Harker’s Office of Communication recently received a Best of District VII award from the Council for Advancement & Support of Education (CASE), which each year recognizes the best digital and print publications serving educational communities, primarily universities. Harker received the award for the series of videos about the construction of the middle school campus, filmed and edited by the OOC’s own Eric Marten with generous help from freelance videographer Jenny Miller.
This latest win marks the eighth CASE award for the department since 2011, when it received a silver award for Harker Quarterly magazine. Since then, the OOC has earned CASE awards for major projects including the Harker website, the 125th anniversary sub-website and the 2018 athletic branding campaign. The OOC also has received more than two dozen MarCom awards — administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals — since 2007.
The Harker Math Club, coached by upper school math teacher Anu Aiyer, just won the fall 2022 high school Math Madness championship. It was the club’s first time winning the competition since 2015. Held by AreteLabs, the biannual online competition consists of four league rounds and six tournament bracket rounds. Teams compete in 30-minute matches with two teams facing off at a time. Teachers schedule the times for their teams to complete the seven or eight multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions that make up each match. Approximately 20,000 students participate in Math Madness competitions each year.
Following their big win in the James Lick Invitational tournament, varsity boys basketball dropped a very close game against Del Mar High School with a final score of 53-55, the team’s first loss of the season. The team bounced back two days later with a 47-24 win over University Prep Academy, and faces Design Tech at home this Friday, Dec. 16 at 6 p.m.
Varsity girls soccer is off to a great 4-0 start, defeating Scotts Valley, James Lick High School, Prospect High School and Castilleja since their Nov. 29 start. The team will play Half Moon Bay in an away game this Friday at 5 p.m.
Varsity girls basketball defeated Lincoln San Jose last week, coming back from losses against Evergreen Valley and American High School in the Sandi Stober Classic tournament. The team will be busy during the winter break, facing Independence High this Saturday at home, followed by away games against Piedmont Hills and North Salinas and participating in the Cupertino Classic tournament at Cupertino High School.
Boys varsity soccer lost last week to Santa Clara High, and played to a tie against Lynbrook on Friday. The team’s final game of 2022 will be at home versus Yerba Buena this Friday at 3 p.m.
Chess enthusiasts Vyom Vidyarthi, grade 10, and Omya Vidyarthi, grade 7, participated in the North American Youth Chess Championship in Mexico City from Dec. 1-6, each winning their respective sections. Vyom placed first in the U20 section and earned his second grandmaster norm, while Omya won the U20 girls section. Earlier this year, Vyom and Omya each won gold at the Pan American Youth Chess Championship.
On Nov. 28, Simar Bajaj ’20 received the Foreign Press Association’s Science Story of the Year award, for a piece he penned for The Guardian in August about pig-to-human heart transplants. Bajaj, who currently attends Harvard University, went to London to receive the award in person. A video has been posted of Bajaj receiving the award, as well as some of his remarks. The FPA is the world’s oldest press organization, dating back to 1888. Bajaj is the youngest awardee in the organization’s history.
The fourth-annual Santa Clara Children’s Business Fair, organized by ninth grader Mikhil Kiran, took place Oct. 22 at Live Oak Park in Santa Clara, during which 100 young entrepreneurs pitched their product ideas to visitors from the local community. “We had a really good event, with a wonderful turnout,” said Kiran, who estimated that several hundred people attended.
Kiran, who is also the founder of the nonprofit Kidzrule, has run the event since he was a fifth grader. He started the nonprofit to create and inspire the next generation of young entrepreneurs.
Harker students participating at the fair included fifth grader Ryan Santosh, who created Nature Designs, and Aditya Shivakumar, grade 9, and Trisha Shivakumar, grade 8, of Magic Escape.
Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Santa Clara City Councilmember Kathy Watanabe, who gave special speeches to the entrepreneurs, were present at the fair, encouraging and congratulating the young entrepreneurs on their first adventures into business.
Last month, sixth graders Ethan Hao, Randy Hui and Terry Zhu, and fifth graders Isabella Du, Richard Li and Aixuan Sun, took first place at a First Lego League Northern California Qualifier event held at Piedmont Middle School. Known collectively as Tierra Bots, the team scored 360 points, and presented an innovation project for a robot that specializes in cleaning solar panels. The team plans to enter the regional competition in February.
In mid-November, three Harker eighth graders were honored in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Contest’s junior division. This year’s contest, held by Bow Seat Ocean Programs, received 4,000 entries from around the world and aimed to inspire youth to learn about and take action on climate change. Students researched and wrote about climate issues in their grade 7 expository writing classes, and their essays were entered into the contest as part of the curriculum.
Additionally, middle school English teacher Marjorie Hazeltine received an Educator’s Award along with $750 to put toward education on climate change. “I submitted a summary of the way I used the contest in my classroom at Harker,” Hazeltine said. “The theme last year created the perfect opportunity to teach satire, persuasion, rhetoric and humor.”
This past weekend, Harker alumni Melissa Chen ’08, Kacie Kaneyuki ’10, Rebecca Liu ’13 and Daniza Rodriguez ’13 – who is also the upper school girls basketball coach – participated in some friendly competition with Harker students in this year’s alumni basketball game. Several alums who planned on competing unfortunately could not attend, so the alumni team was graciously joined by junior varsity coaches Melissa Cabrera and Pip Chan. The first alumni basketball game was held in 2013 and takes place every year over the Thanksgiving break.
Last month, junior Shayla He was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award (HMMA) in the Original Recording category. The HMMAs honor up-and-coming independent artists in a wide variety of categories. Shayla, who is a member of the upper school show choir Downbeat, attended the Hollywood Music in Media Academy’s award ceremony earlier this month in Hollywood, where she had the opportunity to see performances by Grammy winners Charles Fox and Diane Warren. Celebrities including Tom Hanks were also in attendance.