This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Reading and writing go together in academia, and an innovative program is helping musicians learn to write as well as read music.
“Usually students learn to read music and to play it,” said Louis Hoffman, lower school music teacher, “and that’s it. But that’s only half. They should be learning to write it as they’re learning to read it, just like with language.”
Until then, he argues, students are not musically literate.
With the musical literacy goal in mind, Hoffman started the Young Composers program and extended an invitation to all students at the lower school to study composition, no musical background required.
Two students, Paul Kratter and Aditya Andrade, both now in grade 3, took part in the program last year. They wrote pieces for orchestra and jazz, respectively, that were performed at the lower school’s orchestra and choir concert in May. Both students also conducted their pieces, another skill learned in the Young Composers class.
Conducting is one of Kratter’s favorite parts of the program. When asked about his experience at the concert last year, he said, “It felt good to conduct my own music in front of so many people.” His other favorite part of the program, he said, is the composing itself, and because of that, he’ll be continuing with it this year.
Andrade said of the concert experience, “It did feel a little odd playing my own piece. But it has always been a dream of mine, to conduct and play my own piece.” He is looking forward to writing a short symphony for the program this year.
The young composers learn different strategies for composing while also studying everything from musical theory to arrangement (deciding the instrumentation) to orchestration, meaning which instruments will play which parts.
“If you write a note for violin,” Hoffman says, “it has to be something the violin can actually play; you have to be sure that instrument goes that high or that low. Or let’s say you want to write a part for a recorder in an orchestra, an instrument not usually in the orchestra. You won’t be able to hear it; the other instruments will overpower it.”
Another important skill Hoffman wants students to learn is improvisation. He started jazz ensembles at the lower school to encourage students to master this skill. “In jazz,” he said, “you’re expected to understand what’s happening in the music, and then to change it and make it your own.”
With all these new tools in hand, students learn how to prepare the score, which lays out all the parts for the conductor, so he or she can see, measure by measure, who is playing what. And when it’s ready to be played, the students take it to rehearsal and see how their music really
sounds.
Hoffman knows firsthand the importance not just of seeing your notes on paper but of learning to change and revise them based on the style of music being played. His own background is in composition; he worked for 13 years in television and film, writing scores for everything from
Disney cartoons to full-length films.
“Doing this in the real world where you have to meet the expectations of somebody else is actually very challenging,” he said. Learning to compose in the face of those expectations is an important lesson that Hoffman wants to pass on.
In terms of other challenges he’s faced with in teaching composition, Hoffman said, “There are none. Composing is a very natural thing. Whenever new students start, I tell them, ‘You know much more about music than you think you do.’ My job is to prove it to them.”
Once a student has written a piece, Hoffman said, “I don’t change a single note. We talk instead about stylistic expectations. If a student wants to compose something in the style of, say, Duke Ellington, there are certain things people expect to hear.”
Hoffman has taught composition at other schools and said teaching children composition is actually easier than teaching it to adults. “With adults, if after five minutes they aren’t
Beethoven, they throw up their hands. Kids come into composing with fewer judgments and expectations, and because of that, get into it much easier,” he said.
The important thing in music teacher teaching kids to compose is to not “confuse intellect
with experience,” Hoffman said. “Kids can learn anything adults can. My job is to find and use a strategy that makes sense to them. You have to make it make sense within the context of their own experiences.
“I think people hear about it, about younger kids composing and conducting music, and almost can’t believe it,” Hoffman said. “But we should expect musical literacy from all students studying music. It’s just like writing. Just as we expect kids to learn to write paragraphs as they learn to
read them, we should expect kids to learn to write music as they learn to read and play it.”
Hoffman called composing “the missing component” in musical education. “Being able to recognize what you’re hearing in music and then freely create it is what makes you musically literate.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Students are not the only ambitious Harker people who search out internships and learning opportunities over the summer. Our faculty kept busy with a variety of summer projects.
Science Teacher Studies Nanotechnology at Stanford
Raji Swaminathan, grade 7 science teacher, spent time at Stanford learning about nanotechnology at their Summer Institute for Middle School Teachers (SIMST). Nanoscience is the study of incredibly small things to the order of a billionth of a meter. Swaminathan was particularly interested in how the immunology field is using nanotech to help combat diseases. She also learned about the workings of STMs and ATMs, Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes, which help scientists understand the atoms of different materials. Her students can plan on some excellent new activities when they study rates of reaction and learn about the workings of atoms.
Teacher Invited to Educational Testing Team
Enni Chen, grade 2 science teacher, worked with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), known best by students and parents for their STAR tests, this summer. Chen was asked to work with the ETS team in Sacramento that administers the STAR test due to her “solid background in teaching and research,” said Mary Arcilla, the associate director of the STAR program. Chen was instrumental in recruiting members to ETS committees to share their insights on special populations in California. Chen also helped organize a field test ETS will be conducting in September, recruiting districts and individual schools to participate. Chen was recognized for her initiative and outside-of- the-box thinking, two qualities her students look forward to seeing in her classroom this year.
Music Teacher Completes Doctorate in Music Education
Dave Hart, middle school music teacher, finished his doctorate in music education at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Hart’s focus was both in music education and performance in jazz trumpet. Hart was brought to Harker after finishing his three years of course work, which included performing, lecturing on the effects of improvisation and musical education, and teaching at undergraduate and after-school programs. The research component of his dissertation focused on the positive impact of improvisation on students’ abilities to understand and learn music. Hart currently leads the middle school orchestra and jazz band in improvisational practices, something that is often overlooked in musical education programs. Be sure to request a spontaneous number or two at the next jazz concert or a duet featuring Hart and his wife, Leslie, a French horn player who also earned her doctorate at Eastman.
English Teacher’s Poetry Introduces Art Display in N.Y.
Alexandra Mattraw Rosenboom, an award-winning poetess and Harker English teacher, had a Harker-inspired poem included in “Black and White,” the summer 2011 exhibition of New York’s Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. The show, which ran July 16-Aug. 21, was in a huge Civil War-era coffee warehouse, and Rosenboom’s poem, “Inside the Construction: The Brain,” was mounted and displayed at the entrance. “The poem was inspired by notes I took during our February faculty retreat,” said Rosenboom. The guest speaker at the retreat was a neuroscientist who discussed the way we develop thoughts. “Because my poem explores how humans think in black and white before our brain processes things in color, it worked quite well with the show’s theme,” she said. In addition, Rosenboom has two poems in the latest American Letters & Commentary, issue 22.
Harker’s global education department is thriving, as is evident when one looks at some of the amazing places Harker students and teachers traveled to this summer. Enjoy the ride!
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Upper School Students Visit Friends in Switzerland
In late May and early June, several students traveled to Switzerland with Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs and Kevin Williamson, upper school dean of students, to meet their buddies at the Collège de Gambach in Fribourg.
The Harker students began their first day at Collège de Gambach by learning about Switzerland, said Gargano. The students also attended an English class to participate in discussions, helping the Swiss students with their English skills and giving the Harker students an opportunity to gain insights into Swiss culture. Harker French students also participated in a French class for German speakers.
The next day they traveled to Lausanne to visit the Olympic Museum, which featured many interactive exhibits. Vevey was their next destination, which they traveled to via a boat ride across Lake Geneva. Vevey’s Food Museum provided a fascinating look into the history of how food is prepared and consumed.
Since Switzerland is famous for its chocolate, the students visited the Maison Cailler chocolate factory in Broc. “Many students described Maison Cailler as ‘Disneyland-like’ and some indeed said they felt like they were in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” Gargano said.
Thursday of that week was set aside for classes. The Harker students were divided into French-speaking and non-French-speaking groups and assigned an appropriate set of courses to attend. After classes, the Harker students were taken out to lunch, after which they left on a train to explore the town of Murten, where they enjoyed a scavenger hunt.
Another day of classes was followed by a train trip to the country’s capital city, Bern, to have lunch at a local hotel, where the Swiss buddies were thanked for being so kind and accommodating.
The students’ final day in Switzerland was spent hanging out with their Swiss friends playing sports, shopping and exploring the local mountains.
Middle School Students Visit Costa Rica for Spanish Immersion
Middle school Spanish students, chaperoned by Spanish teachers Julie Pinzás and Susan Moling, participated in Harker’s vibrant global education department with a trip to Costa Rica, starting in late July and extending into mid-August.
The students arrived in the Costa Rican capital city of San José on July 31, and were taken to the town of Grecia, where they ate at a restaurant tucked away in a bamboo forest in the mountains. Everyone headed to San Luis the next day to go zip lining through the lush treetops, which Pinzás said was “a definite highlight of the trip.”
Getting down to business, the students began their classes at the Academia Centroamericana de Español (ACCE). “As usual, they impressed the director and their Costa Rican teachers with their Spanish!” Pinzás exclaimed. They also visited Centro Educativo Nuevo Milenio, a private K-12 school, where they shadowed CENM students in grades 7, 8 and 9 during their classes. Another school visited was a local public school with more than 1,400 students in grades 7-11.
During their visit to La Carpio, a refugee camp inhabited mostly by Nicaraguan immigrants, the Harker students went to a daycare center in a park just outside the camp and played with some local children.
En route to Manuel Antonio National Park, the students saw crocodiles and macaws by the Tárcoles River and hiked through Rainmaker Park, a beautiful remnant rainforest. Once at the national park, they saw many species of plants and animals, and took a refreshing dip into the water at a pristine beach.
Other fun activities contributing to the goal of cultural and linguistic immersion included a painting class at the town of Sarchi, known for its painted oxcart wheels and hand-carved furniture and crafts, a Latin dance class, and a scavenger hunt in Grecia.
During their final evening, the students and teachers had tremendous fun (and great food!) during a special farewell barbecue party. The Harker students were each presented with a group photo of the ACCE students they had befriended during the trip, and another successful Harker global education journey came to a close.
Grade 8 Students Discover Beauty and Culture of China on Annual Trip
Each year a group of grade 8 students embark on a trip across the world, and this year’s participants, who departed on May 29, now have lasting memories of a fun- filled and enlightening excursion.
The trip hooks students up with Harker’s sister school in Shanghai, the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS). After a sightseeing stop which included the Oriental Pearl TV tower, the travelers took part in an assembly at the school, at which Harker student Neil Sadhu spoke about the long-standing student exchange between the two institutions. Harker students participated in a number of classes, including one on Chinese opera.
Over the next couple of days, the students visited Zhujiajiao, the water town known for its canals and historic buildings dating back 1,700 years, and the famed Yuyuan Gardens in downtown Shanghai.
Later, the students flew to Beijing and visited the Temple of Heaven, which the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties visited annually to offer prayers for a good harvest. They next explored the hutongs, Beijing’s traditional alleyway neighborhoods, riding on rickshaws to the house of a man who kindly allowed the students to take a tour of his home and answered questions on a variety of topics.
At the Ming Tombs outside of Beijing, the students were led to the dragon- headed turtle pavilion, where they rubbed the statue’s tail for a long life, and its head for continued happiness. The next major stop was none other than the Great Wall of China. “We took a ski lift to the top of the mountain where we could enter onto the wall. It was amazing!” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s global education director, in one of several dispatches to parents.
Upon returning to Beijing, the hardy group visited Tiananmen Square, and then headed to the Forbidden City, touring several of its 980 palatial buildings. The group later visited the Summer Palace, China’s largest imperial garden, and rode a dragon boat to the palace’s pavilion.
The students arrived back home on June 6, ready to rest and reflect on a trip they won’t soon forget.
History Teacher Visits Australia for Annual Exchange
Ruth Meyer, upper school history teacher, spent two weeks in Australia for this year’s teacher exchange with Saint Stephen’s College in the small Queensland town of Coomera. Meyer spent most of her time teaching freshman history and junior English to the school’s students, who she said were like Harker students in that, “they are happy, helpful and enjoy school.”
Meyer, who has always been interested in dream analysis, was able to instruct juniors about the role apparitions play in “Macbeth.” She also sat in on an intriguing lecture exploring gender roles, and anticipates using her experiences to explore gender roles in history when she teaches her Harker classes on feminist literature in Western Political Thought.
The staff and faculty, Meyer said, were also a treat to work with. “They were all tremendously helpful and made me feel like one of their team,” she said. “I felt very comfortable there and they gave me a great welcome.”
Meyer enjoyed some learning of her own, visiting a rainforest and a heritage museum to learn about life in the Australian countryside circa 1900. She also went to an attraction called The Outback Experience, where she learned about the role Australian horses played in World War I. She benefitted from the reversal of seasons from crossing the equator; her counterpart, who traveled from St. Stephen’s to Harker last April, missed school, while Meyer was on her summer vacation.
One of the differences between Harker and St. Stephen’s, Meyer noted, was class size. “The class sizes are a lot bigger than at Harker,” she said. “Some classes that I taught had 26 students.” Friday afternoons at St. Stephen’s are set aside for sports activities.
Like Harker, however, the St. Stephen’s students were “very friendly and kind,” Meyer found, and the school also has “excellent library facilities and a very dedicated and friendly group of teachers.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Summer offers a great many options for enriching educational activities. Several upper school science students seized upon this opportunity and spent two weeks in Costa Rica in July and August, accompanied by upper school biology teacher Gary Blickenstaff and upper school physics teacher Miriam Allersma, for a trip that was as fun as it was enlightening and character-building.
Students spent much of their time working on research projects at Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, known in English as the National Biodiversity Institute, or INBio for short. Students spent significant time in the field collecting data for lab experiments. They later presented these projects to professors at the institute.
The students also worked with people from Costa Rica’s national park system to help protect the local sea turtle population.
Not ones to let a trip to a country as beautiful as Costa Rica go to waste, the group also took the opportunity for fun activities such as river rafting, cruising the canals in Tortuguera, viewing various underwater life while snorkeling and bird watching in the Cloud Forest area of Monteverde.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Over the summer, several teachers received grants from the Harker Tech Grant program to discover new ways in which technology could help them in the classroom. Started roughly 10 years ago, the program has since helped dozens of teachers become more well-rounded and effective educators by expanding their teaching skill sets as well as their ability to receive, track and organize information.
Upper school theater teacher Jeffrey Draper explored how video editing techniques could be used to create online videos that combined images, PowerPoint presentations, lecture notes and interviews. “I want students to see my prepared materials as homework in place of classroom lectures,” Draper said. “Then we can work with the information in the classroom through quizzes and discussions rather than having me deliver the lecture material in class and not have the time to address the information with the students in person.”
Draper wants to finish 10 videos by the end of 2011 and improve them as needed through editing. “I will be working more with video editing over the course of the year to improve the quality of the videos,” he said, “and I look forward to sharing any techniques I learn that may be useful to other teachers.”
Jonathan Brusco and Andrea Milius, middle school history teachers, decided to make their curriculum more diverse and robust by providing online resources for their students. “We rewrote our curriculum and we identified all the standards, and we created our benchmarks that matched with the standards,” Milius said. To meet these benchmarks, a large number of online resources are provided that include both required and supplemental information. “It supplements, but it can also be extra information that we want students to read, and so we’re not just dictated by our textbook,” said Milius. Lower school librarian Kathy Clark and middle school librarian Bernie Morrissey were “instrumental” in helping the two teachers find resources, Milius said.
AP Psychology teacher Kelly Horan opted to leverage the rapidly growing field of mobile technologies for her tech grant project, which used an iPhone app called Assessa that allows her to collect data sent to her by students, evaluate it and send it back to them. Horan’s students lead class discussions throughout the year, during which they collect data based on a rubric that is posted online. The iPhone app allows her to keep all of the necessary information sent to her by students in one place. “I was just having a hard time keeping all of the paperwork together,” she said.
Cyrus Merrill, middle school history teacher, created videos of all of his content lectures and uploaded them to YouTube. He also adapted his classroom for multimedia use. “I converted my room into a black box theater with curtains on all the walls so I can make my room into a theater and focus student attention on specific parts of the wall or only certain screens,” he said. He created a setup that allows him to hang screens on each wall and display images and video clips on them.
“I also researched what I call FAME (fashion, art, music and entertainment) throughout the eight units I teach to incorporate specific social history activities that are hands-on for the most part,” he said.
The purpose of Merrill’s project was to make his classroom more interactive and participatory, and to allow his students to have access to basic points of lectures at home. “I hope it will inspire my students to see class as a dynamic experience with rich visuals and context to put the content into,” he said.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker journalism students started their summer off with an exciting trek to Europe, accompanied by journalism teacher Chris Daren and English teacher Pauline Paskali, to learn and write about the continent’s rich culture and history.
The first stop on their trip was the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, where they searched out stories and interviewed the artistic director of the new Harpa concert hall, as well as Katrin Juliusdottir, Iceland’s minister of tourism, energy and industry. A day of sightseeing followed, traveling along the Golden Circle, a popular tourist route in the south of Iceland. Among the many breathtaking sights were Skógafoss Falls, the Sólheimajökull glacier and a still-sunny sky at 11:48 p.m.
The group then traveled to England, where they stayed at the Old Rectory in Tattingstone, Suffolk, to complete their assignments from Iceland and begin work for fall journalism activities. While there, the students were visited by veteran Associated Press photographer
Harry Hamburg, who shared his vast knowledge and many amusing anecdotes with the group.
Venice provided the next fodder for the journalists. The area around Piazza San Marco was canvassed for stories, and the remainder of the time was spent sightseeing and working on their assignments, as well as enjoying a special dinner at a 700-year-old restaurant.
Paris was next, after lunch during a brief stop in Milan. During their stay in the City of Lights, the students visited the Louvre Museum and toured the river Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral. They also stopped by the Eiffel Tower, where they enjoyed authentic French crêpes.
Back to England! In London they interviewed Member of Parliament Yasmin Qureshi of the Labor Party, who gave the students a tour of Parliament and answered questions about her job. The group was permitted to see the House of Commons and House of Lords in session, a fine treat for these inquisitive students.
Articles and photos chronicling the journalists’ exciting journey through Europe are posted at www.talonwp.com.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s Latin program is going strong, and students have an annual event at which to showcase their knowledge in the National Junior Classical League Convention.
In July, Harker students, along with John Hawley and Lisa Masoni, upper and middle school Latin teachers, traveled to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., for this year’s convention. The convention is attended by more than 1,000 students every year who compete in multiple academic and creative arts contests, and several Harker students had top 10 placements in multiple categories.
Nik Datuashvili, grade 11, took second place in four categories: ancient geography IV, Greek derivatives, Latin derivatives and reading comprehension. He also earned fourth place in academic heptathlon and eighth place in Latin grammar advanced, Latin vocabulary IV and Certamen advanced level.
Meawhile, junior Richard Fan took eighth in Hellenic history IV, ninth in Greek derivatives IV and Roman history IV and eighth in Certamen advanced.
Sean Fernandes, grade 11, reached ninth place in ancient geography and 10th in reading comprehension prose level IV.
Finishing fifth in girls dramatic interpretation and Latin oratory III was Zina Jawadi, grade 10, who also took sixth place in girls Latin prose.
Grade 12 student Jessica Lin took first place in Roman life V+ and 10th in the grade 11 girls essay category.
Finally, junior Sean Nierat earned fourth place in grade 10 traditional photography.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Though it may have been a time of relaxation for many, summer was a busy time for Harker’s forensics department, with students competing in tournaments out of state and the department running its own Forensics Institute. In June, 23 middle school debaters attended the National Junior Forensics League Tournament in Dallas, where Pranav Reddy, now in grade 9, won the national championship in Lincoln-Douglas debate and finished fifth in student congress. Aditya Dhar, grade 7, took third place in student congress.
In addition to these achievements, Harker won the National Debate School of Excellence award, given to the country’s top five debate schools, for the second straight year.
Also in Dallas, James Seifert ’11reached the finals of the dramatic interpretation competition at the National Forensic League’s National Championship Tournament, capping off a string of tournament successes that began in
September 2010. Seifert ended up placing fourth in a highly competitive event that included 236 participants.
Back in San Jose, Harker hosted its own two-week Forensics Institute in August at the upper school campus, which was open to upper and middle school students, as well as students from outside Harker. The institute, directed by upper school debate teachers Greg Achten and Jonathan Peele and middle school debate teacher Karina Momary, offered instruction on policy debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate, public forum, congressional debate and individual events.
Instructors hired for the event were Alex Smith, who debated at University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law, Harker graduate Roshni Bhatnagar ‘11 and Shelly Kingaby, a coach from North Carolina who assists upper school debaters during the school year and helped Seifert reach the dramatic interpretation finals in Dallas.
During the institute, students participated in practice debates and received personalized attention from their teachers, made possible by the one-to-seven teacher-student ratio.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s English Language Institute (ELI), known internationally for its top-level English instruction, ran from late June to August, bringing together students from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Turkey, and providing them with English skills they will be using at American boarding schools and English-speaking international schools.
As in previous years, ELI offered the customized scheduling that has become a hallmark of the program, placing students in specialized environments that helped them strengthen specific areas of their English proficiency. Students also had the option of enrolling in a special prep program for students looking to apply to boarding schools.
Areas of study offered by ELI included vocabulary building, study skills, reading comprehension, grammar, writing and composition, and oral presentation. Students also enjoyed after-class activities such as games, sports and swimming.
Anthony Wood, the director of ELI and a lower school assistant athletic director during the school year, said that Harker’s worldwide reputation as a top-tier school also helps to set ELI apart. “Personally, I think the prestige of the school ensures that most students come with the highest degree of self- efficacy and passion to learn,” he said. “We also value ourselves on our long history of success in teaching English as a second language. Remember, Harker had a boarding school for over 20 years, and this lineage has helped shape the program’s philosophy and curriculum in foreign language learning.”
The program added new teachers this year to “provide added professionalism and expertise to our faculty,” said Wood. ELI also hired college students interested in the teaching profession to further bolster its roster of instructors. The new staff members supported the students both inside and outside the classroom. The ELI curriculum was also redesigned to make sure it matched proficiency levels and maximized its effectiveness.
In addition to their English instruction, students also sampled several quintessential Bay Area experiences, including visits to the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, the Exploratorium, the San Jose Tech Museum and an Oakland A’s baseball game.
Connie Yang, a student from Shanghai who was born in San Francisco, is planning to attend high school in the U.S., and enjoyed the ELI program because its teachers made the classes “fun and interesting.”
Another student from China, Christine Guo of Shenzhen, attends Santa Clara’s Sierra School and enjoyed the Harker campus environment. “There’s a swimming pool, a big field and it’s clean,” she said. She also appreciated the flexibility offered by the program, recalling how easily she was able to request a transfer from the intermediate to advanced class, which she enjoyed more due to the challenge it offered. “I still need to improve my English, even though I’m in a regular high school now, so I think this program will help me,” she said.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 Harker Quarterly.
On June 15, Harker held its sixth annual Harker Teacher Institute to give educators around the Bay Area the chance to learn about how new instructional techniques and technologies can assist them in the classroom.
Various sessions were held at the upper school campus by Harker faculty and staff, who demonstrated the many different new technology tools available to teachers. In one session, Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, demonstrated Scratch, a new open-source programming language that is designed to make programming a fun and engaging activity for children and teenagers. Paul Vallerga, a teacher and designer in Harker’s performing arts department, showed how teachers could use Google SketchUp, a free 3-D modeling tool, for student art projects, demonstrations and more.
Other classes showed how already popular tools could be leveraged in new and very useful ways. Mark Gelineau and Rebecca Williams, middle school English teachers, held a session to show how teachers could greatly reduce the stress of grading papers by using macros in Microsoft Word. Wolfram|Alpha, as upper school math teacher Bradley Stoll demonstrated, could be used as a statistical research resource as well as a mathematics tool.
Other classes focused on effective teaching techniques, such as upperschool Spanish teacher Diana Moss’ session on how poetry can be integrated into all levels of Spanish classes. Susan Nace, upper school music teacher, held a session to help teachers relax and reconnect “what you do with who you are,” using the arts and spirited conversation as a means to rejuvenate their passion for teaching.
This year’s Teacher Institute was once again sponsored by Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators (SVCUE), the local chapter of Computer Using Educators, a nonprofit corporation that aims to use technology to improve student achievement. It was hosted by Harker and Dan Hudkins, instructional technology director, Fred Triefenbach, upper school assistant technology director, Lisa Diffenderfer, lower school assistant technology director and Angela Neff, former middle school assistant technology director.