Harker students and alumni had the unique opportunity to see one of their own compete in the summer Olympics in Beijing, as MS alumna Andrea Nott ’96 represented the U.S. in the synchronized swimming event. Nott, whose team finished fifth overall in Beijing, discovered her love for the sport at the age of nine, and has been named a U.S. Synchronized Swimming All-American for seven years — since 1999. She was selected as an alternate for the Athens games in 2004.
Surprisingly, Nott said she didn’t feel much pressure despite making her first Olympic appearance. “We did a lot of mental preparation, including detailed visualizations and simulations,” she said. “So, when we were waiting to go out to perform I actually felt surprisingly calm.” She also said that her main goal was to put on the best performance of her career. “I wanted to peak and amaze people at the Olympics,” said Nott. “I think our team did that.”
Nott is the daughter of Debra Nott, Harker’s director of nursing and, following a decompression period, Andrea resurfaced in October to join her mom, who went to Beijing with her, at the Harker Family Picnic. The swimmer noted one of the most remarkable experiences of the games was watching the opening ceremonies.
“A lot of Olympians had told me beforehand that it was their favorite part of the Olympics, but I couldn’t quite grasp how amazing it would be to see them light the torch until I saw it,” she recalled. But above all, it was the opportunity to participate in the games that made the biggest impression. “I had been looking forward to the Olympics for so long that I really didn’t want to realize after closing ceremonies that I had let it all go by too fast,” said Nott. “I knew beforehand that I would be retiring from synchronized swimming after the games, so when I watched the torch light in opening ceremonies, I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.”
For those aspiring to reach the stars, Nott says the key ingredient is determination. “Natural talent is a great gift, but it can only take you so far,” she says. “Hard work and tenacity are what will get you there in the end, and the reward will feel even greater.”
Over the summer, the World Awareness Committee (WAC), which recently became Global Empowerment and Outreach (GEO), donated a grand total of $7,400 to the Aid to Children Without Parents (ACWP) charity. The money will be put toward a new school for disadvantaged children in Cambodia.
Neha Sabharwal, Gr. 12, who served as WAC co-vice president last year, said the organization chose to donate to ACWP “not only because it was like the ‘underdog’ group but also because its mission and aims are so fundamentally concrete. This program is all about making lasting, tangible solutions.”
“We were really moved by the ACWP cause,” said Niti Shah, Gr. 11, who was WAC co-vice president last year, and currently serves as vice president of GEO. The organization sprang into action after watching an NBC news special on child sex trafficking. “Many of us didn’t know that it was going on and scarring the lives of girls by the thousands.”
The ACWP purchased the future school’s property, formerly the location of a brothel. When finished, it will provide a basic education to children residing in nearby villages. “[The ACWP was] extremely grateful for the donation,” said Shah.
To raise the money, WAC held a number of events, such as visits by ACWP representatives, a benefit concert, a dance and a student auction. Throughout the year, WAC also sold buttons, T-shirts and CDs containing music made by Harker students. WAC managed to raise about $6,000 on their own, and the amount was bumped to $7,400 after a number of anonymous donations.
GEO will hold its first fundraising and education week Nov. 10-14. The theme for the week will be the hunger and extreme poverty, which is first on the list of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. GEO will also begin fundraising for Free the Children, an organization based on youth empowerment and providing alternative sources of income for individuals worldwide.
The Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology has announced its 2008-09 semifinalists, and Harker has a total of six, one of only two schools on the West Coast to have that many, and the only one in Northern California. Congratulations to Rahul Ahuja, Dominique Dabija, Elena Madan, Vikram Nathan, Nikhil Raghuram and Andrew Stanek, all Gr. 12.
Harker had the highest percentage of semifinalists from among all the schools in California, with twice the number per class size as the second and third schools.
The Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology is designed to recognize talent early on and foster individual growth through science research. It is administered by The College Board and funded by the Siemens Foundation.
Student projects are judged on creativity, field knowledge, comprehensiveness, interpretation, literature review (source citation), scientific importance, future work (follow-up or applications), clarity of expression and presentation. About 300 projects nationwide were chosen as semifinalists. After that, up to thirty students and thirty teams are chosen to compete at six regional competitions. Harker began submitting projects to this competition in 2005-06, and had one semifinalist that inaugural year. In both 2006-07 and 2007-08, Harker fielded four semifinalists.
This school year marks the occasion of the 10th year since Harker opened the Bucknall campus and launched the new Upper School.
There will be a variety of activities and features throughout the year to celebrate, and to marvel at just how far we’ve come in 10 short years. Harker’s “Toast to 10 Years” celebration inspired teachers Diann Chung and Cindy Proctor to host a Gr. 1 activity on the 10th day of school, all based on the number 10.
Activities included the Flying Gumdrops, a Bean Bag Toss, a Ring Toss, the challenge of finding 10 things wrong on a page, and a variety of math games based on the number 10. “The Gumdrop Fling was fun when it touched the ceiling!” noted student Dominique P.
Other groups counted out 10 Goldfish (and ate ‘em!), while nearby, students jumped rope, counting up and down by tens. Each activity had its adherents. Matthew H. “liked counting 10 Goldfish and then eating them,” while Alexandra J. said she “liked the jump rope and counting by tens.
Harker students and alumni had the unique opportunity to see one of their own compete in the summer Olympics in Beijing, as MS alumna Andrea Nott ’96 represented the U.S. in the synchronized swimming event. Nott, whose team finished fifth overall in Beijing, discovered her love for the sport at the age of nine, and has been named a U.S. Synchronized Swimming All-American for seven years — since 1999. She was selected as an alternate for the Athens games in 2004.
Surprisingly, Nott said she didn’t feel much pressure despite making her first Olympic appearance. “We did a lot of mental preparation, including detailed visualizations and simulations,” she said. “So, when we were waiting to go out to perform I actually felt surprisingly calm.” She also said that her main goal was to put on the best performance of her career. “I wanted to peak and amaze people at the Olympics,” said Nott. “I think our team did that.”
Nott is the daughter of Debra Nott, Harker’s director of nursing and, following a decompression period, Andrea resurfaced in October to join her mom, who went to Beijing with her, at the Harker Family Picnic. The swimmer noted one of the most remarkable experiences of the games was watching the opening ceremonies.
“A lot of Olympians had told me beforehand that it was their favorite part of the Olympics, but I couldn’t quite grasp how amazing it would be to see them light the torch until I saw it,” she recalled. But above all, it was the opportunity to participate in the games that made the biggest impression. “I had been looking forward to the Olympics for so long that I really didn’t want to realize after closing ceremonies that I had let it all go by too fast,” said Nott. “I knew beforehand that I would be retiring from synchronized swimming after the games, so when I watched the torch light in opening ceremonies, I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.”
For those aspiring to reach the stars, Nott says the key ingredient is determination. “Natural talent is a great gift, but it can only take you so far,” she says. “Hard work and tenacity are what will get you there in the end, and the reward will feel even greater.
Not quite a blog but not far from it, Debra Nott, Harker’s director of nursing, is emailing from Beijing where she is both providing moral support for daughter, Andrea, a Harker alumna and U.S. synchronized swimming team member, and “discovering” China. Here are her illuminating, periodic missives to friends and family. We’ll add updates, so watch for a changing headline!
August 18 We attended our first synchro competition yesterday. It was duet tech and Andrea and Christina (Jones) were terrific! They are sitting in fifth place and hope to move up in free competition, today, but places don’t change often in Synchro. So far, every country is in the same slot they earned at the last World Championships, in Australia. It was a wonderful moment when they walked out on the pool deck. I had to keep telling myself that I was at the Olympics and our daughter was indeed swimming in the biggest competition in the world. After waiting for this for so many years, it’s going to take a little while for it to seem real. I’m taking a cue from Andrea and trying to be in the moment. She said in her blog that she didn’t want to find herself in closing ceremonies wondering how it all went so fast. The Water Cube is just as spectacular as it looks on TV. The bubbles you see on the outside are visible inside. The best part, other than watching Andrea swim there, is that the air conditioning actually works! That’s a first for an indoor pool.
After Andrea swam, we headed over to the McDonalds located in the Olympic Green. The food is the same as McDonalds in the U.S., but that’s where the similarity stopped. There were about 200 people massed outside. They let us inside in groups of about 100. Remember the Chinese campaign to get people used to lining up instead of duking it out to get to the head of the line? There was a program to encourage them to practice queuing on the 11th of every month because 11 looks like two people standing in line. Let me tell you, that didn’t work. I was squished by people a foot shorter than me and received more than a couple of elbows in the McRibs. That will be our last visit to the Olympic McDonalds!
Since we are living in an apartment, we need to purchase supplies, so we went to the most popular store in the neighborhood – Walmart. It is similar to Walmart in the US, with a few Chinese twists. As we entered, a cheerful young woman greeted us in Chinese. They have the usual displays with those happy faces designating low prices. Then you come across the seafood department. It looks just like the aquarium section at Petco, except here when you buy the fish, you don’t take it home and name it Bubbles. People walk up to a tank, point out a fish and the fish guy scoops it out, pops in in a plastic bag and you toss it in the cart still wiggling.
I just saw a commercial on TV suggesting that a vacation in Inner Mongolia would be lovely. I don’t know how that escaped my bucket list. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore!
The adventure and the competition continue!
August 16 We are living and moving around like real Beijingers now. Traffic here is regulated partly by traffic signals and party by the size and price of the vehicle. Busses and trucks have first priority, followed by vans, cars, bicycles and pedestrians in that order. Vehicles use their horn to warn cyclists and pedestrians that they will be flattened if they don’t move. Beijingers casually step to the side when honked at and we are starting to do so as well, without getting that “fear of imminent death” expression first. Although the vehicles do stop at stop lights, pedestrians and cyclists generally ignore them. When we cross a street on a green light, cars turning right and left cut through packs of pedestrians like a golden retriever going after pigeons. We scatter in enough directions to let the cars through, then proceed on across the street.
Before we came to Beijing, I saw pieces on TV showing scores of taxi drivers going to English classes every Saturday. There are 67,000 taxis in Beijing and I suspect that the 30 or so I saw in English class are the only ones who regularly attended. When we called a taxi to go the Bird’s Nest for Opening Ceremonies, we confidently hopped in, knowing our driver had been practicing “Welcome to Beijing. Where would you like to go?” We went for short and simple and said to him “Olympics.” He looked at us like we were crazy and said a lot of words in Chinese. I figure he was either saying “Could you be more specific as to your choice of venue?” or “This is going to be the longest 17 days of my life!” After that we always have our destination written down in Chinese.
We went to kayaking and rowing yesterday. Security is really tight at the venues. We always get patted down, run over with a metal detector and have our bags searched. The last time they went through my purse, the security guy pulled out my “Charmin to Go” (tiny portable roll of toilet paper) and asked me what it was. It flashed through my mind that since I don’t speak Chinese, it might come down to being branded a terrorist or, somehow, miming the function of toilet paper. Fortunately, he became distracted by my lipstick and forgot about it.
Next on our list of things to see is a hutong tour by rickshaw. Hutongs are very small houses in long rows, many of which were demolished to make way for the Olympics and new hotels. They are doing tours because hutongs may soon be part of China’s past. Then we’re off to a street famous for it’s night life.
August 13, This week our other daughter, Valerie, and her husband, Bentley, joined us in Beijing. We toured the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. Wednesday and Thursday we’ll be attending Olympic events. We’ve seen women’s softball, men’s beach volleyball and, tomorrow, will see rowing and kayak/slalom.
We are staying in an apartment we are renting from a Mr. Gong. It was his apartment when he was part of a “work unit” of people employed by the People’s Daily Newspaper. We’re in one of many 15- or 20-story apartment buildings around the newspaper office. We are clearly the first non-Chinese people ever to set foot in the place. We stop traffic when we walk around. We’re greeted by everything from mild curiosity to slack-jawed amazement. People stop me at tourist sites to have their picture taken with “the giant blonde woman”! The children are charming, as they are everywhere and run up to us to greet us with “Hello”. It may be the only English word they know and they are very proud to use it with us! We are working on speaking Chinese, but it is hard to remember. It seems that it goes into our brains, finds nothing similar to hang out with and goes right back out.
Andrea has Friday off and we hope to take her to one Olympic event, that day. Then, it’s back to the pool. She begins competing on Monday. More news later–the adventure continues!
August 12, briefly: I think my next email will be about getting around in Beijing. Pedestrians don’t have the right of way. They barely have the right to exist! More later!
August 9 We made it to Beijing by way of Shanghai, a Yangtze River cuise and then the Terra Cotta Warriors. The trip has been great and we have been healthy the whole time. We have learned so much about China and its people. Attending the opening ceremonies last night was a once in a lifetime experience. We missed some of the detail by not seeing it on TV, but the spectacle and size of everything was something you have to be there to believe. It was over 100 degrees and very humid in the Bird’s Nest. The people running sideways around the globe and the moving type boxes full of people were incredible. They must have been practicing for years. We were in our hard plastic seats for seven hours, after which I have a permanent crease in my backside from clothing seams. It will be until the next Olympics before that corrects itself! I’ll see if we can send pictures after Andrea swims during the second week. Hope things are going well at Harker!
Harker grad Veronica Pugin ’08 recently received a Northern California Regional Hispanic Heritage Youth Award for the Sports category. Pugin was given a Gold Medallion award, the top honor in her category, which included a $3,000 educational grant. The Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards were created by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation to recognize students of Hispanic descent who serve as role models in their schools and communities. Pugin received the award based on her application, academic achievements and a letter of recommendation from soccer coach Troy Thiele, who also serves as an Upper School math teacher.
Over 100 public and private school educators from around California attended Harker’s third annual Harker Teacher Institute on June 18 to explore some of the latest instructional technologies.
For the past two years, Harker has sponsored this institute for educators, and this year’s institute focused on the instructional use of free – or almost free software – and Web resources. Presented by Harker’s Instructional Technology Department, this year’s event was especially well-attended with over 100 teachers attending from schools throughout the state. “Harker really is like a lab school when it comes to applying technology to teaching and learning,” said Fred Triefenbach, upper school computer science department chair who organizes the annual event. “Having opportunities like this to share with our fellow educators, not only helps all of their students and our community, it helps our presenters reflect and improve their own teaching.“ Planning for this year’s event began in February, and included collaboration with outside supporters such as SFMOMA and Google.
Topics covered included “Leading From the Trenches! Google Docs and more,” the keynote presented by Dan Hudkins, Harker’s director of instructional technology, and breakout sessions on Moodle Media, Threaded Discussions, Google Docs, Screencasting with JING, Music Editing in Audacity and ArtThink.
For more information about this annual event for educators, and to be notified when registration opens for next year’s event, contact communications@harker.org.
Tanya Schmidt ’08 and her sister, Sylvia ’06 – Team Lokahi – recently completed the two-day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in San Francisco July 12-13, raising over $6,000 in donations of the total $7.9 million raised over the weekend.
“I want to thank each one of you for supporting us,” said Tanya, who explained that their team name means “unity” and “togetherness” in Hawaiian. “No matter what difficulties you face in life, we believe that if you have someone supporting and encouraging you along the way, you can make it through, so we decided to help fight the battle against cancer together.”
The event was a marathon and a half – 39.3 miles – divided up with 26.2 miles on the first day, and 13.1 miles on the second – that started in San Francisco, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, and ended up in Crissy Fields to spend where participants spent the night in tents. The second day’s route wound through San Francisco and finished back where the walk started in Golden Gate Park. Tanya recounts her experience:
“By the end of the second day, my legs and feet hurt, but the pain I felt is nothing compared to the pain that the families affected by cancer feel every day. As one of the posters along the route said, ‘Blisters don’t need chemo.’ On the second day of our walk, after climbing up and down some brutal San Francisco hills, we passed by the San Francisco Avon Medical Breast Center, the site where much of the money I have raised will go to directly help members of our local communities. It was very touching to see the nurses and patients line up along the sidewalk outside of the medical center to cheer us on with high fives and many heartfelt thank yous. Your support helped me get there, and I am so grateful and appreciative.
“As I crossed the finish line arm in arm with an Irish lady who I had just met a couple hours earlier, I realized my favorite part of the weekend: the feeling that no matter what struggles you encounter in life, you never have to be alone. The statistics are sad. Every three minutes, another woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, and every 14 minutes, breast cancer takes the life of another person. During the time that I spent walking this weekend, the lives of 670 women have been forever changed with the news that they have breast cancer. With the support of people like you, however, we can change the statistics for the better. Together, we can draw strength from hope, and together, we can cure cancer.” Both dedicated their efforts this year to the family of John Near, a 30-year Harker history teacher who is battling colon cancer.
The Harker Varsity boys volleyball team recently received the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s (AVCA) Team Academic Award for the 2007-2008 season. Since the 1992-1993 academic year, the award has been given to collegiate and high school volleyball teams that have maintained a team-cumulative grade point average of at least 3.30 on a 4.0 scale or at least 4.10 on a 5.0 scale. Harker was one of only 13 high school boys volleyball teams to win this honor. Of the approximately 3,000 schools represented in the AVCA, 353 schools, just under 12%, qualified for the award.