This story first appeared in the Winter edition of the Harker Quarterly.
In late September, 50 members of the Harker community, including students, parents and teachers, got involved with California Coastal Cleanup Day by picking up litter scattered about Pillar Point and Pilarcitos Creek in Half Moon Bay. The effort was kick-started by parent Kelly Lewis Brezoczky (Emma, grade 5; Charlotte, grade 3; Katherine, grade 1), who believed it to be a good fit for the lower school’s theme of compassion. Brezoczky received help from service and Spirit Club advisor Katie Molin and Redwood City’s Marine Science Institute to coordinate the event.
“The students were excited to be helping the environment by collecting candy wrappers and other paper trash, as well as by finding an old tent and two shopping carts in the creek,” Molin said. Her daughter, Naomi, grade 7, received a T-shirt as a reward for discovering the most bizarre item of debris, a plastic net.
This story first appeared in the Winter edition of the Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s energy manager dashboard is now live online at: http://www.harker.org/page.cfm?p=1534. The tool displays the energy consumption measured by the smart meters installed at the upper and lower school campuses and gives detailed readouts on the day-to-day energy usage of each building on both campuses. It also shows how each building ranks according to the amount of energy consumed. The smart meters were installed in 2009 using grant money received by grade 11 students Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous from the Alliance for Climate Education.
In October, Jacqueline Wang, grade 10, was named a regional finalist for this year’s Siemens Competition. Harker regional semifinalists were Roshni Bhatnagar, Rohan Mahajan, Nikhil Parthasarathy and Supraja Swamy, all grade 12.
Each Harker student entering the competition worked with a mentor to do research for their projects. Parthasarathy, for instance, worked with Dr. Sandra Faber, mother of Holly Faber MS ’89, and Wang collaborated with a mentor from Stanford University.
More than 2,000 students from 36 states participated in this year’s Siemens Competition. Of those, 312 became regional semifinalists, and were regional finalists. The mentorships were set up through Harker’s internship program, which is coordinated by Anita Chetty, science department chair. “The entire science department shares in this great achievement,” Chetty said.
A Harker middle school student has used his creative talents to help protect a local endangered species. Jonathan Armer, grade 8, and his older sister created a documentary focusing on burrowing owls, a species whose numbers are rapidly decreasing in Santa Clara County. Arranged under the auspices of the local Audubon Society, the Armer siblings worked on the documentary for close to a year, editing the countless hours of footage down to a 13-minute film.
Jonathan Armer, who has been making films for four years, said the most difficult parts of the project were things he could not control. “You can’t get the owls to do what you want,” he said. “You kind of just have to wait for them to do something interesting and then edit out the ‘boring stuff,’” adding that constantly varying light conditions made filming that much harder.
The Armers’ efforts were not in vain. The Audubon Society will be using their documentary as a lobbying tool as they press local city governments to establish and fund conservation plans, including an owl sanctuary at Shoreline Park in Mountain View and on the property of the San Jose Water Pollution Control Plant.
Armer plans to continue pursuing filmmaking, hoping eventually to study at the New York Academy of Film.
To see the documentary, as well as to learn more about conservation efforts, please click here.
Upper school music teacher Chris Florio traveled to Japan in October as this year’s exchange teacher to Tamagawa Gakuen in Tokyo. While there, he helped prepare Tamagawa’s middle and upper school bands for national competitions. Both bands took top honors.
“I got to be there for all the hype that led up to it,” Florio said. “I got to work with them a lot, conduct them almost every day.”
The two groups both performed American music at the competition, and Florio’s understanding of American music, particularly jazz, proved vital in helping them perform at their best.
“One piece was very jazz-heavy, so I helped them find a more appropriate jazz feel,” he recalled. “They’re not really jazz players. They’re classical musicians, so that’s always tough, but they responded so quickly and amazingly.”
Certain English words also presented some difficulty, such as when one section instructed the brass players to “wail.”
“As a jazz musician in America you might understand what that means,” Florio said, “but it took me days, actually, to figure out how to explain that one.”
After spending so much time teaching students at Tamagawa, Florio took to heart some principles that he hopes to instill in students at Harker. “I noticed how much [Tamagawa students] worked with the metronome during rehearsals. I started doing that and the kids responded really well.”
He also played some recordings of the Tamagawa upper school band for his students, and noticed that “the kids are practicing on their own more.”
In addition, Florio’s work with the band did not end with his Tamagawa trip. Some time during the school year, he wants to hold a video conference between Tamagawa’s band and the upper school orchestra, and have them play for one another and offer feedback. Two students from Tamagawa’s upper school band will also be visiting as exchange students in January.
Aside from teaching, Florio also went on many fun outings with his new friends at Tamagawa, and also visited Kyoto for two days. “They work very hard, but no matter what age the teacher, they have a lot of fun,” he said. “They made me feel like one of their teachers.”
In early November, lower school mathematicians participated in the first meet of the Continental Math League’s (CML) 2010-11 math contest. The meet required students to solve six problems in 30 minutes. The grade 5 team of Adrian Chu, Michael Kwan, Linus Li, Rajiv Mova, Justin Su and Shaya Zarkesh performed exceptionally well, garnering six perfect scores for a perfect team score of 36. The grade 4 team had two perfect scores of its own, courtesy of Rose Guan and Katherine Tien.
More CML meets will take place throughout the school year until the spring. Updates will be made as more information becomes available, so please stay tuned!
An upper school student has received the President’s Volunteer Service Award from President Obama. James Seifert, grade 12, was nominated for the award after meeting the Hugh O’Brian Youth (HOBY) Foundation’s “Leadership for Service Challenge,” in which he completed in excess of 100 hours of community service during his junior year. During his years at the upper school Seifert has completed more than 250 hours of community service, dividing his time between Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT), Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, and local community projects in Saratoga and San Jose.
Several open houses were held at all three campuses in November and December, to give interested parents an insight into life as a Harker student. At the upper school open houses on Nov. 7 and Dec. 2, students gave presentations on school work and shared their experiences as Harker students.
Students guided guests around the Saratoga campus to show them its facilities and help them get their questions answered. Student-run clubs had tables and displays set up in Nichols Hall so that parents could get a glimpse of the various extracurricular opportunities available.
The middle school open house was held Dec. 5 and featured dance performances and a pottery-making exhibition. As at other open houses, students acted as guides around campus as prospective parents visited classrooms and chatted with teachers and administrators. BEST and other activities staff members were also present to answer questions and provide basic information.
At the lower school open house on Nov. 14, interested kindergarten and grade 1-5 parents visited at separate times and learned about the different programs from faculty, administrators and BEST staff. For those interested in Harker’s kindergarten program, four Cookies and Kindergarten events will be held Jan. 7, 10, 20 and 25 at 9 a.m. Attendees will receive a tour of the Bucknall campus and will have the opportunity to view a class session and meet with admissions staff. Reservations can be made by calling 408.871.4662 or e-mailing admissionK5@harker.org .
In October, National Assessment & Testing (NAT) announced that a team of Harker mathematicians finished in sixth place out of 25 teams during the 2010 Fall Startup Event. The team, coached by upper school math teacher Misael Fisico, included Vikram Sundar, Varun Mohan and Alex Pei, grade 9; Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 10; Patrick Yang, Albert Wu, Lucy Cheng and Ramya Rangan, grade 11; and Richard Chiou, grade 12. The test was administered by mail and each student was required to answer 100 problems in half an hour. Each student’s results then were used to make the team’s final score. Part of the challenge, according to a NAT press release, is choosing which problems to solve and which ones to skip.
In October, several faculty and staff gathered at the home of Pat and Terry Walsh, grade 5 math teacher and Harker archivist, respectively, for a special poker event to commemorate the passing of beloved Harker U.S. history teacher John Near one year earlier.
The event also acted as a fundraiser for the John Near Resource Center, raising a total of $945. Funds were donated by visitors and those who were unable to attend but wanted to contribute nonetheless. The center, located in Shah Hall, adjacent to Near’s former classroom, reflects the late teacher’s love of American history. Near taught at Harker middle and upper schools for 31 years prior to his passing in 2009. His legacy includes many hundreds of students left with a love of learning and history as well as the John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund.
Two tables of Texas Hold ‘Em were run for the poker competition which was won by recently retired 30-year lower school geography teacher John Zetterquist, who pocketed a $200 first prize. Casey Near ’06, Dickinson and Near’s daughter, cleverly called Zetterquist’s bluff on one hand, which netted her a $75 prize.
“Casey did an amazing job for her first time playing poker,” said host Terry Walsh, Harker’s archivist.