Late last month, middle school math teacher and department chair Vandana Kadam received the Edyth May Sliffe Award for Distinguished Teaching in Middle School and High School. The Mathematical Association of America presents this award to teachers who foster student interest in mathematics by competing in the yearly American Mathematics Competitions.
Candidates are nominated based on recommendation letters from colleagues, and selected for the award based on criteria such as improving AMC scores, increased student participation and increased numbers of students invited to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) and the USA Mathematics Olympiad (USAMO). Congrats to Ms. Kadam on this well-earned recognition!
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.
Lower and middle school athletes fought hard and won some great accolades this past season! Check out these hard-working players!
VA (grades 6-8) Gold Tennis: The Varsity A gold tennis team, coached by John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished in first place in the WBAL at 8-0 and first place in the MTP at 6-1. The team finished the MTP tournament in first place and had an overall season record of 15-1. Team awards went to Shika Tseitlin, grade 8, and Dawson Chen, grade 8 (co-MVP), Dhruv Saoji, grade 8, and Shahzeb Lakhani, grade 8 (Eagle) and Anthony Tong, grade 7 (Coaches).
VA (grades 6-8) Silver Tennis: The Varsity A silver tennis team, coached by John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 6-0. Team awards went to Jacob Huang, grade 7 (MVP), Kyle Johnson, grade 6 (Eagle), and Arissa Huda, grade 7, and Athena Wu, grade 7 (Coaches).
VA (grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Theresa Smith and Stephanie Coleman, and assisted by high school volleyball players Lauren Napier, grade 12, Isabella Spradlin, grade 12, Emily Cheng, grade 10, Lauren Beede, grade 10, and Dylan Williams, grade 9, finished in a three-way tie for second place in the WBAL with a record of 7-2. Team awards went to Tara Ozdemir, grade 8 (MVP), Brittany Shou, grade 8 (Eagle) and Ashley Barth, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B team, coached by Theresa Smith and Stephanie Coleman, and assisted by the same high school players, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 6-0. The team did not lose a single set all season! Team awards went to Elizabeth Shchegrov, grade 8 (MVP), Gwen-Zoe Yang, grade 7 (Eagle), and Leyla Artun, grade 8 and Emma Gurleroglu, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB2 (grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B2 team, coached by Theresa Smith and Stephanie Coleman, and assisted by the HS players, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 6-0. This team also did not lose a set all season! Team awards went to Sarah Leafstrand , grade 8 (MVP), Sonya He, grade 7 (Eagle) and Ashley Ma, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Belle Carley and high school player assistant Katie Carley, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 5-1. Team awards went to Alice Tao, grade 6 (MVP), Margaret Cartee, grade 6 (Eagle) and Kate Grannis, grade 6 (Coaches).
JVB6 (grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B6 team, coached by Spring Wang and high school player Katie Carley, finished in third place in the WBAL with a record of 3-3. Team awards went to Ellie Schmidt, grade 6 (MVP), Emily McCartney, grade 6 (Eagle) and Jasmine Ishikawa, grade 6 (Coaches).
JVB1 (grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Ellie Pereira, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 5-0. Team awards went to Angelina Burrows, grade 5 (MVP), Young Min, grade 5 (Eagle), and Menaka Aron, grade 5 and Anika Pallapothu, grade 5 (Coaches).
JVB2 (grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B2 team, coached by college volleyball player Allie Pereira, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a record of 2-3. Team awards went to Elie Ahluwalia, grade 4, (MVP), Delara Gholami, grade 4, (Eagle), and Kira Bardin, grade 4 and Riley Olson, grade 4 (Coaches).
Intramural (grade 4) Girls Volleyball: Team awards went to Syna Sharma, grade 4 (MVP), Shaina Cohen, grade 4 (Eagle) and Kallie Wang, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by high school volleyball players Emily Pereira and Kaitlyn Seawright.
VA (grades 7-8) Baseball: The Varsity A team, coached Richard Amarillas, Matt Arensberg and Adam Albers finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 3-3. Team awards went to Chirag Kaushik, grade 8, and Mark Hu, grade 8 (co-MVPs); Freddy Hoch, grade 7 (Eagle) and Michael Pflaging, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (grades 4-6) Baseball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, Tim Hopkins, Kristian Tiopo and Dan Pringle, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a record of 0-4. Team awards went to Kyle Johnson, grade 6 (MVP), Brandon Zau, grade 6 and Chirant Shekar, grade 6 (Eagle) and Jack Ledford, grade 6 (Coaches).
Intramural (grades 4-5) Baseball: Team awards went to Luke Wu, grade 4 (MVP), Sahil Jain, grade 4 (Eagle) and Veeraz Thakkar, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Walid Fahmy and Tobias Wade.
VA (grades 7-8) Boys Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Pete Anderson, finished in second place in the ADAL with a record of 7-1. The team went 7-2 overall. Team awards went to Marcus Page, grade 8 (MVP), Jack Hayashi, grade 8, (Eagle) and Maddux Carlisle, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (grades 6-7) Boys Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Sara Pawloski, finished in seventh place in the ADAL with a record of 2-6. Team awards went to Adrian Liu, grade 6 (MVP), Spencer Mak, grade 6, (Eagle) and Vivek Nayyar, grade 6 (Coaches).
MS (grades 6-8) Water Polo: The MS water polo team, coached by Ted Ujifusa, Allie Lamb and Trevor Wong, participated in six tournaments this season. The tournaments are mostly set up for player development and our boys, girls and coed teams all had good seasons. Team awards went to Jasleen Hansra, grade 7 (MVP), Lachlan Rossi, grade 6, (Eagle) and Vishal Rohra, grade 7 (Coaches).
MS (grades 6-8) Golf: The MS golf team, coached by Ie-Chen Cheng, took first place in the WBAL spring tournament held at the Moffet Field Golf Course. The team shot a 158 on the front nine. They beat the rest of the field by 19 strokes! The top eight golfers were Claire Chen, grade 7 (39), Ryan Zhang, grade 6 (39), Freddy Hoch, grade 7 (39), Athreya Daniel, grade 7 (41), Marcus Page, grade 8 (42), Arvin Nidadavolu, grade 8 (44), Jack Yang, grade 6, (47) and Rohan Gorti, grade 7 (48).
LS (grades 4-5) Boys and Girls Track: The lower school track team, coached by Brighid Wood, Karriem Stinson, Colleen Campbell, Brittney Moseley, Vanessa Rios and Dini Wong, took second place overall at the WBAL track meet.
First place finishers were Cyrus Ghane, grade 4 (800m), Vyom Vidyarthi, grade 5 (800m), Ori Muramatsu, grade 5 (long jump) and MacEnzie Blue, grade 4 (softball throw).
Second place finishers were Rushil Jaiswal, grade 5 (50m and 200m), Vyom Vidyarthi, grade 5 (400m), the team of Vyom Vidyarthi, Kaleb Goldin, Sohum Arora and Rushil Jaiswal, all grade 5 (4 x 100 relay), and MacEnzie Blue, grade 4 (long jump).
MS (grades 6-8) Boys and Girls Track: The middle school track team, coached by Brighid Wood, Karriem Stinson, Colleen Campbell, Brittney Moseley, Vanessa Rios and Dini Wong, took second place overall at the WBAL track meet.
First place finishers were Anjali Yella, grade 6 (200m), Rigo Gonzales, grade 7 (200m, 400m and 800m), Ishaan Mantripragada, grade 8 (200m), Michael Pflaging, grade 7 (1,200m), the team of Nageena Singh, Natasha Matta, Cindy Su and Brooklyn Cicero, all grade 8 (4 x 100 relay), and Brooklyn Cicero, grade 8 (softball throw).
Second place finishers were Anjali Yella, grade 6 (50m and 100m), Armaan Thakker, grade 7 (100m), Ishaan Mantripragada, grade 8 (100m), Emma Gao, grade 6 (400m), Cindy Su, grade 8 (400m), Veyd Patil, grade 6 (800m), Michael Pflaging, grade 7 (800m), Dawson Chen, grade 8 (1,200m), the team of Katie Reed, Cynthia Wang, Annabel Yang and Anjali Yella, all grade 6 (4 x 100 relay) and Siddharth Selvakumar, grade 7 (long jump and softball throw).
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.”