The following article by Enid Davis, lower school librarian, appeared in the January 2003 edition of Harker News.
For a symbolic reason, I have left Catherine Harker’s profile last in the series of our school’s founders. The school has gone through many name changes in its 110 years, but the “Harker” as in Miss Harker’s School for Girls still stands.
Who was Catherine Harker? What was her character? Is she someone whose values we can cherish as much as we do her name?
Catherine was born to a pioneer family in Portland, Oregon, on March 2, 1865. She was the daughter of James Bartlett Harker and Sarah Ellen Polk. The family was of English, Scotch and Dutch ancestry. Catherine, known as “Cassy” to family and friends, was the oldest of three sisters. Middle sister Sara became Catherine’s right-hand woman at Miss Harker’s School for Girls. Sadly, Caroline, the youngest, became despondent while in her early twenties and ended her own life.
Young Catherine attended Portland Oregon High School. Before she came to Palo Alto to open her school in 1903, she was a substitute at Portland High School, had private students, taught at Curtner Seminary in California (1895-1898) and at Mills College in Oakland, California (1890-1893; 1898-1901).
Catherine opened her school for girls in 1903. It began on the corners of Kingsley and Bryant in the vacated Castilleja Hall. Eighty students were enrolled and seven graduated the first year. In 1907, the school moved to a six-plus acre spot in an old vineyard. Cows, chickens, potato patches and vegetable gardens could be sighted from the classrooms. Board and tuition in 1903 was $500; the day school cost was between $50 to $90.
Headmistress Harker, who taught Latin and mathematics in addition to her administrative duties, has been described in a variety of sources as a person with three outstanding traits: humor, scholarship and dignity. Two quotes from our archive sources follow:
“Miss Catherine Harker… was not only a meticulous scholar whose daily lessons were carefully organized in neatly penciled notes, but she was a strongly attractive teacher, usually dressed in the dignity of white shirtwaists and long black skirts of her day, who re-assured her students with a contagiously delightful sense of humor.” —(Miss Harker’s School,”The Echo.” School yearbook, 1952.)
“Her faculty of combining humor and scholarliness made her courses a delightful experience.” —(Tall Tree, Vol. 1, No. 4. October, 1952).
The motto of Miss Harker’s School for Girls was “Not to be served, but to serve – Non ministrai, sed ministare.”
In 1923, the City of Palo Alto changed its street signs to reflect the school’s presence. Katherine and Central became Melville and Harker, respectively.
Still on a symbolic hunt for meaning behind the word “Harker” (English majors unite!), I checked out the library’s Oxford English Dictionary. One of the meanings of the word “hark,” is “to hear with active attention.” A “harker,” is, of course, a listener.
So hark! Our school name comes to us from an intelligent, scholarly, person with a good sense of humor, whose selected school motto was to serve others. She dedicated her life to education. Catherine died of a heart attack on the school grounds on December 12, 1938, but her name certainly lives on.
Harker’s tradition of honoring faculty and staff who have served for five years or multiple increments of five years continued in June at the annual End of Year Party. A total of 28 faculty and staff members received new service pins to mark their first five years, and dozens more had diamonds inserted in their existing service pins to honor their continued dedication.
Those who received new service pins are: Victor Adler, Patricia Andrews, Robert Boyer, Gayle Calkins, Justine Edwards, Jeanette Fernandez, Melinda Gonzales (counselor), Shelby Guarino, Matthew Harley, Louis Hoffman, Sandy Ignacio, Scott Kley Contini, Tamara Kley Contini, Desiree Mitchell, Katie Molin, Susan Moling, Angela Neff, Bettie Nelson, Jaron Olson, Alex Osorio, Pauline Paskali, Jared Ramsey, Elizabeth Saltos, Kate Schafer, Susan Smith, Troy Thiele, Amalia Vasconi and Lauri Vaughan.
Faculty and staff who received diamond inserts for 10 years of service are: Gary Blickenstaff, Karen Carlson, Chrissy Chang, Anita Chetty, Chris Colletti, Peggy Crisler, Henry Cuningham, Ilona Davies, Brigid Miller, Sherry Fong, J Gaston, Denise Hayashi, Gary Hinrich, Marc Hufnagl, Catherine Le, Mark Locascio, Beverley Manning, Lisa Masoni, Lana Morrison, Masako Onakado, Raul Rios and Raji Swaminathan.
Faculty and staff who were honored for 15 years of service are: Darrin Cassidy, Joe Chung, Chris Daren, Marilyn Hansen, Bob Keefer, Brian Larsen, Diana Moss, Kristin Neu, Heather Perrotta, Dan Rohrer, Karriem Stinson, Larry Washington and Patricia White.
Staff who were honored for 20 years of service are: Pam Dickinson, Georgianna Maddams and Stephen Martin.
Mike Bassoni and Carol Sosnowski were honored for 30 years at Harker, and Carol Parris and Pat Walsh were recognized for their 35 years.
With the school year over and campus activity very much reduced, summer has presented an ideal time for several construction projects. In late May and early June, a concrete pad was installed at the north end of Davis Field at the upper school campus, completing the first stage in the construction of new guest bleachers. From June 13 to 17, the new bleachers were assembled and now stand proudly just outside Shah Hall. Also during the week of June 13, new synthetic turf was placed at the north side of the training room.
Extensive work occurred at the upper school’s Manzanita Hall from late May through mid-July, as the upper and lower floors, which once served as dormitories for boarding students and, more recently, for some kitchen staff, were prepared to create new office space for the advancement office and the Office of Communication.
In June, new bricks were laid in the patio area outside Manzanita Hall, resulting in a much neater and more attractive spot for sitting and socializing. New trees were also planted for a more park-like atmosphere.
Earlier in June, a sunshade was installed at the grade 4-5 lunch patio on the south side of the gym at the lower school campus. Once summer school ends, Bucknall’s parking lot will be closed for three days for sealing and re-striping.
Also following the end of summer school, the north side of the upper school driveway will be re-paved. Dates have not yet been decided.
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 led by Harker faculty and staff members, who demonstrated various new technology tools available to teachers. In one session, Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, showed off 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 useful ways. Mark Gelineau, middle school English teacher, and Rebecca Williams, middle school writing teacher, held a session to show how teachers could greatly reduce the stress of grading papers by using macros in Microsoft Word. WolframAlpha, 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 upper school 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 organized and hosted by Dan Hudkins, instructional technology director, Fred Triefenbach, upper school assistant technology director, Lisa Diffenderfer, lower school assistant technology director and Angela Neff, middle school assistant technology director.
Harker journalism students started their summer off with an exciting and eye-opening trek to Europe 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 took a tour of the new Harpa concert hall, whose artistic director agreed to be interviewed by the students. From there, they went to relax at the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa.
Next on the agenda was an interview with Katrin Juliusdottir, Iceland’s minister of tourism, energy and industry, followed by a day of fun and sightseeing traveling along the Golden Circle, a popular tourist route in the south of Iceland. Among the many breathtaking sights were Skogarfoss Falls, the Solheimajokull 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. On June 18, they went to Ipswich to find more stories. Back in Tattingstone, the students were visited by veteran Associated Press photographer Harry Hamburg, who shared his vast knowledge and many amusing anecdotes with the group.
After a productive time in England, the students boarded a train bound via the Channel Tunnel for Paris, then took the overnight train to Venice. After enjoying some food and sightseeing, the students went on another story search in Venice’s San Marco area. The remainder of their time in Venice was spent sightseeing and working on their assignments, as well as enjoying a special dinner at a 700-year-old restaurant.
On June 25, everyone gathered on a train to return to Paris, enjoying lunch during a brief stop in Milan. During their stay in the City of Lights, the students visited the famous Louvre and toured the Seine river and Notre Dame Cathedral. They also stopped by the Eiffel Tower, where they enjoyed authentic French crepes.
On June 28, after their excursion through Paris, the group hopped a train back to England, this time to London. While in the English capital, they interviewed Member of Parliament Yasmin Quresh of the Labor Party, who gave the students a tour of Parliament and answered questions about her job. The group even got to see the House of Commons and House of Lords in session.
The students arrived home safely on June 30. Articles and photos chronicling their journey through Europe are posted at www.talonwp.com.
This article was originally published in the Harker Quarterly Summer 2011 Edition
Harker tennis director Craig Pasqua is not your regular tennis coach. “It‘s not just about teaching good tennis,” he says. “It‘s about teaching kids to become better, more responsible young adults and take their place in society through the game of tennis.”
Pasqua‘s coaching philosophy centers around development – both physical and mental – and his mission is to give as many children as possible the opportunity to play the game.
Pasqua graduated from Stanford University in 1986 with a degree in psychology and decision sciences. He played tennis for De Anza College after graduation and was for several years the national champion of the Native American Indian Tennis Association. He began coaching professionally in 2000 and has been with Harker since 2003.
Along with coaching the girls‘ and boys‘ varsity tennis squads in the upper school, Pasqua offers four levels of after-school tennis programs available to Harker and non-Harker students. Pasqua teaches at the Oakwood Tennis Center, which is located just down the street from Harker‘s Saratoga campus.
HOTTS, or Harker/Oakwood Tennis Training System, is Pasqua‘s central program. HOTTS introduces players to competitive tennis in a team-oriented environment. It is also very convenient for Harker students. Not only is it aligned with Harker‘s academic calendar, but HOTTS coaches escort Blackford students to Oakwood, and a shuttle is available for Saratoga students.
The first level is the QuickStart Junior Team Tennis League, a program designed for kids aged 6 to 10. Court dimensions are shortened, and the students use shorter racquets and slower balls. These changes help younger kids to learn because they can more quickly play “real” tennis. There is less focus on learning the strokes and rote technical repetition, and more emphasis on fun.
From QuickStart, students move on to Believe and Achieve, a program appropriate for beginner and lower intermediate tennis players ready to play on a full-sized court.
For the most advanced players, Pasqua offers the Intercollegiate Player Development Program (IPD). Acceptance to the program is by approval only, and it is meant to prepare students for tough, competitive, tournament play, as well as college tennis. “Some kids don‘t believe they have the skills necessary for college play,” says Pasqua, “but I believe in them, and I know they can do it.”
Pasqua believes in all his students and says that out of everything he does in tennis, his favorite activity is coaching. “I enjoy seeing the kids develop, and the lessons they learn on the tennis court transfer well into life skills. They learn how to problem solve, how to make decisions, how to prioritize. They learn how to be social and talk with other kids. Some of the most enduring friendships I‘ve ever made have been on a tennis court, and I‘m almost positive that’s what‘s going to happen to them as well.”
Apart from coaching at Harker and Oakwood, Pasqua keeps very busy with volunteer efforts. “I think it‘s very important to be a good role model for the kids,” says Pasqua. For the past three years, Pasqua has volunteered at the U.S. Open Arthur Ashe Kids‘ Day. This year he gave lessons for the USTA Serves Foundation, which supports programs that serve at-risk children and people with disabilities.
Pasqua is on the board of the Santa Clara Indian Health Center, the second largest community health clinic in Santa Clara County. He also founded a 501(c)3 corporation in 1996 called Standing Tall Tennis, through which Pasqua has taught tennis to more than 8,000 people in 21 states, many on Indian reservations.
In addition to coaching and his volunteer efforts, Pasqua works at keeping his coaching skills sharp. He recently spent a week at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Naples, Fla., where Pasqua worked with Emilio Sanchez, producer of some of the top tennis players in the world, and adapted his drills and systems for Pasqua‘s own Harker/Oakwood programs.
Students are already seeing results. Harker student Shwetha Bharadwaj, grade 9, is a member of the IPD program and on the girls‘ varsity squad. “I‘ve improved tremendously,” says Bharadwaj. “[Coach Pasqua] does these new drills, and they strengthen me not only physically, but now I‘m smarter with my shots. I know when to hit what kind of shot.” Bharadwaj is appreciative of Pasqua‘s expertise. “He‘s extremely smart, very intelligent. The style [of tennis] he teaches us really helps because most of the girls out there don‘t know it.”
While Pasqua loves seeing his students improve, he says his true joy comes from seeing personal growth. “Kids come back after college and tell me how some adversity they encountered on the tennis court helped them get through something personal in their lives.” It truly is about more than just the tennis.
All four tennis programs are offered year-round, with special camps in the summer. For more information, visit Harker Tennis at www.harker.org and search on “athletics”; or contact tennis@harker.org
Jason Martin ’07 has been recognized for his contributions to the San Jose State University (SJSU) baseball team at their annual senior day. Martin, who was a standout player for the Harker varsity baseball team, is one of the most successful players in SJSU’s history and has been recognized many times for both his onfield prowess and his dedication to his studies. Martin finished as the Spartan’s all-time leader in hits, runs scored, games played and at-bat appearances. Martin, who majored in psychology and minored in kinesiology, also graduated as a three-time San Jose State Scholar-Athlete and two time Academic All-WAC athlete, a testament to his efforts in the classroom.
Martin, whose father is Harker’s executive chef, Steve Martin, began his career with the Spartans as a walk-on player whose mind-set was to work hard and earn his spot on the roster every day. He has said that he learned his work-hard mentality from his parents and that he plays 100 percent whenever he’s on the field. In an interview with the SJSU news, Martin said, “In my mind that is how the game should be played … with maximum effort. If I come home from practice and I’m not really that tired, it bothers me. If I am spending time out there, practicing or playing in a game, I want to get something done.” It is this mentality that has enabled Martin to achieve so much while playing for the Spartans and it was those accomplishments that were honored on Senior Day in May to mark the end of a remarkable collegiate baseball career.
In a strong year for Harker’s Latin department, it comes as no surprise that Harker students had stellar performances on the National Myth Exam. The exam, which is given to all middle school students studying Latin, is administered every year through the American Classical League, which encourages the study of classical literature.
The exam itself is a multiple choice test that assesses students’ learning of Greek and Roman mythology which includes a subtest that tests knowledge of specific writing such as the “Iliad” or “Odyssey.” The exam was administered the first week of March, to test the students’ learning over the course of the year.
This year, more than 30 middle school students earned medals for impressive scores on the exam, with five students, Sean Costello, Aditya Dhar and Albert Xu, all grade 6, as well as Elisabeth Siegel and Allison Wang in grade 7, earning perfect scores. While Harker students usually perform well on the exam, Lisa Masoni, middle school Latin teacher, noted, “This is the first year I’ve had more than one gold medal.”
The award-winning cast and crew of “Pippin” will put on a special show prior to traveling to the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe at 7 p.m. on Fri., July 29 at the Blackford Theater. Tickets are $15 reserved and $10 at the door, if available, but be aware that the show sold out during its spring run. The cast will be presenting the play in its Fringe iteration, so audiences will see the cast run into a blank space, prepare the sets, perform the show, dismantle the sets and leave the theater, in accordance with the Fringe’s strict 90-minute “in-and-out” policy.
Plenty of food will be available at the venue. The content of the play is mature, so we recommend attendance only by those middle school-aged and up. Tickets can be purchased by anyone through Vendini and through tickets@harker.org for parents who’d like to charge to their accounts.
Directed by Laura Lang-Ree, performing arts department chair K-12, “Pippin” is a coming-of-age tale based loosely on the life of Pepin, Charlemagne’s son. “Pippin” was chosen by Lang-Ree for its appeal at the festival, where it would “resonate with our young American and European audiences who, like Pippin, are trying to find their way in these times of global economic depression and civic revolution,” she said.
The production showcases the depth of Conservatory members with a compelling and edgy choice that Lang-Ree expects to draw in a sophisticated audience at the festival, an influential launching pad for theatrical trends.
Pippin’s journey is framed by a theatrical troupe of players who manifest for him the various vignettes he lives out. These sly and darkly irreverent players, directed by Lang-Ree to represent “the darkness in Pippin’s mind and the negativity that can eat away at all of us,” flesh out the environment of voices and dancers who surround the plot.
Lang-Ree framed the production as a contemplation of the “too-hyped American Dream,” where one man is “told that he can have it all if he just works hard enough.” “When you’re extraordinary, you think of extraordinary things,” Pippin tells us early on, lamenting, “Here I am, to seize my day – if someone would just tell me when the hell it is.” In the end, he sings, “I wanted such a little thing from life. I wanted so much.”
Don’t miss the chance to see the Fringe version of this terrific show!
To read the full review, search on “Pippin” in Harker News Online.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning to all our guests: members of the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty and staff, alumni, families, friends, and to our true guests of honor, the graduating class of 2011. I currently hold the privilege of making a few remarks of farewell at graduation. This address is the last requirement standing between you and your diploma. Knowing this, and aware of the fact that you outnumber me, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-spaced, size twelve font. I will continue to refrain, however, from making any promises about the size of the margins.
In this address I typically try to give one final piece of advice, such as “Dare to singletask” or “Be like Curious George.” By now, you have spent the last 13 years or more of your life cultivating your mind. You have been seeking the right answers to questions, memorizing facts, deepening understanding, mastering processes.
Now that you have reached the milestone of high school graduation largely by cultivating your mind, it may be tempting to think that the mind is central to your success and happiness in the future. And, of course, the mind is very important. Equally important, however, is the ability to go beyond your mind, to “lose your mind,” so to speak. So my advice to you today is, “Dare to lose your mind.”
Of course, I need to immediately qualify this statement. By “lose your mind” I do not mean “go crazy,” though going crazy is called for sometimes, like at football games or family reunions. I also do not mean to sound anti-academic. I am speaking more as a recovering academic. The mind is a terrible thing to waste,
but as a schoolmate of mine used to say, the mind can also be a terrible thing. Of course he used to say that to get out of doing homework. But John Milton, 17th century British poet, agreed. In Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Satan says, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” Paradise was lost, remember, when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge.
You too have partaken of the Tree of Knowledge, and you probably have had some late nights of homework when you felt paradise was lost. Knowledge has a way of concealing from us what we do not know. Who really knows what the smallest particle is? Whether or not Pluto is a planet? The great Irish writer Samuel Beckett asked, “Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?” Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian educator who is no relation, as far as I know, to our own Gautam, said that “Truth is a pathless land.” He meant that truth is a living thing. Any mental projection onto reality is not truth. The map will never become the terrain.
Perhaps there is another way to say this. It is too bad that accents and emphases do not play as significant a role in English as they do in other languages. As many of you know, words in Mandarin can be spoken in one of four tones, each tone signifying something different. So perhaps I mean to say “Dare to lose your mind,” with the emphasis on “your,” versus “Dare to lose your mind,” with the emphasis on “mind.” By losing your mind, you may more clearly see someone else’s; you may more clearly see the world.
One of my favorite sermons in any religion comes from the Buddha, during which he simply holds up a flower in silence. That was the entire sermon. Apparently only one of his disciples “got it.” The Buddha could tell that this disciple “got it” by the look in his eye. The world exists independent of concepts. A tree doesn’t know that it is a tree – that is our name for it, and it is only a sound coming from our mouths. A tree just is. Krishnamurti – again, not Gautam – often challenged us to look at anything without any image or word, to truly see without the mediation of thought. What is it like to see anything without words or concepts in our head? That is why we all love music, I believe, because it bypasses the head and goes straight to the heart.
Ms. Kelly Espinosa, Harker’s director of summer programs, perhaps known to you as “Ms. Kelly” when you were on the lower school campus, has a profound question sprawled across a wall in her office. The question reads, “What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about?” This is an astonishing question. If the hokey pokey is really what it is all about, then why do we take ourselves so seriously? Why would we want to get lost in our minds? All we have to do is put our right foot in and take our right foot out, put it back in and shake it all about. That’s life – the cycle of engagement and disengagement. A time to reap and a time to sow.
In closing, the Harker Conservatory put on a fabulous performance of the musical “Pippin” which they will perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, this summer. In the musical, Pippin, played by John Ammatuna, also lives too much in his head. He constantly roams the stage looking for the meaning of existence. He finds happiness only when he stops looking for meaning in “LIFE,” all caps, and instead finds meaning in “life,” all lower case, meaning everyday living. His grandmother, played by Allika Walvekar, gives him the advice, “Oh, it’s time to start livin’. Time to take a little from this world we’re given.” (You don’t want me singing that, by the way.) So that is my advice to you today – it is time to start living, and not always from your head. If you dare to lose your mind, you might find something grander, more beautiful and mysterious, and that might just be what has been around you all the time. Thank you.