Lower school students were greeted with another afternoon of great weather for this year’s Jump Rope for Heart event. Students in K-Gr. 5, as well as their teachers, could be seen having great fun jumping rope, high jumping onto soft mats, limboing, leaping over makeshift hurdles, crawling through obstacle courses, shooting basketball and other activities to “Celebrate Healthy Living,” the theme for this year’s event. Each grade level rotated to a different station for each activity to keep things running smoothly. Those who participated also had the option of writing a person’s name with chalk on the school blacktop and dedicating their activities to that person.
As always, donations proved to be an important part of Jump Rope for Heart, and nearly $2,400 has been raised for the American Heart Association.
In the ongoing battle for which homeroom has the most spirit, the fourth and fifth graders took part in a festive St. Patrick’s Day spirit rally. Green wasn’t the only theme. The games included a potato toss and lucky duck relay race. As an accent to the rally, Irish tunes helped keep everyone doing jigs throughout the competition.
Although there is no winner for each Spirit Rally, homeroom teachers allot points to the teams for winning competitions and showing their school spirit. Points are cumulative, and will go toward a big celebration in May.
Always enthusiastic about finding out the effects of their successful – $10,000 raised – fall fundraiser, Global Empowerment and Outreach club (GEO) members flocked to advisor Carol Zink’s room in early March to take part in a live video chat with Lane Wood, a charity: water representative. Charity: water is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing potable water to underdeveloped regions and Harker has developed a relationship with the group.
GEO members were told their contribution will fund the construction of a well in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conversations with the local people about building the well have already begun, Wood reported. One of the most important steps before starting the project is education. The residents must first learn how to use the well for hygiene and how to maintain it – a process just as vital as the well’s construction.
Questions and answers flew back and forth via Skype, resulting in a very instructive and productive meeting. “It was great getting to know where the well is being built,” said Rashmi Sharma, Gr. 12, GEO’s public relations officer. “I’m excited to hear about a completed well in the future! It was amazing that we could get word much faster and clearer with Skype. Just through e-mails it would have been a pain to relay the same information – we got to ask questions and interact much more easily.” Wood assured GEO members that more updates would soon arrive regarding the development and eventual completion of the well.
On March 10, Erik Andersen, Gr. 9 and Andrew Zhou, Gr. 12, competed in the invitational round of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), held at San Jose State University. They qualified for the Invitational Round after competing at another event on Feb. 4. The March event was just one of many held nationwide to decide who will be on the team representing the United States at the International Linguistics Olympiad (ILO) this summer in Sweden. Results of the competition are not yet available.
Anand Natarajan ’09 represented the U.S. at the ILO in 2008 and 2009.
Sylvia Carroll of the San Jose Quilt Museum paid a visit to Bucknall in late February to teach kindergartners about the art of quilting. She showed the students a wide variety of quilts and asked them to tell her what they saw in each of the complex designs. Children also got to make their own quilts using markers and cloth. At one point, Carroll used the quilts to tell a story, further demonstrating their many artistic uses.
In February, Karen Lantz from the San Jose Museum of Art visited four kindergarten classrooms to give the students a basic primer on key artistic concepts. Students learned about the primary colors, basic shapes and lines, and were shown three different paintings then asked to spot these different concepts within them. As an added bonus, the students each received a bookmark granting them a free visit to the museum.
On Sat., Feb. 6, Google’s offices in San Francisco held the annual Teens in Tech Conference and hosted 13 speakers, two of whom were sophomores Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri. The main focus of the conference was to present and discuss how teenagers have risen from schools and become innovators in online communities.
The meeting boasted an audience filled with prominent entrepreneurs and celebrities of the technology world. Lapidous and Indukuri had their own work to present. They founded SmartPowerEd, a network seeking to connect schools with smart energy-tracking systems to cut carbon emissions and energy costs. Their research revealed a problem: approximately 30 percent of a school’s energy is wasted because appliances, lights and other energy guzzlers are left on even when they are not in use. Their solution involved unique Internet software paired with high tech hardware. The crowd’s response was promising.
“We were getting lots of specific questions on how to get [the program] started at [other] schools. We were sharing with the audience the first steps and what they should do [to get involved],” Indukuri said.
In response to presentations by Lapidous, Indukuri and other now-successful teens, Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, said he was enthused by the possibilities that teenagers were coming up with. “The experience, the culture, the interaction, the environment – it’s a fascinating, fascinating world. Young people are doing it,” Wozniak said. “What a wonderful thing we have brought to the world. Anyone of any age can build their own startups.”
But the audience was not the only group that gained information from the session. Instead, one of the focuses of the conference was to discover the importance of marketing and the tools that go along with it. Both sophomores took home a list of contacts and valuable lessons in the importance of marketing.
“All the connections we made with people just on Twitter and gmail will be useful,” Lapidous said, after seeing the ways big-time companies like DropBox became successful.
Similarly, her cofounder, Indukuri, praised the power of Twitter and the value of living in the Silicon Valley, calling it “the best place to start a grass roots organization.”
When asked to give advice to teenagers who are battling between schoolwork and developing a product, the consensus in the room of successful million dollar men and women was “Be young. Do stupid,” as was tweeted during the conference and affirmed by both founders of iSocket, a commission-free ad platform.
Lapidous and Indukuri also gave some advice. They learned never to hesitate to take action, to believe that people will support a cause, to be organized from the start, and to recognize that having a strong team is critical for success.
But at the end of the day, as the founders of iSocket put it, “Whatever you want to do, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are going to die, but that you are going to come out of it a better person.”
Click here for a slide show of the event. For this and more news from students in Harker journalism, visit the Winged Post.
The lower school and middle school girls basketball and boys soccer seasons are coming to a close, and what fantastic seasons they have been!
Girls basketball
The varsity A Gr. 8 girls basketball team finished the season at 7-3 in league play and 8-4 overall, taking third place in the league. They also were Gold Division consolation champs in the WBAL tournament. The team was led by Nithya Vemireddy, Regina Chen, Mercedes Chien and Alana Shamlou.
The varsity B Gr. 7 girls basketball team finished 3-4 in league and 5-5 overall, placing fourth in league. They put on quite a show in the WBAL tournament, finishing in second place in the Silver Division, only losing by a basket! The team was led by Diba Massihpour, Madhu Nori and Nikita Mittal.
The junior varsity A Gr. 6 girls basketball team also finished with a 3-4 record in league, taking fifth place. They finished the season with a 4-6 overall record and took fourth place in the WBAL tournament. The team was led by Shannon Richardson, Namitha Vellian and Sadhika Malladi.
The varsity B2 Gr. 7 and the junior varsity B6 Gr. 6 girls basketball teams finished a spirited season of play, learned a lot about the game of basketball and had fun with their teammates and coaches. The B2 team was led byRama Prasad, Sheridan Tobin and Laya Indukuri; the B6 team was led by Shreya Mathur, Aishu Murari and Shivali Minocha. Both teams ended the season 0-7.
The junior varsity B1 Gr. 5 girls basketball team finished 5-1 in league, 6-2 overall and took 2nd place in the league and WBAL tournament! The team was led by Joelle Anderson, Sarah Baz and Jordan Thompson.
The junior varsity B2 Gr. 5 and the junior varsity C Gr. 4 girls basketball teams also had a successful season. They learned a lot about the game of basketball, had a lot of fun and also came out with a couple of victories. The B2 team was led by Swetha Tummala, Priyanka Taneja and Rachel Cheng; they finished the season 0-6. The C team, with a 2-4 record, was led by Raveena Panja, Ania Kranz and Ashna Chandra.
Boys soccer
The varsity A Gr. 8 boys soccer team finished 1-2-3 in league. The boys played a tough league schedule and many games could have gone either way but finished in a tie. The team was led by Kevin Moss, Jeffrey Hanke and Varun Kamat.
The varsity B Gr. 7 boys soccer season finished 2-4 in league and 2-6 overall. They enjoyed victories over Priory and Crystal Springs. The team was led by Nikhil Kishore and Neil Sadhu.
The junior varsity A1 Gr. 6 boys soccer team had a remarkable season! They went 3-1-1 in league and were 4-1-2 overall, taking second place in the WBAL. They were led by Nathaniel Stearns, Nick LaBruna and Calvin Kocienda.
The junior varsity B boys soccer team also had a fantastic season, with exciting victories against Crystal Springs, Pinewood and St. Joseph’s Sacred Heart. At press time, the team was 4-1 in league and in second place in the standings. The team was led byNikolas Weisbloom, Kedar Gupta and Joseph Krackeler.
The intramural boys Gr. 4-5 soccer team also learned a lot about soccer and had a lot of fun with their teammates and coach Jim McGovern. The team was led by Nirban Bhatia, Rohit Shah and Shaya Zarkesh.
The junior varsity A2 Gr. 6 boys soccer team had an impressive season despite their record of 0-5-1, since they were playing all of the other schools’ top teams. The team was led by Kurt Schwartz, Rohan Daran, Justan Su, Nikita Kosolobov and Kevin Hu.
From March 29 through April 2, students in kindergarten through Gr. 8 will have an opportunity to improve their tennis skills during Harker’s 2010 K-Gr. 8 Spring Break Tennis Camp. The camp is available to all K-Gr. 8 students, from beginners to advanced players. Instructors during the program will be Seydou Traore, International Tennis Federation World ranked junior, Rachel Gast, Mission College Head Women’s Tennis Coach and Craig Pasqua, United States Professional Tennis Association/Professional Tennis Registry Tennis Professional, as well as members of the Harker varsity tennis team.
The camp will take place at Oakwood Tennis Center at 700 Saratoga Ave. in San Jose. Students may be dropped off no earlier than 8:15 a.m. and can be picked up no later than 11:45 a.m. Payment is received on the first day of the camp. A form (available to download below) will need to be filled out and brought with the student on the first day of camp. The completed form can also be e-mailed to craigp@harker.org or faxed to 408.984.2325.
Please download the flier for more information and to register for the camp. For any questions, please contact Craig Pasqua by calling 408.590.7347 or send an e-mail to craigp@harker.org.
Monisha Dilip, Gr. 12, received the 2009 National Young Women of Distinction Award in late February, given every year to the top ten Girl Scouts in the country. A Gold Award Girl Scout, Dilip received the high honor for her extraordinary leadership and commitment to service. For her community action project, she established a free learning center for the visually impaired in Chennai, India.
The center is the first of its kind in India. Dilip discovered that less than five percent of reading materials are in an accessible format and that visually impaired people are the most persecuted in poor countries. At the learning center, visually impaired people can use assistive technologies to browse the Internet, access educational and informational materials and keep in touch with friends and family. Girl Scouts of the USA said that Dilip’s “compassion for children with disabilities was the motivation for the Indian Disability Center.”