More than 30 grade 8 French students went on a special lunch trip to Crepe Danielle Restaurant in Saratoga this week, enjoying the French language, culture and, most of all, snails! While crepes, the house specialty, was the most popular dish amongst the students, many of them did try the escargot, as well as coq qu vin (chicken in wine sauce) and crepe Suzette, which delighted student and teacher alike when it was flamed at the table.
This was a great opportunity for Carol Parris to help her students understand spoken French in an atmosphere that was decidedly more relaxed than the status quo, replacing notebook and whiteboard with salad fork and menu. Parris said of the outing, “the rule was French food, culture and fun.”
If you’re looking for more information about the trip or middle school French classes, email Parris at CarolP@harker.org.
Pat Walsh, lower school math teacher, took an enthusiastic group of about 40 lower school students to the San Francisco Giants game, where, coincidentally, music teacher Jennifer Cowgill was directing a boys choir who sang the national anthem before the game.
Although the Giants lost the game, the students remained hopeful and in great spirits throughout. “They screamed , danced and rallied for a come-from-behind win, but it just wasn’t going to happen,” Walsh said. The students even received compliments from other fans on how well-behaved and spirited they were.
Several parents wrote in to show their appreciation. “It’s a good experience that Michael will never forget,” said parent Sara Chan (Michael Kwan, grade 5). “I still can’t stop him from talking about it all day long.”
“It was Christopher’s first game at AT&T Park and he had a great time!” wrote Maria Gong of her grade 4 son. Gita Banga (Anika, grade 5; Anvi, grade 3) said, “It is experiences like this which the kids treasure and remember, making learning fun and enthusiastic. This spirit amazes us. Anika had a wonderful time today, and an experience which she will not forget.”
Fifty-nine ravenous Advanced Spanish Honors students descended on La Habana Cuba on April 20, and not a single morsel of food escaped. Julie Pinzas and Susan Moling supervised as their classes took a field trip to enjoy traditional Cuban food in San Jose, while sharpening their Spanish-speaking skills.
The students were treated to white rice, fried plantains, refried beans, and their choice of garlic chicken, pork and vegetarian tamales. They were encouraged to converse in Spanish during the meal and the wait staff was given specific instructions not to speak to the students in English, nor acknowledge their pleas for more food in any language other than Spanish. The main courses were followed by servings of “tres leches,” or three milks cake, a dessert topped with syrup and cream, a delightfully sugary desert to end the meal. Allison Kiang, grade 8, had a great time on the trip, enjoying the good service and delectable food, saying “next year’s students can look forward to a unique trip!”
For more information about the trip, email Julie Pinzas at juliep@harker.org.
[Updated] In mid-April Harker’s Key Club took a trip to Anaheim to attend the annual Key Club district convention. More than 3,000 students attended from all over California, Hawaii and Nevada. The group, chaperoned by Kerry Enzensperger, activities director, and Kevin Williamson, upper school dean of students, also spent a day at Disneyland.
“Our focus for our visit to the convention was primarily to become exposed to the diverse world that Key Club is a part of,” said Farrah Gulzar, grade 11, vice president of Key Club. “Not only were we able to meet new people, but we were informed of fundraising ideas, amazing organizations and various projects that we may be able to integrate into our own club for the 2011-2012 term.
“I was really intrigued by the project that Kiwanis and UNICEF are working on, “Project Eliminate.” This project focuses on helping children with the disease MNT, and the information they gave us and the videos we were presented created a new awareness in many of us. I’m hoping that in next year’s term we can focus our efforts on this project,” Gulzar said.
“At DCON, there are group sessions, where all 3000 of us are gathered into a giant room where we are updated on the progress of our entire district,” said Jennifer Nguyen, grade 12, president of the club, “covering things like new membership, the total community service hours we all have donated, the amount of money we raised and so forth.”
“Then, there are also seminars which are typically smaller, about 50-60 people per seminar,” Nguyen continued. “You get to choose which seminar you would like to attend and they range anywhere from “How to be a Successful Leader” to “Key Club 101,” thus, every Key Clubber can personalize his or her agenda to suit what they have in mind for their involvement in Key Club.
“Because our club arrived to convention early, we were able to spend a day at Disneyland. The weather was perfect and we were all able to have lunch together,” said Nguyen. “It was amazing! We were also able to squeeze in about an hour poolside where Mr. Williamson treated us all to refreshments and we were able to talk freely with him about the community service policies at Harker. It was very interesting to be able to talk as a group and communicate our thoughts and ideas directly to the administration.”
The Saratoga campus received a special Earth Day gift – a London Plains tree from the Modern Woodmen of America. Representatives of the group presented the tree because part of the group’s charter is to give back to the community. With the help of the Eagle Buddies (sophomore students and their grade 3 buddies) the tree was planted along the border of Rosenthal Field on the Saratoga campus.
Founded in 1883, Modern Woodmen of America is a fraternal society that provides financial services and other benefits to its members, which number more than 750,000 nationwide.
Harker’s award-winning artist, Vladimir Sepetov, grade 12, will have his work on display for sale at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art’s Print Fair, an open portfolio sale by more than 35 Bay Area printmakers, this weekend. He will be displaying on Saturday only, April 30 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. and admission is free. The institute is at 560 South First Street, San Jose.
The Harker robotics team competed at San Jose State University in April, the second competition of the robotics season and their last chance to qualify for the national competition. This drive team competed at UC Davis in early March and finished the preliminary rounds in the top 10 teams, but a malfunction in one of their alliance member’s robots meant that Harker and its partner robots were literally blocked from scoring.
At the San Jose event, the team went in with high hopes and a “113.5 pound, lean, mean, extremely tough machine,” said Peter Gao, grade 12, executive president of the team, which is run as an enterprise. Although the team did not advance to the national level, the experience of building and running the robot was the real value in the effort.
The robot was constructed entirely by students, with guidance from Eric Nelson, physics and astronomy teacher. This year, they built a simple and reliable robot to make it easily repairable and maintainable between matches. This simpler design, pioneered by team members Pranav Bheda, grade 10 and Jason Yu, grade 11, brought durability to the robot, as well as decreased construction time. Instead of having to finish building the robot very near to the competition date, the robotics team finished the robot with two weeks to spare, giving them a chance to develop a well-practiced drive team, well-prepared for competition.
After the San Jose event, Gao analyzed what went wrong. “On one hand, our driver was kind of rusty because the last competition was a few weeks before, and we didn’t give him sufficient practice time,” he said. “Also, there were strange programming/electronics errors that simply shut down our robot at the beginning of the round, and we’re still not sure what’s causing them.”
Still, the team had a fair to middling shot at glory. “I think we did a lot better than previous years, though not as well as I would have liked,” said Gao. “We managed to build a functioning and capable robot a week early, and got enough practice and testing time to iron out a lot of kinks. The gains from this year are not technical, but organizational and strategic: a simpler robot whose construction is heavily planned with periodic deadlines will be completed earlier and tested more thoroughly, leading to an overall more effective robot than a more complex one that is finished right on time.”
There is always next year and Gao has a few words of advice for next year’s team: remember that simplicity and reliability are most important with a robot. Without them, the robot is ineffective. Also, a human is many times more reliable than a machine.
First and second grade parents, students, teachers and administrators bonded over a delicious spaghetti dinner in mid-April on campus. Administrators hope to make this an annual event and if turnout and fun are indicators, it will be a success. Mustafa Gurleroglu (Emma, grade 1) was head cook and was assisted by more than 30 Harker dads. The menu included tossed salad, garlic bread and pasta with a choice of marinara, meat or Alfredo (cheese) sauce. Dessert was potluck, so many fine tastes were had by all!
The annual fabulous kindergarten Easter hat parade was a spectacular event, as always, in mid-April. Spectators included faculty, staff, students and parents as the youngest Harker students wended their way around the campus. Nothing cuter!
A new face was behind the principal’s desk at the lower school in mid-April. Lauren Beede, grade 3, was principal for a day as the winner of the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic package. She spent time in the office and amongst her peers during her brief tenure.