The new Harker Speaker Series kicked off with a bang March 7 with over 100 parents, students and faculty in attendance to hear the inaugural series presentation, “What Happens When E.T. Calls?” by Dr. Seth Shostak of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.
Shostak presented a lively and very entertaining exploration about the scientific hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence – which is now into its fifth decade – and how a timely convergence of extremely powerful computers, sensitive arrays of radio telescopes, and sophisticated software positions us in a unique place in human history where success in the search may not be that far off.
Watch the next Harker News for a recap of the presentation, and for news of future speakers. We hope to see you at the next one!
Grade 1 celebrated Valentine’s Day with a special breakfast event at the Bucknall gym. Parents were invited to join in on the fun, which included a breakfast of waffles, fresh fruit and juice as well as a special student activity that involved making heart-shaped valentines on which they wrote something they liked and why. The valentines were then posted on a larger heart that was displayed in the first grade homerooms.
The homeroom teachers also shared stories with the kids, who were asked to dress in red, white or pink to mark the occasion. Later in the day, the students exchanged Valentine’s cards in their respective classrooms.
“The children had a great time, the parents had a chance to socialize with other parents and spend with their child at school,” said Diann Chung, grade 1 homeroom teacher.
Wrestlers Santosh Swaminathan, Jason Mendel and Chris McCallaCreary, all grade 12, advanced to the second day of competition at the CCS tournament over the weekend, a Harker first. McCallaCreary placed fourth overall, making him the highest-placing CCS wrestler in Harker history.
Meanwhile, boys basketball, boys soccer and wrestling all received CCS Scholastic Championships. Congrats all around!
Pat White’s grade 6 advisory did a bang-up job collecting toiletries for the Georgia Travis Center for Women and Children. The students sorted and bagged two boxes of donated travel toiletries including shampoo, toothpaste and soap, and came up with 112 mini collections to be handed out to those who need them at the center. “We have been collecting hotel and sample toiletries since the beginning of the school year,” said White. “We will have another sorting and bagging later in the spring. The Georgia Travis Center has been very busy because of the general economy and its impact on families, so we hope our contribution will be helpful.”
Harker grade 1 students celebrated the 100th day of school on Feb. 15 during their morning homeroom classes with a variety of fun activities. Students were encouraged to bring in 100 items. “All first graders were encouraged to bring in 100 items,” said Cindy Proctor, homeroom teacher. “We had pennies, Legos, marshmallows, beads, keychains, pens, pretzels, SillyBandz and much more.”
Students even used the “100” theme as creative inspiration, making the number “100” out of corks or pasta, and even writing their name using 100 pieces of cereal.
During their math classes, the students all did activities related to the number 100, such as writing their names as many times as possible in 100 seconds, stamping sets of ten with rubber stamps, making necklaces out of 100 beads and flipping a coin 100 times then graphing how many times it landed on heads or tails.
The Harker School is pleased to announce its new Harker Concert Series, featuring three performances this spring that all are open to the public. Tickets are available online Wed., Feb. 23 at www.harker.org/concertseries.
“This new series, along with the Harker Speaker Series launched in 2005, is part of the school’s ongoing commitment to sharing thoughtful, entertaining and engaging events with the greater Bay Area community,” said Chris Nikoloff, Harker’s head of school.
All concerts will be held in the intimate 200-seat auditorium in Harker’s new gold-LEED certified science and technology building, Nichols Hall. Pre-event reception one hour prior to each performance. Hors d’œuvres and beverages available.
Chris Florio, an upper school music teacher who helped launch the new series, is especially excited about it. “While Harker has always been a magnet for the sciences, we’re really excited to share our enthusiasm and love for the arts as well.”
The first concert will be held Wed., March 9, at 7 p.m. and will feature Washington, D.C.-based violin duo MarcOlivia. Marc Ramirez and Olivia Hajioff have performed worldwide and have been featured on radio and television in North America, Europe and Asia. Winners of Fulbright fellowships and numerous competition prizes, the duo are also artists-in-residence at the Tokyo College of Music. Tickets are $15.
The Taylor Eigsti Trio, the second performer in the series, will appear on Fri., March 25 at 8 p.m. A Bay Area native and Grammy-nominated jazz pianist, Eigsti began playing the piano at the age of four and was leading bands by the time he was 12. At just 26 years of age, Eigsti has already been featured on the covers of Keyboard Magazine and Jazziz Magazine, and he has worked with jazz heavyweights such as Dave Brubeck, Christian McBride and James Moody. Appearing with Eigsti will be bassist Reuben Rogers, who has worked with artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargroves and Joshua Redman, and drummer Colin McDaniel, a fellow at the University of the Pacific’s Brubeck Institute and winner of the 2010 DownBeat award for outstanding extended composition. Tickets are $35.
In addition to their performances, MarcOlivia and Eigsti will offer special master classes to Harker students from 3-5 p.m. in the Nichols Hall auditorium on the days of their respective concerts.
The series will culminate on Fri., May 27 with an 8 p.m. performance by Areon Flutes, a Bay Area-based flute quartet that received a bronze medal in the 2008 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, one of the most prestigious chamber music competitions in the country. In an effort to promote flute chamber music, the members of Areon established the International Chamber Music Competition and the Chamber Music Institute, based in San Jose, which functions year-round. Tickets for this concert will be sold for $15 each.
Harker’s Young Physicists team brought home the championship trophy in early February, a school first, and is prominently featured on the tournament’s home page.
The team, seniors Karthik Dhore and Nikhil Parthasarathy, and juniors Vishesh Gupta and Akhil Prakash, accompanied by Drs. Miriam Allersma and Mark Brada, flew to Oak Ridge, Tenn., site of the 2011 U.S. Invitational Young Physicists Tournament sponsored by the United States Association for Young Physicists Tournaments (USAYPT).
At the competition, students from across the country present research on four open-ended physics problems, announced a full year prior, requiring work well above most common high school curricula, said Brada.
“Since the problems are particularly difficult, each student who travelled to the competition worked in a team with one or two other Harker students to complete all of the work that was required,” Brada added.
Dhore worked with Juniors Shival Dasu and Sankalp Raju on the Salt Water Oscillator problem, Parthasarathy worked with Junior Govinda Dasu on the Magic Motor problem, Gupta worked with freshman Sarika Bajaj and junior Max Isenberg on the Domino Wave problem and Prakash worked with Sophomore Payal Modi on the Boiling Water problem.
“Each member of the team contributed a great deal of work to the solutions that were ultimately presented at the competition,” said Brada.
The competition itself is carried out through a series of “Physics Fights,” which are essentially debate-style presentations in which one team presents research findings while another team looks for flaws in how their research was conducted. The team from Harker ultimately prevailed at the taking home the travelling tournament trophy for the first time in school history.
The Harker Programming Club is hosting a programming competition March 19 from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at the upper school campus.
“While searching for more competition opportunities for the club, we were disappointed by the scarcity of local tournaments and thus decided to hold one of our own,” said Christine Chien, grade 12, club spokesperson. “In the long run, hopefully, our contest will help programmers at other schools pursue their interests and encourage schools that do not have a computer science program to start one.”
The event will be held in Nichols Hall, Harker’s new science and technology building, and registration and lunch are both free. Details of the actual competition and how to register are online.
Chien noted the contest will prepare students for the AP Computer Science exam as well as the Stanford ProCo Contest since problems have been written by the ProCo team. Accepted languages are Java, C++, C and Python, and each team must bring a laptop with Wi-Fi capability. Teams of up to three students will compete in a two-and-a-half hour round to score as many points possible by submitting problems online. Prizes will be awarded to non-Harker teams!
All teams must be chaperoned, so each school must bring a teacher or parent. Chaperones will have access to a lounge area with outlets, Wi-Fi, and of course, coffee.
Schedule: Registration check-in 9-10 a.m.; Contest 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.; Lunch 12:30–1:30 p.m.; Keynote speaker 1:30-2:30 p.m.; Awards 2:30–3 p.m.. For more information, contact the Harker Programming Club at harkerprogramming@gmail.com.
Eighty-six grade 7 science students combined their artistic talents with math skills to create a 72” x 52” recreation of an iconic portrait of Isaac Newton. The idea was created as a physics-art collaboration between middle school science instructor Raji Swaminathan and fine arts instructor Elizabeth Saltos. Using the same grid-enlargement method Raphael used to create his frescoes 500 years ago, the students were each given a 1″ x 1″ image, which they had to enlarge to a 6.5” x 6.5” inch square. After 88 squares were completed, the students taped them together to form a portrait of Newton surrounded by many of his inventions and scientific contributions. Said Swaminathan, “This whole semester, seventh graders hear more about Newton than anybody else, and this project is something hopefully that they will remember in their 30s and 40s.”
The Varsity boys basketball team wrapped up their season in the quarterfinals if CCS play with a tough 70-40 loss. Full credit to this tough, hard-working team. Enjoy the slideshow!
Feb. 25, 2011
[Update] Following Thursday’s 61-49 victory over King’s Academy, the varsity boys basketball team will move on to the Central Coast Section quarterfinals against the #2 seed Santa Cruz. This marks the fourth consecutive year Harker has entered the quarterfinals. The game takes place Sat., Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m. at Menlo School (directions to Menlo School from the Saratoga campus). Please come support your Eagles at Saturday’s game!
The varsity girls basketball season came to a close after their 71-53 loss to Sacred Heart Prep on Thursday. Their season nonetheless ends on a high note with a very impressive 20-5 record, and being the first girls team since 2006 to qualify for the CCS playoffs.
Feb. 23, 2011
[Update] Double Down! For the first time in Harker history both varsity basketball teams, girls and boys, are in CCS playoffs and won their first games. Tuesday evening, Feb. 22, the girls defeated Gonzales High in first round playoffs 59-40 and will travel to Sacred Heart Prep Thursday for round two. Priscilla Auyeung, grade 10, had 18 points, Daniza Rodriguez, grade 10, contributed 13, and freshman Nithya Vemireddy had 13 rebounds.
Following the girls’ game the boys were victorious, defeating Pacific Grove 49-34. Nikhil Panu, grade 10, scored 18 points and Stephen Hughes, grade 11, 13 in the win. The boys travel to league rival King’s Academy Thursday for the second round tip-off at 7 p.m.
Please support our teams tomorrow night! They both have a great chance, but they can use your support: Boys Game; Girls Game.
Feb. 22, 2011
Harker will host a CCS basketball doubleheader for both boys and girls varsity teams for the first time in Harker history tonight.
For the first time since 2006 the girls basketball team qualified for CCS and are seeded 11th versus 14th seeded Gonzales High. They play tonight, Feb. 22, at 5:30 at Blackford. The boys qualified again this year and are seeded 10th against 15th-seeded Pacific Grove and play at Blackford at 7 p.m.