Fifty-eight students participated in the inaugural upper school speech and debate team retreat on Aug. 25-26. The team met at the San Jose Sheraton for a mix of team building, prep for the season and a fun dinner/arcade trip. Maddie Huynh, grade 11, noted that the retreat “was a great way to meet the new freshmen, get a start on the season and bond with the team.” Ben Yuan, grade 12, added that he “loved getting a clear vision for the season.” The enthusiasm spilled over to the coaches who enjoyed having such a positive start to the season. Go speech and debate Eagles!
Fifty-eight students participated in the inaugural upper school speech and debate team retreat on Aug. 25-26. The team met at the San Jose Sheraton for a mix of team building, prep for the season and a fun dinner/arcade trip. Maddie Huynh, grade 11, noted that the retreat “was a great way to meet the new freshmen, get a start on the season and bond with the team.” Ben Yuan, grade 12, added that he “loved getting a clear vision for the season.” The enthusiasm spilled over to the coaches who enjoyed having such a positive start to the season. Go speech and debate Eagles!
Fifty-eight students participated in the inaugural upper school speech and debate team retreat on Aug. 25-26. The team met at the San Jose Sheraton for a mix of team building, prep for the season and a fun dinner/arcade trip. Maddie Huynh, grade 11, noted that the retreat “was a great way to meet the new freshmen, get a start on the season and bond with the team.” Ben Yuan, grade 12, added that he “loved getting a clear vision for the season.” The enthusiasm spilled over to the coaches who enjoyed having such a positive start to the season. Go speech and debate Eagles!
The Harker Conservatory held its inaugural Summer Conservatory program in June and July, inviting young theater enthusiasts to grasp a unique opportunity to hone their craft and learn from top instructors and industry professionals.
Laura Lang-Ree, Harker’s director of performing arts, had been exploring the idea of a summer program at Harker, as she knew firsthand the value of strong summer performing arts programs, both as a professional and a mother to three performing arts-loving kids.
“But I also knew that there was nowhere to host it. … With nowhere to host such a program, it was only a dream – until this year,” said Lang-Ree, alluding to the opening of the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. As the opening of the new building approached, she began looking into how to develop a summer program while addressing another challenge: how to create a program that would not directly compete with other summer performing arts offerings outside Harker that she felt were “already doing a wonderful job.”
“There was a lot around that was really great, and there is no reason to compete with programs that are already doing a great service in the community,” she said. To this end, Lang-Ree began searching last summer for a specific niche that the future program would fill to enhance the selection of summer offerings without competing with them.
It was around this time that Lang-Ree discovered that one of her favorite theater companies, the California Theatre Center, would be closing its doors after more than 40 years. Lang-Ree, who found the news “devastating,” stepped up to help fill the void left by CTC’s closure. Her own children – rising senior Ellie, Cecilia ’13 and Madi ’15, who was on staff at Summer Conservatory – had enjoyed great experiences at programs such as CTC and Peninsula Youth Theatre. “Our summers were full of fantastic theater opportunities,” she said. “Losing CTC was a loss to the entire community.”
With the information she had gathered from consulting people from other summer programs, Lang-Ree designed the Summer Conservatory to be “a process-based, in-depth, thoughtful program for kids who are really hungry to learn more, do more and be more as a theater artist student.”
Students in grades 6-9 joined the Conservatory Presents course, designed for young theater lovers eager to build their chops. A more advanced course, called Conservatory Intensive, was available for grade 9-12 students by audition only. Morning classes – both required and elective – emphasized voice and movement, scene study, improvisation and other techniques.
“One of the interesting things about being a performer is you go deeper as you repeat lessons already learned,” Lang-Ree explained. “There’s a certain level of repetition that’s very important to becoming a more finessed performer, and yet we’ll always have something a little bit more to hand the older child so that they’re getting more to chew on as they grow.”
Students spent the afternoons rehearsing for one-act plays that were performed on the final day of the program. Performers were cast following auditions held at the beginning of the course.
Among the directing staff, 2015 Harker Conservatory graduates Zoe Woehrmann and Madi Lang-Ree were brought on as co-directors for the showcase, and helped develop and teach acting classes in addition to their directorial duties.
“We’ve been a part of the performing arts program at Harker for our entire lives, and it’s what inspired us to pursue theater in college as well,” Woehrmann said. “When we heard of the opportunity to be able to help be part of the inaugural group of teachers and directors to start the summer program at Harker … we just jumped at the opportunity.”
Because of their extensive conservatory experience (both were directors featured in the 2015 Student Directed Showcase), she and Madi were given considerable freedom when helping to create the Summer Conservatory curriculum along with Lang-Ree. Both alumnae also are studying theater in college, with Madi having directed a one-act play in her most recent semester at Chapman University, and Woehrmann, a rising senior at New York University, planning to take a play she wrote and directed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
“We worked together before camp actually started to design the curriculum and the daily schedule of classes we thought were important and how we were going to structure them and what we were going to teach within them,” Woerhmann said. They then worked in conjunction with Lang-Ree to come up with the best possible age-appropriate class curriculum for serious theater students.
Madi, who has previous experience teaching at other summer programs, said she was surprised by how much students already knew and their enthusiasm for the many aspects of the program. “I don’t remember knowing very much at all about Shakespeare in middle school, but I’ve had a couple kids who are like, ‘I’ve got this monologue memorized from Hamlet and this one from Macbeth!’” she exclaimed. “And then some kids will really like movement or really like improvisation and some kids will keep asking us, ‘Can I help with costumes or can I help with tech elements as well as being on stage.’”
Students with that eagerness to delve deeply into theater are precisely the type Laura Lang-Ree hopes the program will continue to attract. “[Summer Conservatory] is for the kid who believes what’s fun is the day-to-day work, the rehearsals where they can go deeper and bring out all the details of their characters and the story they are telling” she said. “That’s what they will achieve here.”
In the late 1880s, the town of Palo Alto had only about 1,400 residents. It would be nearly another 100 years before the term “Silicon Valley” was coined and the area became known as an innovation hub. In 1890, Congress had just established Yosemite as the nation’s third national park and Stanford University was in its infancy.
However, the need for students who were well prepared to go on to Stanford and other top universities was evident. So, in 1893 at the behest of Stanford’s first president, The Harker School was founded by Frank Cramer as Manzanita Hall, a college preparatory school for boys. Miss Harker’s School for Girls, founded by Catherine Harker, followed soon after in 1902.
Urvi Gupta ’14 is finishing up her years at Stanford this spring, earning a degree and putting on a conference – and it is hard to say which she is most excited about.
The conference was the culmination of a three-month long initiative called Disrupt Diabetes, a unique, patient-forward innovation challenge, said Gupta, who is earning a B.S. in human biology with a concentration in behavioral science and health design. The challenge included 12 teams of five; with speakers, judges, mentors and volunteers, about 80 people attended the conference.
The challenge was designed to put diabetes patients in the driver’s seat of innovation. Twelve patients were partnered with designers and students in March, and these teams spent nine weeks uncovering compelling needs rooted in the patient’s day-to-day experiences.
From there, teams conducted user research, interviewing diverse stakeholders and doing landscape and literature reviews. On May 20, the teams met at the Stanford School of Medicine for a design sprint, where they were joined by a medical expert and thought leader. The overarching goal was to leverage diverse perspectives to generate impactful and viable solutions to patient needs. At the end of the conference, each team pitched its need and solution to a panel of judges, who selected three winning projects to receive a monetary award and mentorship to continue work after the challenge.
Gupta was ecstatic about the results. “Over the past few years, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to delve into the health care space from a variety of angles,” she said, “but one of the primary perspectives has been from the lens of innovation and specifically leveraging design thinking (a problem solving framework) as a tool to create change within health care.
“Through a variety of projects, I’ve become extremely passionate about elevating the patient voice, a point of view very rarely heard from, despite the fact that they should be at the center of every conversation. In the spaces that I’ve been a part of, there has been a huge push to begin including patients in these processes, whether innovation at the systems level or placing a bigger emphasis on their experiences through the patient-doctor visit.
“However, it still felt like there was something missing. It is incredible that patients are at the table (in some places), but I wanted them to be spearheading the conversation. Hence, my co-director, Divya Gopisetty, and I came up with a new patient-forward innovation framework, which sought to promote patient partnership. But innovation can’t be done successfully within a silo – all perspectives and expertise are needed. Therefore, we also made sure to create multi-stakeholder teams with the focus of dismantling power hierarchies that typically exist in order to promote the most fruitful collaborations.
“We were specifically drawn to diabetes because of the strength and resilience individuals with diabetes have. As in most chronic conditions, patients are truly the experts on their own conditions, serving as their own doctors for the 99 percent of the time they are not seeing their physicians. We wanted to harness this expertise and use it as a driving force towards more meaningful innovation. Thus, Disrupt Diabetes was born.”
Trying to change medical care in the United States is a gargantuan job, but Gupta was willing to take some first steps. “I think the biggest challenge was juggling being a student and trying to plan this conference; my co-director and I often joked about how we wish we could be doing the conference full time.
“We received so much energy from everyone we talked to – from physicians across the country who gave their time to two students they didn’t know to the patients who became our powerhouses to our mentors, everyone expressed how necessary Disrupt Diabetes was in order to create a larger communal shift in our thinking around innovation. We felt so validated in the things that we have felt frustrated by in our experiences and were trying to fix within diabetes innovation with Disrupt. That energy is what really kept us going during this year.”
The results have been worth it, Gupta said. Three winning teams received monetary awards and mentorship to continue their projects. “Two of these teams had overlapping solutions and were chosen to share an award and collaborate for an even more impactful product down the line,” Gupta said. “This was a huge win for me because one of our primary goals with this initiative was to create deep collaboration between different stakeholders. The judges wanting to promote this collaboration was a sign that we were able to do that. The teams also have the opportunity to present their progress at a diabetes innovation conference in November.”
One other result was the creation of an “innovation framework which can be applied to a variety of conditions and may become an annual conference,” Gupta said. “Many of the people who participated in Disrupt, whether it was for the full two-plus months or just the day of, wished for us to continue this next year.”
Another goal Gupta is pleased to have reached is the creation of a community of Disruptors. “The relationships that came out of Disrupt were so genuine,” she said. “Because everyone came from a vastly different background, each individual had so much to bring to the table and were respected for it. In this process of empathy and listening, beautiful bonds were formed, which will hopefully grow as they take what they saw and felt at Disrupt back into their own communities.”
Gupta plans to continue her education in medical school, but first she is off to South Africa for a three-week conservation photography project, “which I’m incredibly excited about,” she said. While applying to medical schools, she plans to stay in the Bay Area and “work to further health care innovation and elevate all voices in health care.”
“I am so incredibly grateful for all that I have learned from directing Disrupt Diabetes,” Gupta added. “I have grown in so many ways as a learner, a designer and future health care professional, and I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who has supported me on this journey. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience bringing together such amazing minds and seeing the power of compassion in creating a brighter health care future.”
Freshman Luisa Pan’s college account got a big boost from a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block for winning the H&R Block Budget Challenge! Two other Harker students have won this award: Roma Gandhi, grade 10, in 2017 and Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 11, in 2016. Each semester, five awards are given out nationwide. H&R Block sent a representative to Harker today to award the check to Pan.
The most challenging aspect of the contest was recovering from unexpected events, said Pan. “I had to use overdraft protection in order to avoid a nonsufficient funds fee and risk losing even more.”
She did have to make special time to manage the challenge. “I managed to reserve a short period of time every day before going to sleep to check that all my checks had gone through, and I was following my budget plan,” she said. “Over the weekends, I had more time to properly plan my budget for the following week.
“I still have more to learn in terms of financial literacy and budgeting. I would most likely want to continue expanding my budgeting and decision-making skills.
“The challenge was a fun experience in all, and I don’t regret playing it. I think it’s a great way to teach students about finance and saving for the future before college. For me, I expect the challenge will help me to properly manage my money in college and beyond.”
In its congratulatory letter, H&R Block noted Pan “scored above thousands of students who participated in the online simulation.”
Freshman Luisa Pan’s college account got a big boost from a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block for winning the H&R Block Budget Challenge! Two other Harker students have won this award: Roma Gandhi, grade 10, in 2017 and Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 11, in 2016. Each semester, five awards are given out nationwide. H&R Block sent a representative to Harker today to award the check to Pan.
The most challenging aspect of the contest was recovering from unexpected events, said Pan. “I had to use overdraft protection in order to avoid a nonsufficient funds fee and risk losing even more.”
She did have to make special time to manage the challenge. “I managed to reserve a short period of time every day before going to sleep to check that all my checks had gone through, and I was following my budget plan,” she said. “Over the weekends, I had more time to properly plan my budget for the following week.
“I still have more to learn in terms of financial literacy and budgeting. I would most likely want to continue expanding my budgeting and decision-making skills.
“The challenge was a fun experience in all, and I don’t regret playing it. I think it’s a great way to teach students about finance and saving for the future before college. For me, I expect the challenge will help me to properly manage my money in college and beyond.”
In its congratulatory letter, H&R Block noted Pan “scored above thousands of students who participated in the online simulation.”
Freshman Luisa Pan’s college account got a big boost from a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block for winning the H&R Block Budget Challenge! Two other Harker students have won this award: Roma Gandhi, grade 10, in 2017 and Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 11, in 2016. Each semester, five awards are given out nationwide. H&R Block sent a representative to Harker today to award the check to Pan.
The most challenging aspect of the contest was recovering from unexpected events, said Pan. “I had to use overdraft protection in order to avoid a nonsufficient funds fee and risk losing even more.”
She did have to make special time to manage the challenge. “I managed to reserve a short period of time every day before going to sleep to check that all my checks had gone through, and I was following my budget plan,” she said. “Over the weekends, I had more time to properly plan my budget for the following week.
“I still have more to learn in terms of financial literacy and budgeting. I would most likely want to continue expanding my budgeting and decision-making skills.
“The challenge was a fun experience in all, and I don’t regret playing it. I think it’s a great way to teach students about finance and saving for the future before college. For me, I expect the challenge will help me to properly manage my money in college and beyond.”
In its congratulatory letter, H&R Block noted Pan “scored above thousands of students who participated in the online simulation.”
Harker middle school speech and debate team members competed at three tournaments in three states – California, Georgia and Texas – in April and early May.
In April, at the National Debate Coaches Association National Championship in Atlanta, 166 entries from 102 schools across 26 states competed. Harker had two middle school entrants and a few upper school entrants.
Also in April, 10 middle and upper school Harker students competed at the St. Marks Novice Round Up in Dallas. A dozen schools were represented. Results are below.
Novice Policy
1st – Deven Shah and Andy Lee, grades 8 and 9, respectively, went undefeated with a perfect 19-0 ballot count.
Novice Policy Speaker Awards
1st – Andy Lee
2nd – Deven Shah
6th – Ansh Sheth, grade 6
On May 7, approximately 40 Harker middle schools students competed against each other in two distinct intramural debate events in preparation for the Middle School Tournament of Champions Nationals, and earned the following awards:
Lincoln-Douglas
1st – Rahul Santhanam, grade 7
2nd – Brian Chen, grade 7
Public Forum
1st – Sriram Bhimaraju and Arjun Gurjar, both grade 6 (3-0)
2nd – Adam Sayed and Sathvik Chundru, both grade 6 (3-0)
Public Forum Speaker Awards
1st – Sascha Pakravan, grade 8
2nd – Carol Wininger, grade 7
3rd – Ansh Sheth, grade 6
4th – Ayan Nath, grade 8
5th – Deeya Viradia, grade 7
In early May, Harker speech and debate team members attended the middle school TOC at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington.
At the event, 232 of the best middle school speech and debate students from 35 schools competed. Overall, Harker had great success across all events. Harker won the First Place Sweepstakes Team Award for best middle school speech and debate team in the country.
Harker students won the following awards, competing against some of the best middle school teams in the country:
Policy
1st – Deven Shah and Mir Bahri, grade 7, undefeated, 20-0 ballot count
5th – Saanvi Arora, grade 8, and Sarah Mohammed, grade 7
Policy Speaker Awards
2nd – Deven Shah
18th – Mir Bahri
Lincoln-Douglas
2nd – Anshul Reddy, grade 8
3rd – Alexander Lan, grade 7
5th – Akhilesh Chegu, grade 8
5th – Arnav Dani, grade 8
9th – Brian Chen, grade 7
Lincoln-Douglas Speaker Awards
1st – Akhilesh Chegu, grade 8
3rd – Krish Maniar, grade 7
4th – Anshul Reddy, grade 8
Public Forum
1st – Sascha Pakravan and Ayan Nath
2nd – Krishna Mysoor, grade 7, and Ansh Sheth
5th – Arnav Jain and Rohan Rashingkar, both grade 8
17th – Michelle Jin and Lexi Nishimura, both grade 7