In April, middle school librarian Bernie Morrissey hosted a video chat with author Rex Ogle, whose novel, “Free Lunch,” won the middle school’s first Tournament of Books, an event in which books were placed in a tournament bracket and voted on by students. Ogle, who previously worked in comics with stints at Marvel and DC, talked about how he became a writer, how long it takes him to write, his work in comics and his follow-up to “Free Lunch.” He also read from “a story in real time” that he has been writing about a middle schooler’s experience being quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire chat is viewable via the embedded YouTube video.
During the spring semester, John Owens MS ‘85, circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, made special appearances at Harker classes via Zoom. In May, Owens gave a presentation of the Ninth Circuit’s history and geographic boundaries to lower school history teacher Eric Leonard’s grade 3 students. Much of the class time was set aside for the students to ask questions, but due to time constraints, Owens agreed to answer questions that students posted online.
In April, he visited Carol Green’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class to discuss his background, including his career in law, his duties as a circuit judge and memories of his time at Harker. He also answered questions from Harker students on topics such as memorable cases he has presided over and advice for soon-to-be-graduates.
Last week, middle school science teacher Tamar Hawk invited environmental activist Tiffany Duong ‘02 to speak with her students about careers in environmental advocacy. Duong, who attended Harker from first grade through grade 12 and was a member of the upper school’s first graduating class, delivered an overview of how she became interested in environmental issues and how her career changed in the ensuing years. She discovered her love for the topic while attending an assembly on the rainforest as a fifth grader. “I wanted to be the person who was standing in front of the bulldozers at the Amazon,” she recalled.
After graduating from UCLA, Duong worked as a renewable energy lawyer, handling contracts and negotiations for solar arrays and wind turbine farms, including California’s Tehachapi Wind Farm and Ivanpah Solar Power Tower. Duong briefly discussed why more states don’t use renewable energy, explaining that issues such as cost and space are considerable hindrances. “There’s not always a storage capability for renewable energy, which makes it hard for some areas to utilize renewable energy,” she said. Politics, including lobbies from major industries, also play a large role. “A lot of people … don’t necessarily believe that climate change is even happening or that this is an issue,” she said.
Duong later discovered that she wanted to be closer to the environment she was working to save, and made a career switch. In 2016, she headed to the Peruvian Amazon, researching biodiversity along newly opened areas of the rainforest, documenting existing species and discovering new ones in order to prevent encroachment from miners and loggers. Her work in ocean advocacy began in 2017, as she helped in the effort to ban drift net fishing in California and tagged sharks in Costa Rica to provide evidence of migratory swimways in order to protect aquatic life. In 2018 she worked to restore coral reefs in the Florida Keys.
Duong continues to go on expeditions in addition to working as an environmental journalist. She advised the students that there is no single most effective way to be an advocate, using her own career as an example. “I’ve worked in law, policy, education and now media, and I think the most effective thing will be the one that you do,” she said. “Whatever you want to do, try it.”
In May, lower school science teacher Enni Chen’s kindergarten and grade 2 students submitted photos and videos of experiments they conducted at home. For a lesson in capillary action – the mechanism by which liquid flows through narrow spaces – students including kindergartner Nora Yan placed paper towels into cups of colored water, resulting in highly colorful creations.
While learning about electricity, second graders learned how to build their own circuits, and student Corinne Chou used her circuit to make a very clever alarm that makes a noise when tripped by an opening door. In another lesson, second graders learned how placing varying amounts of water in glasses causes them to vibrate at different frequencies. Students Sophie Cai, Megan Lin and Sophie Croswhite created videos of themselves playing tunes using arrangements of glasses filled with different amounts of water.
Students in Susan Nace’s Study of Music class composed original pieces during the shelter-in-place as part of their studies. These pieces were later recorded using a variety of methods and posted online for analysis. Students also commented on their pieces, detailing their inspirations, processes and the tools they used to create their music.
“I enjoyed working on my composition once I got an idea to go off of,” said Kyra Hawk, grade 9, whose piece was written for her father and brother, both French horn players. “I was impressed by what I could compose, because I never thought of myself a composer of any sort.”
Freshman Anthony Zhao found that working from home afforded him a more flexible schedule, and he used Apple’s GarageBand software to compose his piece. “Some challenges I have faced are learning to compose in a new software and creating effective beat drops,” he said. “When I began, I barely had an idea of how to use GarageBand, but now I am able to compose music in GarageBand.”
For her piece, written for violin and cello, Katelyn Abellera, grade 9, enlisted the help of violinist Sawyer Lai and cellist Abby Tcheng, both grade 9. “First, I came up with the main melody. Then I came the bass part, where I took into consideration harmonies, parallel, similar, contrary and oblique motion that we learned about in theory,” she said.
For those who wish to see and hear these pieces, the students’ works have been uploaded to a public folder accessible by all.
In April, lower school science teacher Shital Ashar made the most of the distance learning format by teaching from various spaces at her home via Zoom. For a lesson on seed anatomy, she had students dissect a bean seed to learn about its various parts. She then demonstrated how seeds could be used to make a delicious salad while students made their own. “Kids were super excited and prepared with ingredients that I had listed on the group space,” Ashar said.
Some days later, Ashar took advantage of the favorable weather to teach another unit on plants, this time dipping a stick of celery in colored water to show students how water moves through plant tissue. “We then learned about types of roots, with examples,” she said. “Students also illustrated roots and examples in their science lab notebook.”
In the two weeks since Harker campuses closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lower school community has been finding many unique ways to make the most out of the remote learning experience.
Michelle Anderson’s kindergarten students celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by creating leprechaun traps, an annual activity usually held at school. “On St. Patrick’s Day we try and catch a leprechaun so they can lead us to their gold,” Anderson said. Undeterred by the closure, students sent in photos of their creations.
Teachers, meanwhile, also have been getting creative while working from home. Art teacher Gerry-louise Robinson cobbled together her setup using such available materials as a laundry basket. Ann Smitherman, grades 4 and 5 language arts teacher, had her sons Cole MS ‘16 and MC ‘16 as well has her husband record videos of themselves reading from picture books for her students. “They’ve figured anything different is good during this time when kids are at home!” said Ann.
Students are also making their work from home more interesting, such as fifth grader Adrian Roufas, who recorded a time-lapse video while creating his latest art piece.
Many upper school teachers are incorporating a variety of methods to manage the amount of screen time their students are having each day due to the shift to remote learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With students both attending classes and doing homework on laptops and other devices, educators are concerned about the amount of time students are spending in front of screens. “I am alarmed at the extent of screen time and lack of physical movement,” said upper school chemistry teacher Smriti Koodanjeri, who has been going on short walks with her daughter, Anya.
Sharing Koodanjeri’s concerns, business and entrepreneurship teacher Michael Acheatel included 15 minutes of light exercise into his Zoom classes. “I am also keeping my screen time-based assignments as light as possible,” he said. He’s also worked with business & entrepreneurship teacher Juston Glass and athletics coach Loren Powers to organize online exercise periods, to which all students are invited. Upper school history teacher Carol Green suggested including slides in presentations that remind students to take stretch breaks. Last week, she and fellow history teacher Julie Wheeler “unintentionally added a lot of movement to our class” by giving students the option to submit their assignment as a video made on the video sharing service TikTok. “The TikTok format gets the students moving!” Green said.
“Honestly, my biggest suggestion would be to cut down the amount of material we are trying to cover,” said upper school English teacher Tia Barth. ” I’m trying to give only about 80 minutes of work with class time and homework combined. Everything we teach and do is important, but we’re going to have to prioritize and scale back to make this approach sustainable.”
While understanding teachers’ concerns, upper school LID director Diane Main cautioned that screen time shouldn’t be altogether avoided. “Are they passive consumers of content, or are they interacting and creating? The more we can have them doing the latter, and for shorter stretches rather than an hour or more at a time, the better it is likely to be for them,” she said.
The ongoing school closure, which began last week as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has dramatically changed the day-to-day lives of Harker students and faculty, but the community is still finding ways to continue both instruction and socializing by switching to platforms such as Zoom. Yesterday, the advisory of Office of Communication Director Pam Dickinson and Performing Arts Chair Laura Lang-Ree met via Zoom, and The Harker School Jazz Band decided to try taking its practice online. Upper School Admission Director Jennifer Hargreaves’ advisory posed for a photo during its Zoom meeting, and juniors Nilisha Baid, Anoushka Buch, Ruya Ozveren and Sabrina Takemoto took the opportunity for an online hangout during today’s lunch.
Business and entrepreneurship teacher Juston Glass’ students studied demographics for a marketing project and did a case study on how to market Apple products to previous generations. “The teams had great ideas utilizing the marketing mix strategy, also known as the four P’s: product, place, price and promotion,” Glass said. “And we are enjoying being able to remote learn and collaborate despite the circumstances.” During some extra break time in upper school science teacher Chris Spenner’s class on research on methods, the students were treated to an impromptu jazz performance by sophomore saxophonist Aaron Tran. “It was a poignant moment of community and support in strange times,” said Spenner, who was understandably “too entranced by the performance” to capture it in a video.