate about SETI actually work for the SETI Institute, and they can help us to improve the search.”
Tarter then moved on to the greater topic of SETI research. “There are answers to questions about what is, what ought to be, who are we, why are we, and of course, who else might be out there,” she began. “Along that journey, we’ve discovered that our universe is vast, that our sun is one of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.” As massive as that sounds, the Milky Way is only one of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, which itself only makes up four percent of the universe’s mass energy density. The rest she said, is made up of “dark matter, dark energy. ‘Dark’ is just an astronomical word for ‘we don’t know.’”
She pointed out that SETI research hasn’t set out to prove the assumed existence of sentient extraterrestrial life. “We just note the possibility, probably even the probability, given the size and the uniformity of the universe we find ourselves in,” she said.
Since 1995, about 550 planets have been found by watching stars that wobble as their planets orbit around them. The Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009, has been searching for Earth-sized planets in orbit around stars similar to the sun, which may be the right temperature to contain liquid water necessary for life. Using its 95-megapixel camera to detect dips in the brightness of stars caused by their planets’ orbits, Kepler identified 1,235 exoplanet (the term for planets existing outside the solar system) candidates by staring at a tiny patch of the Milky Way between the Cygnus and Lyra constellations. Of those, Tarter said, 60 may be situated in the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” orbiting just the right distance from their stars to house the right temperature for liquid water.
That data, released in February, was followed up in September by another large set of data, which doubled the number of exoplanet candidates. One of Kepler’s most fascinating discoveries from that set was Kepler 16b, the first planet known to orbit two stars.
Although Kepler 16b is likely too cold to be habitable, “it shows us that it’s possible to have planets in stable orbits around binary stars, and since most stars out there are binaries, this is a whole lot more real estate that we know is out there, and some of it might be habitable,” Tarter said. Using statistical math, Tarter estimated that “maybe 500 million” planets in our galaxy are habitable.
In addition to people who search for life, Tarter said the SETI institute also employs astrobiologists who study the “origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.” In order to understand what types of planets may be able to sustain life, they study life forms that are able to withstand extreme conditions here on Earth. “My colleagues are trying to find the answer to the question of what constitutes a biosignature,” she said. The presence of methane in our atmosphere caused by everything from termites to what Tarter termed “bovine flatulence,” for example, is one clue of the biological happenings on the surface. “Biology is leaving an imprint on our atmosphere, and perhaps we can find something like that in the atmospheres of other planets, but it’s very tricky to be able to say with absolute confidence that that particular chemical signature cannot be produced abiotically,” she said.
The presence of technology on other worlds is also a concern for SETI research, which also looks for so-called “technosignatures” from extrasolar planets. While earthly technologies could be detected by an advanced civilization, receiving their communications is another matter. “Our own technologies are in fact visible at interstellar distances by an advanced technology,” Tarter said, “and perhaps their technology could be detected by us at radio or optical or some other wavelength, if we only had a determined search to systematically look for it.”
SETI’s success is not only dependent upon whether or not other civilizations exist, but also whether or not their technology lasts long enough on a cosmic time scale. “We are a very young technology, 100 years, in a very old galaxy, whose age is 10 billion years,” she said. “Can we become an old technology? Is technology on average a stabilizing influence, and do technologies last for a long time?”
Tarter wrapped up her presentation with a summary of how the SETI Institute has been trying to build a worldwide community to assist in their research. Their primary audience, she said, is college students. “They’re going to be responsible for our technological longevity. They’re going to solve the technical challenges that we’ve presented to them from technologies we’ve previously produced and not used wisely.” One way they have engaged this audience is to publish their code as open source so that it can be improved.
To involve the community beyond universities, SETI Institute is working on a “citizen science” application that will hopefully enable people to find what SETI researchers may have missed by “allowing humans to do what they do best, which is pattern recognition,” Tarter said.
In building the setiQuest community, the institute has also received help from Google, Dell, Intel and Amazon. The setiQuest explorer application is now available as a Web browser app and is also available for free on Android smartphones and tablets. Tarter admitted that the application needs improvement. However, the data they are receiving from the application will eventually allow them to start a new citizen science project with the help of Galaxy Zoo, an organization that allows website visitors to help classify galaxies. This project will feed users data from telescopes in real time to help SETI researchers sift through particularly crowded bands, “where there are so many signals and we can’t figure out where they are,” Tarter said.
During a brief question and answer session following the presentation, Tarter answered a question from an audience member that dealt with what to do in the event of being contacted by another world. In such a scenario, she explained, the first step would be to tell the world what has happened. There is also a piece known as Article 8, which states that Earth will not respond to the message until a global consensus is reached on what the response will be.
She said she was confident, however, that any such correspondence would not be hostile, as any civilization advanced enough to send a message over such a great length, would probably have been around long enough to be peaceful. “I’m a bit of a Polyanna,” she joked.
The Bollywood and Bangles evening held in September was a great kickoff to fashion show preparations. Hosts Raj Bahri and Kavita Tankha, parents of Aliesa, grade 6, Jai, grade 4 and Mir, grade 2, welcomed guests into their spacious hillside home in Los Altos on a warm, starlit Saturday evening.
“Kudos to Kavita and Rajat for hosting one great party,” said attendee Anil Gulati (Avi, grade 4; Aaditya, grade 2), who was accompanied by his wife, Anjali. “From the smallest detail of decorations to the scrumptious food, drinks and the dancing – everything went off so well! We had a ball dancing to the favorite Bollywood tunes and the gals with the henna done all over looked really festive!”
After dropping cars with the hosted valet service, guests were greeted at the door with a smile and handshake from their hosts, then passed through the house to the beautifully landscaped garden surrounded by stretches of lawn. The whole garden was spotted with upholstered lounges and glowing white tables, tall and short, to make snacking on the delicious hors d’oeuvres and sipping the notable mojitos a most enjoyable experience.
The garden sported two bars and a half-dozen or more servers passed through the crowd of nearly 200 guests. Since the theme was Bollywood (after the Mumbai film making industry’s home) and Bangles, the women, especially, were dressed in everything from full Indian evening dress – sari and wrap – to western dress accented with colorful shawls. Men mostly stuck to dress slacks and shirts, but a number wore traditional dress, as well.
As the evening progressed, gas heaters were lit and the DJ changed the music from traditional and modern Indian music to well-known modern dance tunes with a beat and bass that carried throughout the party setting.
Along with the always-ready mojitos, the bar had a great variety of beverages, and hors d’oeuvres included curry chicken and breaded cauliflower. Around 9 p.m. a buffet opened on the lower level and guests fueled up for the rest of the evening on traditional Indian dishes.
Around 9:30, the music warmed up and couples hit the dance floor. Partiers were in full swing well into the evening and all left filled with delicious food, tasty beverages and the sense of having been to a wonderfully well-arranged event that also helped the Harker Fashion Show kick off its fundraising in style.
Harker’s advancement team was impressed by the donor’s efforts on behalf of the school. “An event of this nature takes many hours and a tremendous amount of effort to pull together so beautifully,” said Sue Prutton, fashion show liaison for the team. “We’re indebted to Kavita and Raj for their gracious support of the fashion show and of the school.”
This article originally appeared in the fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
We caught up with retired lower school teacher Howard Saltzman to find out about his years and fondest memories as a Harker teacher, as well as how he spends his post-Harker time.
Q: What did you teach at Harker and for how long?
A: I taught at Harker for 31 years! I was a fourth grade teacher for the first 13 years and taught third grade the last 18. At first, I taught all subjects! Once third grade was departmentalized, I taught just social studies. Ultimately, I really enjoyed teaching California history.
Q: Did you coach any sports or advise any clubs?
A: I coached fourth and fifth grade sports after school for about 15 years. It was so much fun coaching football, basketball, soccer and softball. I stopped coaching once my son, Michael, was
in sixth grade so I could watch him participate in those same sports.
Q: What is your typical day like now that you are retired?
A: Now that my wife, Susan, and I are retired, I enjoy working in the yard, walking with my dog and doing a little traveling. We have had a chance to go to Sydney, Australia; Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Vancouver Island, Canada; and Las Vegas, Nev.
Q: Are you pursuing any long- desired goals, now that you have time?
A: On May 25, my daughter, Kari, gave birth to our first grandchild, Kiora! So, we are excited about being able to take care of her Monday through Friday, so Kari can teach English at Palo Alto High School. Our son, Michael, is an English teacher at Irvington High School and coaches football at Saratoga High School.
Q: What is your fondest memory of teaching at Harker?
A: I have so many fond memories of my days at The Harker School. Those memories all revolve around the terrific students and colleagues that
I had over the years. I was always surrounded by truly outstanding teachers at Harker. Howard and Diana Nichols were both visionaries! I had the chance to see both of them take Harker from a one-campus,
K-8 school to a three-campus, K-12 school. They constantly strived to make Harker the best that it could be. Betty Koski and Marla Vallone worked with me for the first 13 years in the fourth grade. They were terrific teachers. I could not lose.
Q: Do you keep in touch with any former students?
A: I did have the privilege to work with Grace (Sabeh) Wallace ‘95 the last few years at the Bucknall campus. She was an outstanding student in
my class when she was in the fourth grade. Also, I recently had a chance to connect with both Matt Baker ’83 and Karri Sakai ’84. Matt was in my first class at Harker while Karri was in my second class. Now, they’re married and have a daughter in the first grade at Harker who had Grace Wallace as a teacher last year.
Q: Can you share a memory of your days at Harker with us?
A: Pat Walsh and I taught together all 31 years! What an outstanding teacher and great friend. His sense of humor made all my years at Harker so much more enjoyable.
Q: Do you have any message for the current students or the Harker community in general?
A: How lucky I was to have been a teacher at The Harker School. My own children had a chance to attend Harker and both were very well prepared for high school, college and life.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Hotel Toiletries Gathered for Homeless
Pat White, middle school history teacher, has again led a collection of donations of hotel toiletries for the Georgia Travis Center for homeless women and children in San Jose. White’s group last donated 210 individual plastic bags of soap, shampoo and other personal care products for individual use in June, and this fall were well on their way to reaching that level at press time.“Thank you so much for your generosity,” said White.
Mother/Daughter Teams in Relay for Life
Michelle Douglas and Amy Wardenburg, 11, created a mother/daughter team for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life held July 9-10 in Campbell. The pair’s lives have been impacted by cancer and they were inspired to create a team to help fight it. For the past four years, Douglas and Wardenburg have volunteered at the Campbell Relay for Life. This year, along with their mothers, Chris and Heather, they were joined by fellow 2013 classmates and their mothers Cristina and Helena Jerney, Cecilia and Laura Lang-Ree, Hannah and Sue Prutton, and Molly and Roni Wolfe. Lang-Ree is chair of the performing arts department at Harker and Prutton is director of upper school volunteer programs. The team walked for 24 hours and raised $4,000.
Senior Raises Funds for Propionic Acidemia
Maya Gattupalli, grade 12, organized a fundraiser in August for the Propionic Acidemia Foundation and invited the Class of 2012 to participate. The event was a 5K walk in Vasona Park in Los Gatos on Aug. 14. “Nine other Harker seniors volunteered at the event,” said Gattupalli. “We had about 83 people attend the walk and we raised $5,256 (and therefore reached our goal of raising 5K).” Propionic acidemia, a recessive genetic disorder affecting one in every 100,000 people in the U.S., is characterized by a nonfunctioning enzyme used in the digestive process, leaving those afflicted unable to break down certain proteins and fats. This leads to the build-up of toxins and acids, which can cause organ dysfunction.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
The Harker Conservatory completed its second appearance at the largest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with a successful run of “Pippin” in August.
In 1947, eight uninvited theatrical groups descended on the newly formed Edinburgh International Festival, performing “on the fringes.” The trend caught on, and in 1959 the Fringe became official. In 1994, the American High School Theatre Festival (AHSTF) formed and instituted a competition to choose and facilitate the appearance of high-caliber secondary school drama departments at this mecca of arts festivals.
The Harker Conservatory was first nominated for the Fringe by now-defunct American Musical Theater of San Jose back in 2006. After an in-depth application process and review of years of Harker shows, Harker was selected from more than 300 applicants as one of 38 schools to appear under the AHSTF banner, and “Urinetown: The Musical” performed to impressive crowds in 2007.
Laura Lang-Ree, chair of the performing arts department K-12 and the spring musical’s director, has set a goal of attending the Fringe once every four years, and in 2010 Harker was one of 45 schools accepted. Choosing just the right show is a challenge, Lang-Ree says: “It’s about finding the right mix of sophistication and edginess. The Fringe is not the place to bring something that is the equivalent of vanilla yogurt. It’s got to zing, it’s got to grab the attention of thousands of potential audience members, and it’s got to be memorable.”
Preparing for the Fringe takes a full year, not the least of which is trimming the show to fit into a strict 90-minute format. The set must accompany the actors as well, putting additional demands on Paul Vallerga, Harker’s innovative set designer. In addition to Lang-Ree and Vallerga, musical director Catherine Snider, production manager Brian Larsen and chaperone extraordinaire Chris Daren ironed out the details and accompanied the cast.
Once settled in their dorm rooms on the campus of the University of Edinburgh, the cast’s adventure began in earnest. A packed schedule of rehearsals, publicity, shows and shopping ensued. Fundraising efforts during the school year meant that Lang-Ree was able to arrange for several group meals together and attendance at 12 professional shows of varying genres.
One highlight was the relationship Harker developed with an American improv troupe called “Baby Wants Candy.” They create an hour-long musical based on a title suggested by an audience member, and the “Pippin” cast met them during publicity times and promised to attend each other’s shows. The BWC troupe gave a shout out from the stage to the Harker group at their performance, and were gracious enough to arrange a special workshop at the dorms for Harker and another California high school.
But of course the highlight of the trip was performing “Pippin” at the beautiful Church Hill Theatre. Participating AHSTF schools support each other by attending at least four other high school shows, so the challenge for each school is to fill the theater’s seats with “regular” Festival-goers in addition to the high school students. Each school is allotted one 20-minute slot on a small stage on Edinburgh’s main street, the Royal Mile. “Pippin” cast members braved the rain in full costume and gathered a huge crowd with their opening number, after which they took to the Mile with a three-card Monty game whose trick card was printed with all the “Pippin” information. The cast was able to “trick” locals, foreigners, other performers and, on one notable occasion, two local police officers into choosing the info card. The hard work paid off with approximately 240 people attending one of the four performances of “Pippin,” including many of the other high schools who weren’t required to attend but who had heard the buzz.
The demands of mounting a Fringe show led to the cast reaching deep within themselves for stamina, flexibility, humor and grace under pressure, and they all rose to the occasion beautifully. The final performance had 125 people in the audience (Fringe shows average seven people), and Lang-Ree was surrounded by other American directors asking, “How did you do this?” Lang-Ree recalled, “This moment was a professional highlight for me; such a huge compliment to the cast and crew and an even bigger compliment to the entire performing arts department at Harker as our kids really are a reflection of their K through Life experience.”
An online arts group reviewed the show, giving it four stars and writing, “An excellent production
of ‘Pippin’ by an enthusiastic and well-drilled cast.” The final accolade came from the head of AHSTF, who asked the Harker cast to provide the only performance at their closing ceremonies. One final time, the stalwart cast donned makeup and costumes and wowed the 800 people in attendance.
Lang-Ree mused, “We were selected by AHSTF as one of the best and brightest musical theater programs in America, so I think it’s very important that what we bring to the Fringe – artistically, technically, creatively – be a home run. This event is not a ‘dress rehearsal’ for theater life – the Fringe is the real deal.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
The Harker School’s junior varsity and varsity dance troupes participated in the first dance camp at the upper school campus, run by the United Spirit Association (USA), from Aug. 10-12. USA Dance is the official member organization of the United States Olympic Committee and is the official international liaison for U.S dance teams. The intensive three-day camp was run by USA instructor Brittanee Lujan and led by new-to-the-upper- school dance teachers Karl Kuehn and Amalia De La Rosa.
De La Rosa and Kuehn opted to do a “home camp” this year, meaning a USA instructor came to Harker specifically to work with Harker’s dance teams.
The camp helped students develop a wide range of skills, and focused especially on learning technique and choreography, as well as team-building exercises. Each day the dancers learned material from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., including routines in hip-hop, jazz and lyrical styles, and a fun camp routine that is learned by dancers all across the nation attending USA camps.
At lunchtime and on breaks, the students participated in the team- building activities, including a Crazy Costume Relay and T-shirt-making project. They also had a technique class each day, during which the girls learned advanced across- the-floor progressions including battements, pirouette combinations and tricks, and jeté combinations.
On the last day of camp, the troupes wrote their own constitutions for the year, which included their team goals and expectations. Then, for the last hour of the last day, parents joined the dancers and teachers for an open studio, which gave them a chance to see what the students had been working on and what they had accomplished.
The USA Dance instructor was continually impressed with the girls’ demeanor and skills throughout camp. So much so, in fact, that she awarded them with the coveted USA Spirit Stick on the last day of camp. The Spirit Stick is a special award for teams that display outstanding work ethic, teamwork, skill and a positive attitude. “Winning the Spirit Stick on the last day of camp is a great honor, as that team gets to keep the Spirit Stick at their school,” said De La Rosa. The teams were exhausted at the end of their intense three-day experience, but their hard work was well worth it. Overall, Kuehn and De La Rosa say, it was a great way to start the year.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Summer Programs Keep Students in Shape and Nurture Younger Athletes
For several summers, Harker’s upper school athletic department has offered the Eagle Iron program during the summer months as a means for our student athletes to stay or get in shape for the upcoming year. This past summer training ramped up to include younger members of the athletic community. Eagle Iron was modified to include students entering grades 7-8, and two new programs were added for athletes starting grades 4-6: Junior Eagle Iron, which is exclusively for Harker student-athletes, and Summer Sports Performance Academy, which welcomes non-Harker students as well.
All of the programs are specifically designed to progressively develop the fundamental components of sports performance – movement mechanics, dynamic flexibility, core strength and stability, balance, and speed and agility.
The new format of our summer programs reflects Harker’s development program for our student-athletes from the summer before grade 4 all the way through senior year. The introduction of the academy is a way to reach out to the community, bring young student-athletes to our campus and expose them to all that Harker has to offer.
“Eagle Iron averaged about 50 student-athletes per day,” said Ron Forbes, Harker’s strength and conditioning coordinator, “which is an increase from previous years.
“The new Junior Eagle Iron and Summer Sports Performance Academy programs were very well-received by parents and students alike, averaging 15 to 20 student-athletes per session,” Forbes added, noting that girls made up 40 percent of participants in all three programs.
“While all three programs were successful in terms of athletics and physical development, it was the communal aspect of the new format that was most impressive,” said Forbes, who has a long career in collegiate athletic training behind him.
“We witnessed shy, apprehensive seventh and eighth graders open up, bond with and create relationships with the upper school students, and vice versa. The incoming grade 9 boys and girls who participated in Eagle Iron were noticeably more confident and comfortable on the upper school campus during the first week of school,” said Forbes.
As for the younger kids, “Junior Eagle Iron created an opportunity for them to spend time on the upper school campus, use the upper school facilities and meet a lot of upper school coaches,” said Forbes.
“That program also gave upper school coaches a chance to meet and spend time with our future stars. By the end of the summer it was obvious the kids felt they were part of something much bigger than just fourth, fifth or sixth grade sports – they left as proud members of the Harker athletics department.”
Victories Pile Up as Fall Sports Seasons Open
Fall sports seasons had just begun at press time. Here are results from a few sports — be sure to follow teams via Harker News Online (http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups) and check the winter edition of Harker Quarterly for season summaries of both upper and middle school seasons.
In season kickoffs, both varsity and JV football teams defeated San Jose High in early September. Junior varsity won 24-0, as quarterback Keanu Forbes, grade 9, threw for three touchdowns (two to Adarsh Battu, grade 10 and one to Ethan Ma, grade 9), and ran one in himself. In varsity play, San Jose scored first on an interception return, but the next play showcased Kevin Moss, grade 10, returning the kickoff 80 yards for a touchdown to tie the score. Quarterback Spenser Quash, grade 11, threw for a pair of touchdowns to Rahul Madduluri and one to Daanish Jamal, both grade 12, to bring it home 34-13.
Girls Volleyball
After a tough start to the season, the girls volleyball program got on track with a resounding victory over San Lorenzo Valley in straight sets. Varsity went 25-21, 25-15, 25- 23; JV scores were 25-11, 25-23.
Shreya Dixit, grade 9, Alisha Mayor, grade 12, Aura Dave, grade 12 and Divya Kalidindi, grade 10, have led the team in the first three matches in kills. Mercedes Chien, grade 10 and Lucy Xu, grade 12, have played some stellar defense, and freshman setter Caroline Howells has been adjusting rapidly to the pace of the varsity game.
Being a young squad, the girls have been handed the difficult task of trying to compete at the varsity level. The entire coaching staff is pleased with the positive attitudes of the girls and the hard work they put into their practices sessions.
Water Polo
Boys varsity water polo went 1-2 at the San Benito Tournament in early September, defeating San Lorenzo Valley High School before losing to Pioneer High and Monterey High. Goal scorers against SLV were: Ryan Hume, grade 11, with three; Akshay Ramachandran, grade 12 with two; Karan Das- Grande, grade 11, two; Tariq Jahshan, grade 12, Jagdeesh Kottapalli, grade 12, and Gilad Nilo, grade 11, all with one each. The JV team also went 1-2 at the Homestead Tournament earning their first win in the JV program’s history!
Arthi Padmanabhan ’10 had a great season on the tennis courts, finishing in June. Her team at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., completed the season ranked ninth nationally (ITA Division III), and ranked second in the ITA Division III West region. Padmanabhan finished the season ranked 12th in the west in doubles and was named an ITA Scholar-Athlete for 2011. In addition, one of the capstones of her freshman year was being named to the All-Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference First Team. Pomona has a combined athletic department with Pitzer College, another of the seven colleges that make up the Claremont University Consortium.
Students in Cyrus Merrill’s grade 8 United States history class got a real-life example of how the constitution, the Bill of Rights, and especially the fourth amendment, applies to them.
It started with a police officer in early October. Rob Millard, a San Jose Police officer and Harker parent, came in to talk to the class about Fourth Amendment procedures and the Bill of Rights in practical reality.
“The police officer talked to us about many things I never would have thought I’d actually understand,” said Selin Ozcelik, a student in the class. “From appellate jurisdictions to catching criminals hiding under shadows for years, I started to really see what went on in our country. My dad turns on news radio channel every morning, and every word mentioned on that program seemed to be a more sophisticated language apart from the one I knew and spoke everyday. So, even the radio ended up making more sense.”
Later in the period, Millard asked Ozcelik if he could search her backpack. “I said yes, not sure where exactly he was going with that example. I later learned that without my approval, the police officer had no right although he had probable cause.”
The next visitors were two law students from Santa Clara University—Christopher Creech and Shikha Mittal ‘05—and they coincidentally also picked her backpack to search. “I confidently said no as the class around me laughed,” Ozcelik said.
Merrill says that Mittal—a student of his 11 years ago—mentioned that she and other law school students had an activity and community service goal of going out and teaching about the Constitution in the schools. She organized the speakers from among students at the law school.
This gave the students a chance to contrast “the police officer who spoke previously with the position of a lawyer discussing limitations on the police when arguing in court,” Merrill said.
Creech and Mittal were also able to help prepare the class for their final activity—a mock trial before a mock Supreme Court. For the first 10 minutes, they worked with the kids directly, brainstorming how to argue before the Supreme Court. Sahana Narayanan says this was her favorite part of their visit. “They gave us invaluable tips and pointers on our statements, and even explained to us how the judge would react in real life!” Then the law students got into hands-on examples.
They started by defining what the Fourth Amendment is—it guards against unreasonable search and seizure and requires a judicially sanctioned warrant that is supported by probable cause—and who and what it protects. It protects your person and your clothes, Creech said, “but why is it not illegal to just look you up and down?”
“Because then police officers would have to walk around with their eyes closed,” a student offered.
“Exactly!” Creech said. “It’d be ridiculous! That’s why it protects against unreasonable search.”
“Do people disagree about what’s unreasonable?” Merrill asked.
“All the time,” Creech said. “But if you can go before a judge and successfully argue what is and isn’t reasonable, then that becomes the law.”
Creech then took out a shoebox, which he gave to a student in the class. “Now let’s say I’m a policeman,” he said. “I’m looking for a stolen Ferrari, and I want to search your shoebox and see if it’s in there. Can I look in your shoebox?”
“Sure,” the student said, offering it back to him.
“But would it be reasonable?”
“No,” the student said. “But I said it was okay.”
“So now I can search it,” Creech said.
Finally, it was time for the students to become lawyers themselves. The law students came back to act as judges (along with Merrill), and Merrill’s class had researched, prepared, and were ready to present. “To think like a lawyer during the mock arguments was hard, but very fulfilling at the end,” said Narayanan. “I was defending a school that prohibited the wearing of armbands during the Vietnam War. This case (Tinker v. Des Moines) eventually lost in the Supreme Court! So I had to study arguments that would support my case as well as the cases that our opposing side would be using against us. That was the first step,” she said. “The second step was to actually tie those into the mindset of how people were thinking during the 1960’s. I had to make it relevant not to 2011, but to 1969 itself.”
Michael Zhao, another presenter in the mock trial, said, “The mock arguments allowed us students to truly grasp the idea and concept of how real arguments are presented in the Supreme Court.”
“Our debates combined all of the previous activities and made us analyze the information we received from each of the people who visited our classroom,” said Karen Tu, a student in Merrill’s class. “It was also hands-on and gave us a taste of what would happen in a ‘real-world’ scenario.”
It wasn’t just the material that the students learned—they also came away with a better understanding of why learning about the Fourth Amendment and about the Bill of Rights as a whole is important.
“As students, we often overlook the Bill of Rights as something that we need to learn for a test. Because of this, one often learns and forgets the material. By going through these interactive lessons however, I think that we will not only have a greater understanding of the concept, but also remember of the Fourth Amendment itself, as these lessons had a lasting impact on us,” Zhao said.
“We need to know what our rights are and what we or other people can or can’t do. By learning about them, we can protect ourselves and others with our knowledge,” Tu said.
Ozcelik added that, “understanding the base of our country helps students see where our modern society evolved from and the struggles it had to overcome to get here.”
Merrill said one of his goals in bringing in various speakers and organizing a mock argument was to give the students “the real feel that while the Constitution may not change, the interpretations of it might. Post 9/11, for instance, the courts have been much more permissive of invasions of privacy as the public and courts have moved towards prioritizing order and security over liberty and freedom.”
Narayanan said, “Ultimately, the whole act of listening to people of the law, whether they were police officers or lawyers, culminated to a very enriching learning experience that I will never forget!”