This story was originally published in the Fall 2010 issue of Harker Quarterly Harker’s 2010 Summer Camp brought students from all over the San Jose area for learning and fun – often both at the same time.
With the entire afternoon set aside for activities, summer academics for K-8 took place within a short class day, from 8:30-11:30. The curriculum focused primarily on math and language arts, and the environment was somewhat more relaxed than regular school, according to Diann Chung, K-8 summer academic principal. “It’s still education, but it has a different vibe,” she said.
To ensure that each student was appropriately challenged, teachers used differentiated instruction to adapt their lessons to multiple levels within the same classroom. The summer curriculum was designed to be compatible with that for the school year, not redundant, and teachers had a great deal of latitude within which to incorporate games, crafts and activities.
For example, teacher Alice Cooley read a silly story to her first graders every day. “They think it’s great to hear me get my tongue twisted while reading ‘Fox in Sox,’” she said.
Elective topics ran the gamut from math to language arts, science, technology and the arts. In Enviro-Kids, students made their own dust collectors for a study of air pollution and later used computers to learn more about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Campers in grades 1-4 looking for a different kind of academic experience, or just a shorter camp, opted for a two-week thematic program titled Big Blue Marble. The curriculum integrated science, history, the arts and social studies – and, of course, math and language arts – into a multidisciplinary study of our world.
Each session focused on two continents, and students wrote in their travel journals, counted in different languages, and read both fiction and nonfiction. During the Africa module, all classes made hummus and fufu (sweet potato balls). They studied mummies and hieroglyphic writing, and created 3-D square and triangular pyramids.
“I really enjoy the integrated curriculum,” said veteran Harker teacher Kathleen Ferretti. “It’s a chance to look at things in a different way and have a lot of fun doing it.”
Some students in grades 5-8 chose two-week summer courses with a longer school day (8:30-3:30) for an in-depth look at a single subject area.
Michael Schmidt, Harker middle school computer science and robotics teacher, taught a lighter version of his required seventh grade course in which students built robots out of Legos. After learning how to program their creations during several days of robot wars, the students directed their energy toward making useful robots.
Products included Lego motorized wheelchairs, robotic pets, a grocery scanner, and a vending machine that operated perfectly during the parent demonstration before slipping off the table and crashing apart. With a maturity beyond his years, the builder shrugged, “That’s why vending machines aren’t built out of Legos.”
Schmidt made sure his students absorbed key concepts without letting go of the joy. “The more fun I’m having, the more fun they’re having,” he said.
This story was originally published in the Fall 2010 issue of Harker Quarterly More than one hundred international students this summer sought out Harker’s well-established English Language Institute (ELI) to bolster their English skills and their academic prospects in the United States.
The ELI students, aged six to 16, came primarily from Asia, but a variety of continents were represented with students attending from such diverse countries as Russia, Bolivia, Brazil and Ethiopia.
According to ELI director Anthony Wood, many students come to the program to increase their chances of admission to college preparatory boarding schools in the U.S. A few have been “admitted conditionally and referred to the program by their admissions directors,” he said.
As a mature program ELI provides a good look at U.S. and California culture. While the focus is on learning English, cultural adventures this year included visits to the Roaring Camp Railroad in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the San Jose Tech Museum and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
While in the Monterey area, the group stopped at the Carmel Mission for some historical context on California’s development. U.S. history was integrated into the curriculum to give students moving on to American schools a good background for learning more about the U.S.
This year Jared Ramsey, Harker lower school history teacher, taught a specialized curriculum introducing major events that have shaped the U.S. “He added great variety and expertise to our program,” said Wood, “and the students really enjoyed his creative teaching methods.”
The students also enjoyed ELI’s enrichment program, in which they continued learning after 3:30 through activities. The younger students swam and played games. On Mondays and Fridays they joined the summer camp program at Bucknall.
“It’s an opportunity for the kids to immerse themselves with American kids who speak English as their first language,” said Wood.
The most advanced students, usually aged 14-16, stayed at the Saratoga campus and worked on special projects tailored to their needs. For many, that meant SAT preparation. They were assisted by mentors (sometimes called buddies), often Harker juniors, seniors or recent graduates.
Teacher Lyle Davidson said ELI students arrive with a pretty good understanding of grammar, but they often need help in other areas. “The SAT asks very tricky questions in reading comprehension,” he explained. “Buddies … are able to take a teaching role and model how they would confront the problem – and they do it all in English.”
Mentor Brian Lee, a 2010 Harker graduate, said he really enjoyed hanging out with the students. They talk about music a lot, he said, and, with the natural curiosity of young people, “they ask questions about our personal lives, like where we come from.”
The school days were long, but Huu Li, from Vietnam, said his teacher made the time fly. “He’s very funny. He knows how to make the students feel happy and never feel tired when we study.”
This story was originally published in the Fall 2010 issue of Harker Quarterly More than 20 teachers returned to campus this summer to focus on new ways to integrate technology into their curricula as part of Harker’s tech grant program, which aims to create more well-rounded and effective lesson plans that expand the school’s area of information literacy.
Each teacher focuses on one piece of technology and learns various ways to integrate its uses into his or her teaching.
Shelby Guarino, grade 5 advanced core English teacher, took this opportunity to expand the global education network by learning how to use Moodle, an open-sourced, community-based software that allows for interactivity.
Before her tech grant, Guarino worked closely with Jennifer Abraham, global education director, to share the students’ work with peers from Harker’s sister schools. “For the past two years, I have been doing some grammar art projects, which I would ask students to donate and mail to some of our sister schools,” Guarino said. “For the two years, it was working great, and finally, the last trimester of last school year, we got some work back.”
A tool already used by the department of global education to connect with sister schools in several places including Japan, Australia, China, Costa Rica and France, Moodle offers a new dimension to Guarino’s teaching, bringing collaboration and sharing to a whole new level. Using the software and exchanging videos, photos, audio files and projects, students in Guarino’s English class can collaborate with students at Saint Stephen’s College in Coomera, Australia, and create a more dynamic connection to learn more about different cultures and activities from other areas of the world.
“The goal is getting it to be part of the regular school day – communicating with peers around the world,” Abraham said. Guarino’s tech grant will introduce Moodle to the lower school campus.
Chrissy Chang, K-8 P.E. department chair, learned to use Athena and Microsoft PowerPoint to make health lectures, documents and resources more easily accessible to eighth graders. “Using Athena allowed me to share the curriculum in an orderly fashion, give easy access to students and, more importantly, to go green,” Chang said.
After attending a local workshop on using authentic sources in Spanish class, Diana Moss and Isabel Garcia, Spanish teachers for the upper and middle schools, respectively, decided to use this opportunity to create a Wikispace “as a vehicle for organizing and sharing the authentic sources we had found over the course of the week,” Moss said. The Wikispace includes links for music, cultural and geographical information about Spanish-speaking countries, literature and grammatical topics in an effort to bring the real world into the classroom.
Scott Kley Contini, grade 8 science teacher, used his grant to develop a blogging project, where students in his classes will write blogs, comment on their peers’ work and create a larger dialogue. Kley Contini noticed that slide shows rarely allowed for constructive discussions and found blogging to be a better alternative. “This will encourage them to communicate a little more as well as force them to really think analytically about what they are writing about,” he said. He hopes the assignment will teach his students to communicate differently and encourage them to come up with original content that none of their peers have previously posted.
Other tech grant projects included learning to use macros and Annotate Pro to grade more easily and efficiently, expanding the use of Audacity and continuing to utilize Athena to create easier file sharing, forums and polls. Aiming to keep curricula fresh, sharpen teachers’ skill sets and utilize alternative teaching resources, the tech grant program has allowed teachers to think outside the box and continue to thrive through Harker’s mission to “achieve academic excellence through the development of intellectual curiosity, personal accountability and love of learning.
This story was originally published in the Fall 2010 issue of Harker Quarterly A total of 175 educators from around the Bay Area attended the fourth annual Teacher Institute on the Saratoga campus to learn about technology and different methods to improve classroom curricula. It was the highest participation since the event began.
The institute started as a summer Mathematica session that trained Harker staff to use the mathematics software and develop a project-oriented curriculum. In 2008, however, Fred Triefenbach, an instructional technology staff member, thought Harker should share this knowledge with the community at large. That session has evolved into the full-fledged technology program that is offered today.
“The instructional technology department and The Harker School believe that we have an obligation to share what we have learned about technology in education with the wider educational community,” said Daniel Hudkins, director of instructional technology.
Added Lisa Diffenderfer, assistant director of instructional technology: “The focus really was to share the wealth with the community.” Consequently, Harker’s instructional technology staff focused on offering free – or nearly free – resources that teachers with limited budgets can utilize.
In addition to coordinating and planning the event with instructional technology staff Angela Neff and Triefenbach, Diffenderfer led a workshop called “Free Web 2.0 Tools.” The session showcased various free, cross-platform online tools that could be used in the classroom. She demonstrated how VoiceThread can transform classroom discussions by creating elaborate presentations that include images, documents, videos and voice comments. “It went well. There were a lot of resources presented that teachers hadn’t seen before,” Diffenderfer said.
An extensive list of sessions included ways to grade online, integrate digital content – video, photo, podcasts, music – into the classroom with Moodle, collaborate online with various tools like Google Docs, and use multimedia such as documentaries, graphics and sound to spice up a presentation.
One workshop, taught by Milpitas Christian School teacher Diane Main, introduced geocaching to attendees, showing how searching for hidden objects and creating treasure hunt games can offer a new way to enhance classroom activities.
Stephanie Haining, a teacher in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, demonstrated innovative ways to use iPods to create student projects. Jonathan Brusco, middle school history teacher at Harker, showed how to make history exciting by integrating documentary filmmaking into the curriculum. Other Harker faculty and staff who presented include Kathy Clark, Mike Schmidt, Scott Kley Contini, Mark Gelineau, Kim Sandoval, Gerry-louise Robinson, Grace Wallace, Danny Dunn, Andrew Carlos, Lauri Vaughan and Sue Smith.
Hudkins said the entire event went smoothly and recognized Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators (SVCUE) for its support.
Anne West, grade 12, is featured in a front-page article in the Oct. 1 edition of The Wall Street Journal that chronicles her mission to analyze her family’s genome. John, Anne’s father, had the family’s genome sequenced last year after being diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism in 2003. However, the resulting mass of raw data presented the Wests with the problem of compiling the information into something they could interpret.
Nathan Pearson, director of research for Knome, Inc., a personal genomics company, is quoted in the Journal piece as saying, “If you got an auctioneer to read out loud someone’s genome at six letters every second, it would take 34 years to finish.”
Using her family’s computer, Anne West decided to take on the monumental task of boiling down the data, a job typically reserved for large teams of scientists with highly advanced degrees. West, who has had a passion for biology since grade 5, has been using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to decipher the data.
According to the Journal, the work is daunting but rewarding. West spent six months decoding just one of 20,000 genes, but her work has led to some big opportunities, such as her summer stint in the laboratory of Harvard and MIT scientist George Church. In April, she was a speaker at the Genomes, Environments, Traits (GET) Conference in Boston, where she received business cards from scientists in the field. She is also working with researchers in Seattle on a paper that is partly based on the Wests’ genome, and in September traveled to a genomics conference in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., where she appeared as a panelist.
West thanked her science teachers at Harker, saying they played a large part in fostering the love of biology that has led her to this point. She credited Catherine Le, grade 5 science teacher, for sparking her initial decision to pursue biology; Scott Kley Contini, middle school science teacher, for his “rigorous course”; and Gary Blickenstaff, upper school biology teacher, who assisted her with the project and helped with her presentations at the Personal Genomes Conference and the GET Conference. “I’ve worked hard and of my own motivation, but it was never in isolation nor without help,” she said.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 28 – Raghav Sehtia, grade 10, in the “School Scene or Honors” section for his two-year appointment to the San Jose Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
The New York Times, Sept. 5 – Alexander Wang MS ’98 is mentioned in a story about the rise of Asian-American fashion designers.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 4 – The box score of Harker’s 14-6 win over San Jose appears in the “High School Football Roundup.”
The Little Black Dress Party was held in late September to raise funds for the Harker Fashion Show. Attended by about 100 Harker parents, the affair included live entertainment, tarot card and palm readings, plus a splendid variety of foods and cocktails. The event was hosted by parents John and Michelle Keller, who went all out for their guests. “Many enjoyed meeting parents from other grades; or they were new to the school and loved meeting parents who have been at Harker a long time,” said Sue Prutton, director of upper school volunteer programs. The Harker administration is extremely grateful to the Kellers for their generous donation and dedication to making this event a success.
The Advanced Placement National Scholar awards have been announced and Harker students earned 366 awards in one category or another. Categories range from the AP international diploma, a globally recognized program for students who display exceptional achievement on AP exams across several disciplines, to the AP scholar award for students who receive scores of 3 or higher on three or more AP Exams. Students can qualify for more than one category.
Harker students garnered awards in a several categories. The school has 62 students in the scholar category; 50 students were named scholars with honor for receiving an average score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams takenand scores of 3 or higher on four or more of these exams; 183 students were named scholars with distinction for receiving an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken and scores of 3 or higher on five or more of these exams; and 71 students were named national scholars (United States) who received an average score of at least 4 on all AP exams taken and scores of 4 or higher on eight or more of these exams. Hearty congratulations to all!
Five Harker students took high honors at the the 13th Po Leung Kuk Primary Mathematics World Contest (PMWC), held in July in Hong Kong. David Zhu and Peter Wu, now grade 6, were on the Silicon Valley team that took first runner-up in the Po Leung Kuk Cup. Cindy Liu, Rachel Wu and David Lin, all now grade 8, helped the East Bay team reach second runner-up.
In individual competition, Liu had a perfect score and won a first place honor, Zhu earned a second place honor and Peter Wu and Rachel Wu won third place honors.
Each student at the competition was selected from two tryout rounds. Both rounds were administered by MathEdge, an organization that trains students in problem-solving and competitive mathematics. The first round attracted 154 students from 76 Bay Area schools. From the first round, 15 were selected to attend a 12-week training camp. Of those 15, eight were selected to compete at the PMWC after a second tryout.
In late September, the students of each lower school homeroom, with help from teachers and parents, got to work on the door decorations for 60th Annual Family and Alumni Picnic. A yearly tradition, the doors are decorated to reflect the theme of the booth that each classroom will run during the picnic.
The doors decorations are expected to be finished and visible on the Bucknall campus by Mon., Sept. 27. On the weekend before the picnic, the door boards will be moved to the Blackford campus to be displayed for all picnicgoers to see.