Harker had another great year in the Future Problem Solving International competition, sending students in every division to the finals of the competition, which are held at the FPS International Conference. This year, the conference is being held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, of the four teams invited to the international conference, three are from Harker. In the months prior to the school closure, students from each of the divisions met and worked through the year’s scenario.
In the junior division (grades 4-6), the team of sixth graders Krish Nachnani, Aditya Shivakumar, Jonathon Szeto and Veeraz Thakkar earned first place, while sixth graders Cyrus Ghane, Charlie Wang, Daniel Miao and Kairui Sun took second place. Both teams will be headed to the internationals. Individual junior competitors Brenna Ren and Helen Gu, both grade 6, placed second and fourth respectively, and also qualified for internationals.
The team of eighth graders Ritu Belani, Reshma Kosaraju, Aeliya Grover and Olivia Xu placed third in the middle division team competition. In individual competition, Anandita Arun, grade 7, placed second, and Kosaraju placed fourth; both earned an invite to internationals. Belani also took second place in scenario writing, securing yet another internationals spot for Harker.
Seniors Sriya Prathuri, Amla Rashingkar and Tina Xu were invited to internationals for taking first place in the senior division team competition, where seniors Anvi Banga, Jack Hansen, Anika Tiwari and Alicia Xu earned third place. Junior Hilari Fan took fourth place in the individual competition.
Last week, Anu Aiyer’s AP Statistics students were recognized by the New York Times for their contributions to a discussion on a graph posted in the Times’ “What’s Going On in This Graph?” series. Each week, the Times posts a graph and invites students to participate in live discussions on the information it contains. The April 16 graph depicted consumer spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing how spending habits changed during the last week of March as compared to the same week in 2019. Students were invited to discuss what they noticed about the graph, ask questions about the data presented and come up with a headline for the graph that encapsulates its main idea. Aiyer’s students’ headline, “COVID Troubles & Fiscal Bubbles: How COVID-19 Changed Our Spending Habits,” was one of four recognized.
“We have been doing this in my classes throughout the year and this time we sent in our analysis and out of 400 entries, our names were selected,” Aiyer said.
Amy Jin ‘18, currently attending Harvard, is now a team member for the Crown Education Challenge, an international contest for K-12 students that contains tracks in art, STEM and writing. Founded in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent wave of worldwide school closures, the contest hopes to inspire students to continue their learning, become active in global issues and foster hope in troubled times.
The contest’s theme is finding hope during a pandemic, and each category encourages students to submit work relating to the theme. For the art category, students are invited to submit visual art, music, digital art, films and dance pieces. STEM submissions can include original research on ways pandemics can be prevented or addressed in the future, taking the form of posters, videos, apps or other media. Writers may submit journalistic pieces, poetry, short stories, screenplays, podcasts or essays relating to the theme.
Submissions are being accepted until 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on May 31.
Sixth graders Anika Akkiraju, Shloka Chawla, Pavitra Kasthuri and Danielle Steinbach spent their spring break devising a way to help medical workers dealing with PPE shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. After meeting via Zoom, the students launched a fundraising campaign on April 1 to collect donations to purchase the equipment. By the end of the campaign, the students had raised nearly $11,000, which they used to buy 3,000 masks and 1,000 face shields for Kaiser Permanente, which were delivered late last week.
“Despite being quarantined and unable to connect with each other, we have created memories that remind us to continue serving the community and have succeeded in helping others,” said Chawla. “The experience has taught us valuable lessons, and together we had lots of fun.”
Over the last several months, fifth graders Rohan Goyal, Ayden Grover, Neel Kumar and Krishna Muddu, who compete in the VEX IQ robotics competition as Team 14791R, had many successes despite the season being cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. The students learned a great deal about programming, robot construction, robot operation and a host of other skills over the course of the shortened season, during which they won two robot design awards and qualified for both state and national level competitions. Other notable accomplishments included building two robots from the ground up and keeping a detailed engineering journal.
Although it was a shortened season due to COVID-19, Jarrett Anderson ’19 made the most of his first collegiate year with the Springfield College men’s volleyball team. Anderson excelled on the court and was recently named a D3 All-American and the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division 3 Northeast Region Newcomer of the Year. Anderson’s 5.15 points per set ranked him fifth in the nation; he accounted for a team-best 360.5 points; and his .814 aces per set was the fourth best in the country.
Check out all the stats on Anderson, as well as the other accolades that his team took home:
A group of Harker parents organized via the Chinese messaging app WeChat has been gathering and donating protective supplies to local hospitals. More than 100 families are involved with the effort, according to Harker parent Jing Wang (Cynthia, grade 5), who organized the group. As of mid-April, thousands of supplies have been donated, including more than 3,000 surgical masks and more than 1,000 N95 masks, as well as hundreds of face shields, handmade masks, shoe covers and more.
Hospitals that have received the goods include Kaiser Permanente centers through Santa Clara County, as well as Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose and Eden Hospital in Castro Valley. The group plans to keep sending supplies during the pandemic, and students are also busy creating posters. Photos of their donation activities also recently appeared on NBC Bay Area.
Even with a lost spring season, two junior Harker swimmers are getting national recognition. SwimSwam recently came out with a list of the top uncommitted high school junior boy swimmers and our very own Matthew Chung and Jason Kwok both made the list. The complete list can be seen here:
SwimSwam then published a second list naming the top NCAA swimming recruits in the boys high school class of 2021, with Chung earning an honorable mention on the exclusive list. Check out all the swimmers here:
In response to reports that Michigan was experiencing a troubling surge in COVID-19 cases, fourth grader Brandon Du and his mother, Yimin Zimmerer, last week sent supplies to Beaumont Hospital in Michigan to help its workers deal with the spread.
Du and Zimmerer had been donating to local hospitals and became “concerned by the rapid development in Michigan,” Zimmerer said. “It breaks our heart to see all the brave people fighting on the front line with insufficient protection.” They reached out to lower school English teacher Ann Smitherman, who is originally from Michigan and whose brothers, both former mayors, still live there. They recommended contacting Beaumont Hospital, and soon Du and Zimmerer had arranged to send a shipment containing 500 masks, 130 gowns and 130 pairs of goggles.
Zimmerer reported that the hospital staff was very happy to receive the supplies.