The 2016 Family & Alumni Picnic: Harvest Festival brought members of the Harker community out in droves for fun and camaraderie on Oct. 9. Harker families and friends — combining for a total of more than 3,000 attendees — braved the unseasonably warm weather to enjoy carnival games, great food, student performances and much more at the 66th annual event. Popular attractions such as the laser tag arena and zip line thrilled attendees all afternoon. Meanwhile, Harker alumni reunited with friends and faculty at the special alumni area.
Students in Allen Lyle’s grade 8 history class have been studying the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, along with the navigation methods they used during the Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. One of these navigation methods, known as “the log and line,” helped navigators determine the speed of their vessels by counting the number of knots on a rope that passed through their hands in a set amount of time as measured by a sandglass. Eventually, the term “knot” came to mean 1 nautical mile per hour, a measurement still used today. Like the navigators, students were able to calculate their own speeds in knots for a variety of movements – from walking and running to bear crawling and cart-wheeling! Go Harker history Eagles!
Congratulations to Maile Chung, grade 12, who is a finalist for a Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) Triple-Impact Competitor Scholarship. Chung is one of 20 Bay Area high school student athletes vying for a scholarship, out of 3,200 applicants.
PCA awards scholarships of up to $2,000 based on essays in which applicants explain how they have met the standards of personal mastery, leadership and honoring the game, as defined by PCA founder Jim Thompson in his book, “Elevating Your Game.” Winners will be selected and announced at a local awards ceremony in the fall or winter.
Chung, who earned a WBAL honorable mention in girls soccer as a junior, is also a talented musician and a member of school leadership. Good luck, Maile!
Updated: The latest video!
Early in the morning on Saturday, Aug. 20, a construction crew at Harker’s upper school campus pumped concrete into the footings of what will be the theater at the new performing arts center.
“We actually pumped approximately 1 million pounds of concrete over the course of about five hours,” said Mike Bassoni, Harker’s facilities director. The pour was carried out by a truck with a 136-foot boom that stretched nearly the entire length of the construction site.
One of the footings will act as support for the theater’s fly tower, which houses the system of ropes, pulleys, counterweights and other apparatus that stage crews use to lift and move various theater components such as lights, curtains, scenery and, occasionally, actors. Due to the size of the fly tower’s walls (which will be 75-feet tall upon completion), its footing is the largest of the two buildings. The remaining theater footings have been dug, and steel rebar has been applied, in preparation for another concrete pour on Sept. 9.
“We’re also working very quickly on the footings in the basement of the gymnasium. Those will be ready for pouring later in September,” Bassoni said. “We’re on track to keep these buildings ready for opening in 2017, and we’re very excited about the progress.”
Earlier in the month, lower and middle school families who donated to the capital campaign gathered for a pair of ice cream socials that took place in view of the construction site. Harker News will continue to post updates about the construction progress and related events every month, so stay tuned!
Beginning in June 2016 Harker launched two new state-of-the art building projects on the upper school campus, the result of a $45M capital campaign. The 33,000 square-foot athletic center, opening August 2017, features a 12,000 sq.-ft. gym, athletic training room with advanced hydrotherapy unit, and spacious team rooms. The Rothschild Performing Arts Center, opening spring of 2018, features a 450-seat theater with fly loft and hydraulic orchestra pit, a state of the art scene shop, vocal, instrumental, theater/musical theater classrooms and dressing rooms. For more information visit the news and video links below or contact communications@harker.org
Lower and middle school families that donated to the latest phase of our capital campaign gathered for two ice cream socials on the upper school campus this month to get a close-up look at the construction of our new performing arts and athletic centers. The gym is slated to be finished in June 2017 and the performing arts center by December 2017. For more information on the campaign and updates on the project, visit http://www.harker.org/giving/capital-giving.
Each summer, Harker’s business and entrepreneurship department holds a Wharton SOAR (Strategy, Operations, Action, Research) Camp. This year, students learned the basics of working on a team, and starting and operating a business, through a simulation focused on the needs and challenges of a box-selling company.
In this exercise, camp members assigned roles and delegated tasks to each other in order to increase the bottom line and win every “month” (every hour, in the simulation). Students incorporated marketing strategies into their business, with each team creating an advertisement skit to perform for the group.
Next came the car simulation, in which campers strengthened their teamwork skills, and learned about manufacturing and the complex operations of running a business in the automotive industry. The students were then judged on the appearance and functionality of their cars, and learned the effects of supply and demand.
Students also traveled to San Francisco, where they took an in-depth tour of the startup incubator Runway, located in the Twitter headquarters building. Campers explored futuristic inventions, like virtual reality equipment, biometric scanners and advanced hydration technologies, among others. Afterward, the group headed to the San Francisco Federal Reserve, where students learned about monetary policy, the history of the Fed, and the effects of economics on daily life. Campers also were allowed to visit the “cash” (a play on the word cache), where they saw the management and destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of worn-out U.S. currency.
On Aug. 14, new and returning preschool and lower school families gathered at John D. Morgan Park in Campbell for an afternoon of fun, food and socializing in the summer sun. See the accompanying slideshow to get a peek at the festivities!
Keller was nominated for the award by Harker journalism teacher Ellen Austin, who told the JEA that Keller was the first administrator she felt was worthy of nominating in her 16 years as a school journalism adviser.
“With him in the principal’s chair, my students have produced stories about sex trafficking, presidential elections, feminism, sexism in tech sectors and in math classes, LGBTQ issues and equity, and more,” Austin told JEA. “Butch has not balked at nor tried to suppress any of these stories. If anything, he has just encouraged my students (and me) to ensure that our work is careful and accurate.”
The JEA and National Scholastic Press Association will honor Keller at their Fall National High School Journalism Convention, to be held Nov. 12 in Indianapolis.
Bay Area high school students spent much of their summer enhancing their academic careers at the upper school’s Summer Institute. Open to students enrolled in any accredited high school, the courses – taught by caring, dedicated and highly qualified teachers – enabled students to earn credit or bolster their knowledge of a subject of interest.
Courses at this year’s upper school Summer Institute were divided into two categories. For-credit classes gave students the chance to earn academic credit in a variety of subjects, including algebra, geometry, economics and programming. Small class sizes helped to ensure each student received high-quality instruction. Many of the teachers at the Summer Institute teach at Harker year-round.
Also available was a range of enrichment courses, giving students the opportunity to explore their interests or boost their knowledge in various subject areas. Enrichment courses included Pre-Calculus Boost, Creative Writers Workshop, Driver’s Education and Climate Change.
All upper school Summer Institute courses were held at Harker’s upper school campus, which offers quality facilities and a top-notch learning environment.
“I enjoyed how both my teachers and my classmates were all focused solely on the classwork that was set for each day,” said Gene Wang, a Harker sophomore who took AP Chemistry and Advanced Programming. “There were very few distractions and very little wasted class time, which led to a lot getting accomplished each day.”
“I enjoyed the labs because they were a lot of fun and reinforced the concepts we learned during the lecture,” said Christopher Leafstrand, grade 10, who also attended AP Chemistry.
Wang said he would recommend the classes to any student who hopes to get ahead. “Although these two courses are intense, there is truly a lot of material that is covered and each student that completes this course will definitely learn a lot.”