The Harker Environmental and Animal Rights Team (HEART) held a special assembly on Oct. 22 featuring guest speaker Ambessa Cantave, an educator representing the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE). ACE specializes in engaging high school students to become active in stopping climate change.
Cantave gave an introductory presentation on climate change with an amusing series of animated shorts that illustrated how carbon dioxide works in the earth’s environment, and how human-caused emissions of it and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the various changes in climate in the last several decades. He then demonstrated how youth can network to bring about the change needed to end the climate crisis, showing video of young climate activists marching en masse and working on projects that help make their schools and communities more environmentally conscious and less wasteful.
Slips of paper were passed out to the assembly audience, on which students wrote their names to be included in a Declaration of Independence on Fossil Fuels, which will be presented to President Barack Obama.
[Updated] The Harker Speaker Series returns in 2009 with Rick Steves, renowned travel book writer. He will discuss his recent book, “Travel as a Political Act,” on Oct. 29 at 11 a.m. in the Harker Gymnasium on the Harker Upper School campus, 500 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose. RSVP is required (HSSRSVP@harker.org), admission is free, and parking is at our Blackford campus with a shuttle service to the event (see note below). The talk will be followed by a Q & A and and a book signing — Kepler’s Books of Menlo Park will have books for sale at the event.
About Rick Steves A piano teacher in his early career, Steves necessarily traveled on a tight budget, and eventually changed from music to traveling and giving seminars on budget travel. He now hosts an hour-long travel program weekly on public radio nationwide, and is in his fifth season on public television.
In his book, Steves talks about the ordinary people he has come across in his travels across Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, where he has learned about tolerance and cultural diversity, always seeking a fresh perspective as an American and a citizen of the world.
Note: Due to the volume of RSVPs we’ve received, guests will be shuttled from our Blackford campus (a few blocks away at 3800 Blackford Ave., San Jose) to the Saratoga campus beginning at 10:00 a.m. and continuing through the start of the program. Return shuttles to Blackford will begin at the end of the program, and the last shuttle will leave Saratoga for Blackford at approximately 1:15 p.m. (This is a regular school day at our Saratoga campus and all parking spots on that campus are assigned and will be in use).
The Harker School Blackford Campus
3800 Blackford Ave., San Jose
Shuttle pick-up at Blackford will be in the front loading zone near the main campus entry. A security officer will be present to monitor the vehicles parked there.
Buddhist abbot Jian Hu Shi made his fifth annual visit to Harker Oct. 21, bringing his message on how to cope with life. The robed, tonsured, quiet, humorous monk, the first speaker in the Cum Laude Society Lecture Series, told a crowd of about 30 students and faculty members of the four noble truths and how suffering can be traced back to greed, ignorance and anger.
Jian Hu, who has a doctorate in computer science and worked in the aerospace industry before making the spread of Buddhism his life’s work, told a few stories of how Buddhist thinking, seeking the source of the conflict, had helped people resolve important issues. Jian Hu, abbot at the Chung Tai Zen Center of Sunnyvale, noted even an issue as large as global warming, caused by greed and ignorance – greed for personal possessions and ignorance of the long term pollution from them – can be addressed with Buddhist logic.
In response to questions from the audience, Jian Hu addressed perceptions about Buddhist doctrine, including respect for animals while understanding that killing an animal is not as bad as killing a human, and that it is hypothetically permissible to kill a human to save a village. He told of a couple methods of meditating and recommended meditation as a way to deal with anger, along with finding the source of the anger and examining its rationality. Jian Hu noted that nothing has real value except one’s mind.
[Update] The Harker Conservatory presents “Galileo,” first written by Bertolt Brecht just prior to World War II, then updated by Brecht in 1947. In the play, Brecht uses the later years of Galileo Galilei, the great natural philosopher, who was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for his scientific discoveries, to explore conflicts between dogmatism and science.
Director Jeffrey Draper said the play “offers a unique series of challenges to the actors and designers as the action takes place over 30 years in 13 scenes throughout Italy.” Working against classic theater traditions, the play presents a flawed protagonist and antagonists who are not wholly bad. The real protagonist of the play may be truth, with science and religion each fighting to claim it, said Draper.
To best prepare for their roles, Dr. Paula Findlen, Chair of the Department of History at Stanford University, came to speak to the cast at their retreat in October, and answer questions about Galileo Galilei and the Italian Renaissance. “Findlen often teaches a course on Galileo at Stanford and we were very lucky to have her address our students and give us an invaluable context for the events of the play,” Draper noted.
“This version of Galileo is unique to Harker, however, as two actors will be sharing the title role each night,” Draper said. “They are each on stage throughout, with Adi Parige (Gr. 11) playing the more family-oriented and comfortable half of the man and Kendra Moss (Gr. 12) playing the more ambitious and scientific side of him.”
“The show contains a large musical production number,” added Draper, “in our case, staged as an extravagant puppet show with music created by Nico Nagle (Gr. 9), Kovid Puria (Gr. 10), John Ammatuna (Gr. 11), and Allika Walvekar (Gr. 11). This play is very much unlike any production Harker has presented before and is a perfect choice for a school that excels in math and science. We hope the entire community comes out to see this unique and challenging production.”
Show dates are Oct. 29, 30 and 31, at 7:30 p.m., at the Blackford Theater. Tickets are $25 reserved, $10 adults, seniors and students. E-mail tickets@harker.org to reserve tickets.
Harker sports fans can now grab a meal while attending their favorite sporting event. The Carley Café, a food trailer donated anonymously, will be on site for designated home games and events. Phyllis Carley was long known as Harker’s biggest sports fan, so when she passed away this year after 50 years working and volunteering for Harker, naming the trailer after her was an easy decision.
The Global Empowerment and Outreach student club kicked off its fall GEO week on Oct. 16 with a visit to the upper school by charity: water’s Lane Wood, who spoke to a special Friday assembly about the crisis being faced by more than one billion people worldwide who do not have access to clean drinking water. The charity: water organization, whose founder, Scott Harrison, visited Harker’s middle and upper school campuses last year, raises money to build wells where fresh water is sorely needed. So far the organization has completed more than 1,200 water projects that have helped approximately 650,000 people worldwide.
Clean drinking water is the theme of the fall GEO week, and includes various events and fundraisers, including a relay race and a program in which students sponsor teachers and staff who have pledged to give up their favorite drinks for the week.
[Updated] Women in Science, Technology, Electronics and Mathematics (WiSTEM) is taking on breast cancer awareness this fall, starting with a Breast Cancer Awareness Week Sept. 27-Oct. 2. The group opened its campaign with a slideshow presentation and appeal to students in the Monday upper school meeting, followed by a day of wearing pink. Other fundraising activities during the week included bracelet and cupcake sales.
The group is now recruiting and soliciting pledges for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on October 31 at Arena Green, Guadalupe River Trail in San Jose. The event is a 5k walk (3 miles), open to everyone, to raise funds and awareness for the fight against breast cancer. In addition WiSTEM has a Men Against Breast Cancer component in their campaign to encourage men to take an active role in the fight against this terrible disease.
After adding luster to the Harker reputation, the winning 2009 Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) competition team has gone above and beyond the call of duty, donating their winnings, $3,451.96, to Harker’s Annual Giving fund. The selfless gift means even more, as all team members are now graduates. The Senior Mix Team members, Hanh Dang, Daniel Kim, Tsung-Ju (Jeff) Lu, Jeff Mandell, Nikita Sinha, Kartik Venkatraman, Kevin Wang, Kevin Xu, all class of 2009, were advised by Anthony Silk, mathamatics teacher. The team won a trip to Disneyworld along with the cash, and, “we all thought that we should donate back to the school that gave us this victory,” said Sinha. “We figured it would be best spent as a donation (and) specified that the money would be used for scholarships for entering students.”
Third graders spent a day at the History Park in Kelley Park in San Jose, learning social studies by seeing homes and articles from the past in a natural setting. The park features 27 original and reproduction homes, businesses and landmarks that highlight Santa Clara Valley’s past. Children saw everything from an old firehouse to running trolley cars at the 14-acre park and played Victorian-era games.
Greg Lawson, assistant head of school for student affairs, recently acted as a guest reader during the weekly Teacher Reads period for kindergarten classes. Lawson, dramatizing the voices, and the children, listening to thrilling Halloween stories, all enjoyed the interlude. Lawson’s visit also tied in with the kindergartners’ study of communities, including the school community, as he is based at the upper school campus and does not often get into lower school classrooms.