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.
This report was submitted by lower and middle school athletic director Theresa “Smitty” Smith.
Here are the results from our early winter and late winter sports seasons at the lower and middle schools.
Early Winter – Boys Basketball and Girls Soccer
VA (grade 7-8) Boys Basketball
The Varsity A team, coached by Richard Amarillas, finished in a three-way tie for second place in the WBAL with a record of 3-3 and went 4-5 overall. The team also took second place in the gold division of the WBAL tournament. Team awards went to Zachary Blue and Om Tandon, both grade 8 (co-MVPs), Brian Xiao, grade 8 (Eagle), and Kyle Leung, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (grade 7-8) Boys Basketball
The Varsity B team, coached by Tim Hopkins, finished in first place in the WBAL with an 8-0 record and went 10-0 overall. The team also took first place in the gold division of the WBAL tournament. Team awards went to Bowen Xia and Rahul Yalla, both grade 7 (co-MVPs), Vyom Vidyarthi, grade 7 (Eagle), and Gary Jin, grade 7 (Coaches).
VB2 (grade 7-8) Boys Basketball
The Varsity B2 team, coached by Randy LeGris, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a 2-5 record. Team awards went to Reza Jalil, grade 8 (MVP), Rayan Arya, grade 7 (Eagle), and Leo Sobczyn and Nikhil Chadha, both grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (grade 6) Boys Basketball
The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, finished in second place in the WBAL with a 5-1 record and an overall record of 7-2. The team also finished in second place in the gold division of the WBAL tournament. Team awards went to Brennan Williams (MVP), Topaz Lee (Eagle) and Rishaan Thoppay (Coaches).
JVB6 (grade 6) Boys Basketball
The Junior Varsity B6 team, coached by Raul Rios, finished in third place in the WBAL with a record. Team awards went to Ethan Leelanivas (MVP), Alejandro Cheline (Eagle) and Ritik Raman (Coaches).
MS Intramural Boys Basketball
Team awards went to Daniel Schwartz, grade 7 (MVP), Krish Goenka, grade 6 (Eagle) and Daniel Miao, grade 6 (Coaches). The team was coached by Adam Albers and Ron Paranada.
JVB1 (grade 5) Boys Basketball
The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Karriem Stinson, finished in a two-way tie for second place in the WBAL with a 6-1 record, and an overall record of 8-2. The team then took first place in the WBAL tournament. Team awards went to Kai Nishimura (MVP), Brandon Labio (Eagle) and Raj Akunuri (Coaches).
JVB2 (grade 5) Boys Basketball
The Junior Varsity B2 team, coached by Spring Wang, finished in sixth place in the WBAL with a 3-4 record. Team awards went to Benjamin Leafstrand (MVP), Zack Weng (Eagle) and Yash Belani (Coaches).
JVC (grade 4) Boys Basketball
The Junior Varsity C team, coached by Karriem Stinson, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a 3-3 record. Team awards went to Jackson Yue and Luca Chan (Eagle) and Reid Bardin (Coaches).
LS Intramural Boys Basketball
Team awards went to Vidwat Shekar, grade 4 (MVP), Jaden Cao, grade 4, and Ian Lee, grade 5 (Eagle), and Avi Gupta, grade 4, and Shamik Khowala, grade 5 (Coaches). The team was coached by Tobias Wade and Walid Fahmy.
VA (grade 7-8) Girls Soccer
The Varsity A team, coached by Brighid Wood, Hannah Grannis, Dini Wong and Morgan Smith, finished in sixth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-5. Team awards went to Kate Grannis, grade 8 (MVP), Claire Anderson, grade 7, and Layla McClure, grade 7 (Eagle), and Margaret Cartee, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVB (grade 5) Girls Soccer
The Junior Varsity B team, coached by Colleen Campbell and Brittney Moseley, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 5-1. Team awards went to Ava Zarkesh and Chelsea Xie (Eagle) and Heather Wang (Coaches).
LS Intramural Girls Soccer
Team awards went to Maya Horan, grade 4 (MVP), Sofiah Jalil, grade 4 (Eagle), and Sasha Gupta, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Colleen Campbell and Brittney Moseley.
Late Winter – Girls Basketball and Boys Soccer
VA (grade 7-8) Girls Basketball
The Varsity A team, coached by Richard Amarillas, finished in second place in the WBAL with a 7-1 record, and finished 8-1 overall. They were to play in the gold division championship game of the WBAL tournament prior to the season being suspended. Team awards went to Anjali Yella, grade 8 (MVP), Isabella Lo, grade 7 (Eagle) and Kate Grannis, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB Girls Basketball
The Varsity B team, coached by Tim Hopkins, finished in first place in the WBAL with an 8-0 record, and finished 9-0 overall. They were to play in the gold division championship game of the WBAL tournament prior to the season being suspended. Team awards went to Alicia Yan, grade 6 (MVP), Claire Yu, grade 6 (Eagle) and Ria Kohli, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (grade 6) Girls Basketball
The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, finished undefeated in third place in the WBAL with a 5-2 record and finished 5-3 overall. Team awards went to Iris Wang (MVP), Kimaya Mehta (Eagle) and Kira Bardin (Coaches).
MS Intramural Girls Basketball
Team awards went to Shreya Vemulapalli, grade 6 (MVP), AJ Hacigumus, grade 6 (Eagle), and Ella Guo, grade 6 (Coaches). The team was coached by Raul Rios, Adam Albers and Rob Moore.
JVB (grade 5) Girls Basketball
The Junior Varsity B team, coached by Ellie Pereira and Joycie Kaliangara, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a 4-3 overall record. Team awards went to Finley Ho (MVP), Ava Zarkesh (Eagle) and Chelsea Xie and Jessica Chen (Coaches).
JVC (grade 4) Girls Basketball
The Junior Varsity C team, coached by Spring Wang and Emily Pereira, finished in first place in the WBAL with a 5-0 record. Team awards went to Jillian Chen (MVP), Sophie McGrath (Eagle) and Maya Horan (Coaches).
LS Intramural Girls Basketball
Team awards went to Sasha Gupta, grade 4 (Eagle) and Julie Chen, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Tobias Wade.
VA (grade 8) Boys Soccer
The Varsity A team, coached by Brighid Wood, Hannah Grannis and Michael Pflaging, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 0-8. Team awards went to Alex Guo (MVP), Ryan Barth (Eagle) and Chase White (Coaches).
VB (grade 7) Boys Soccer
The Varsity B team, coached by Brighid Wood, Morgan Smith and Ron Paranada, finished in third place in the WBAL with a league record of 2-2-1, and an overall record of 4-2. Team awards went to Ruhan Sahasi (MVP), Vyom Vidyarthi (Eagle), and Bowen Xia and Aarav Borthakur (Coaches).
JVA (grade 6) Boys Soccer
The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Brighid Wood and Dini Wong, finished in third place in the WBAL with a record of 3-5. Team awards went to Stanley Chen (MVP), Cyrus Ghane (Eagle) and Krish Nachnani (Coaches).
JVB (grade 5) Boys Soccer
The Junior Varsity B team, coached by Colleen Campbell and Oscar Flores, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a record of 3-2-1. Team awards went to Vladimir Shchegrov (MVP), Ayden Grover (Eagle) and Rohan Goyal and Mason Brooks (Coaches).
LS Intramural Boys Soccer
Team awards went to Teodor Arnaudov, grade 4, Shridhar Chaware, grade 4, and Sudhith Gondipalli, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Karriem Stinson and Dominic Flocchini.
Congratulations to all our athletes and coaches for a great winter season!
Harker eighth graders Anish Jain, Jordan Labio, Kyle Leung and Vardaan Ghai received an honorable mention in the Toshiba/National Science Teaching Association ExploraVision contest, one of the world’s largest student science competitions. Honorable mentions are given to the top 10 percent of submissions, of which there are about 5,000 every year. The students developed their project, titled “Nanosense: Eliminating Food Allergies Using IgE/Th1/Th2 Sensors and Nanotechnology,” with the help of middle school science teacher Kathy Peng. This year’s competition tasked students with examining the technology of today to envision how it might evolve over the next 20 years.
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.
Last week, the COVID-19 virus not only sent all students home from school, but also from all extracurricular activities including sports. As of now, the spring season is postponed, but information is changing rapidly and the season will be evaluated at a later time. Before school was shut down, your Eagles were able to get a few games in:
Boys Volleyball
Last week, the boys volleyball team defeated Leland 3-0 before falling to Monta Vista 0-3. The Eagles were 6-4 at week’s end.
Boys Golf
The boys golf team defeated Pinewood 192-217 last week with Bowen Yin, grade 11, earning medalist honors shooting a 35.
Boys Tennis
All games were canceled for the boys tennis team last week. The Eagles were 6-2 and undefeated in league at the time.
Track and Field
The track and field team had no scheduled meets last week.
Swim
The swim team had no scheduled meets last week.
Lacrosse
Last week, the lacrosse team played to an 8-8 tie against Castilleja before the season came to a halt with the Eagles holding an 0-2-1 record.
Softball
All games were canceled last week for the softball team. The Eagles have a 0-2 record.
Baseball
The boys baseball team went 1-1 last week, bringing its abridged season record to 4-2. In a 1-3 loss to Prospect, Levi Sutton, grade 11, had two hits, while Andrew Chavez, grade 11, drove in the only Eagle run. Then, in a 26-1 win over Jefferson, all 12 Eagles drove in at least one run, with Sutton leading the way with four RBIs.
“Cmd-Delete,” a short documentary created by juniors Jason Lin, Sara Yen and Amar Karoshi, was today named the grand prize winner of C-SPAN’s 2020 StudentCam contest. It also received the Fan Favorite award for receiving the most votes among the contest’s 12 finalists. The documentary, which explores the impact of technology on the electoral process, will air on C-SPAN throughout the day on April 21, starting at 6:50 a.m. EST. A cash prize of $5,000 also was awarded. Nearly 5,400 students submitted entries into this year’s contest, which invited students to produce short documentaries on national issues. Other topics covered this year included climate change, prison rights, health care and the separation of immigrant families.
A team of computer scientists including Anand Natarajan ’09 recently published a proof that has solved “a raft of open problems in computer science, physics and mathematics,” wrote Quanta Magazine’s Kevin Hartnett. Natarajan co-authored the proof with researchers at Caltech, the University of Toronto, the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Texas, Austin. The full article contains an in-depth explanation of how the proof was developed.
Middle school students became regional champions at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Middle School Science Bowl, held Feb. 22 at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Coached by middle school math chair Vandana Kadam, the team of eighth graders Gautam Bhooma, Justin Chen, Ethan Liu and Arnav Swaroop and seventh grader Jonathan Xue went undefeated in the opening round robin portion of the event. In the elimination round, Harker fell to Miller Middle School’s Team 1 before meeting them again in the finals, where Harker won with a score of 92-64. The team will now move on to the finals of the national competition, which takes place April 30-May 4 in Washington, D.C. With the upper school Science Bowl team’s win earlier this month, this marks only the second time in Harker history that both the middle and upper school Science Bowl teams have been regional champions at the same time.
In addition to Kadam’s guidance, the team was coached by upper school students Kyle Li and Emily Liu, both grade 12, junior Russell Yang, sophomores David Dai, Harsh Deep and Rishab Parthasarathy, and freshman Rohan Bhowmik, who organized weekly training sessions with practice questions and coaching on how to remain calm and build teamwork.
Nanoseed, a student-run organization that offers low-interest loans and grants to students and entrepreneurs in rural China, will hold its second benefit concert at the Rothschild Performing Arts Center on March 13 at 7 p.m. All proceeds will go toward loans and student scholarships.
The event will feature a wide variety of student performers, including piano performances by sophomore Yejin Song, sophomore Spencer Cha and junior Audrey Liu, as well as violinist Sophia Horng, grade 11, and guitarist Wilson Zhang, grade 11. Student a cappella group Signature also will be making an appearance, and dance acts will include a ballet performance by Arely Sun, grade 10, a duet by seniors Anna Miner and Emiko Armstrong, and a group comprising Miner and Armstrong as well as seniors Chloe Chen, Vance Hirota, Ethan Hu and Kai-Ming Ang. Performers from other Bay Area schools are also set to appear. The performances and speeches will reflect the theme of this year’s concert, “Give to Grow.”
Tickets are available for $15 for students and $25 for adults. A $5 discount is being offered with the promo code “EarlyBird” until March 1.
Harker middle school students performed admirably at a recent chapter-level MathCounts competition, held Feb. 15 at the upper school. A team comprising grade 8 students Ethan Liu, Aniketh Tummala, Olivia Xu and William Zhang, coached by middle school math chair Vandana Kadam, took first place, making Harker the winning team in the Santa Clara chapter for the third consecutive year. The team will move on to the state competition, to be held March 21 at Stanford University.
Harker also had several stand-out individual performers, including Tummala, who took second place with 45 out of 46 points scored. Angela Liu, grade 7, placed fifth with a score of 44 and qualified for the state competition. Xu also scored 44 to finish in seventh place. Ethan Liu and William Zhang each scored 42 points and placed 10th and 12th, respectively. Eighth graders Emma Gao and Michelle Wei took 13th and 14th, respectively, with both students scoring 42 points. Eighth grader Joe Li placed 17th with a score of 41, Jonathan Xue, grade 7, finished in 19th with a score of 39 and Angelina Hu, grade 8, scored 37 to place 24th. Although several students scored the same number of points, tiebreakers were awarded to students who solved more difficult problems.
In addition to the main competitions, students also participated in the countdown round, in which students were given problems and a time limit of 45 seconds to solve each one. Xu emerged the winner, while Tummala took third and Zhang took fourth.
A total of 91 students from 11 schools competed at the event, which is considered to be one of the toughest chapter-level MathCounts competitions in the country.