A group of Harker upper school students signed on to volunteer with The Tutoring Network (TTN), a Stanford-based nonprofit organization that offers free after-school tutoring at local elementary schools.
Launched in 2008, TTN’s goal is to provide meaningful service experiences for high schoolers. For the second year in a row, Harker volunteers have tutored students at the Empire Gardens Elementary School in San Jose.
Called the Harker School-Empire Gardens Partnership, this year’s group comprises a board led by site co-directors Sadhika Malladi, grade 11, and Vienna Wang, grade 10. Joining them as board members are fellow Harker students Edward Sheu, Kristen Ko and Madison Tomihiro, all grade 11, and Allison Kiang, grade 12.
Malladi said she became interested in TTN in eighth grade, when she decided that all of her extra time should be put to good use doing community service. She went on to found the (now discontinued) Blackford Elementary School TTN site and is currently focused on growing the Empire Gardens site. In addition to serving as site co-director, Malladi helps to oversee board operations.
Wang said she began working with TTN because her sister had previously volunteered with the program. When she first joined TTN, she especially enjoyed teaching children math and watching them have fun while learning.
The commitment for the Harker TTN volunteers is two days per week, with the program running until June. The goal of improving the basic math skills of students in grades 2-5. The curriculum covered by tutors is set up by TTN volunteers and school staff.
In front of a raucous home crowd, the girls crushed archrival Sacred Heart Prep for the third time this season, advancing past the CCS quarterfinals and into the semifinals. This Wednesday, they will take on Soquel at 7:30 p.m. at Notre Dame-Belmont High School. Stay tuned for information on a rally bus that will take Eagles fans to the game!
Cross Country
Senior Corey Gonzales and sophomore Niki Iyer gave spectacular performances at the CCS finals last Saturday in Salinas to qualify for the state meet this Saturday in Fresno. Iyer had the fifth-best time of the day across all runners in all divisions, placing third in the Division 4 race, while Gonzales placed eighth out of 100 runners. Juniors Jack Rothschild and Alex Dellar also ran personal bests on Saturday’s course.
The Eagles ended their season with a triumphant win, dominating St. Francis-Watsonville 48-15 on senior night. Freshman quarterback Nate Kelly led Harker to a massive 480 yards of total offense, including touchdown passes to three different receivers. Seniors Christian Williams and Sid Krishnamurthi pulled down touchdown passes from 42 and 39 yards, respectively, while junior Miles DeWitt caught touchdowns of 21 and 19 yards. Krishnamurthi also intercepted a pass to set up a scoring drive, as did freshman Anthony Contreras. The Eagles also scored on a touchdown by sophomore Will Park and two extra points by senior Alyssa Amick.
Tennis
The girls varsity squad won its first-round CCS match last week, beating York School 4-3, before falling the next day to league rival Menlo to end the season. The Eagles finished their year with a 15-7 record, tied for the most victories in a season in Harker girls tennis history.
Big news out of Harker sports! An Eagles golfer made it farther than any other Eagle, while varsity volleyballers achieved one of the highest seeds in Harker’s history. Two cross country runners finished second in league and join two teammates for what is sure to be an epic CCS race this weekend. Tennis is off to CCS as well, while both water polo teams ended the season with wins. Let’s get to the news!
Golf
At the CCS Golf Championships last Tuesday at Rancho Canada in Carmel, freshman sensation Katherine Zhu shot a 3-under-par 69, the best-ever Harker golf finish, catapulting her into the Northern California Championship in Salinas – the furthest any Eagles golfer has ever advanced! There she finished 19th out of 84 golfers, capping off a season in which she also won the WBAL individual league championship.
After defeating Sacred Heart Prep on senior night to earn the WBAL league co-championship along with Menlo, the girls varsity squad earned a No. 2 seed in the CCS Tournament, tying them with the 2007 team for the highest-ever seed achieved by an Eagles girls volleyball team. This Saturday night, they’ll have the opportunity to advance in the tournament when they host a quarterfinal match at Blackford against either Del Mar or Sacred Heart Prep. You can be a part of the action, too! For CCS contests, there is an admission price of $8 for adults and $4 for students. The girls finished their regular season with a 16-8 overall record and a 9-1 league record.
Senior Corey Gonzales and sophomore Niki Iyer each finished second on Friday in the league cross country championships. They will be joined by two additional qualifiers – juniors Alexandra Dellar and Jack Rothschild, both in their first year of running cross country – at this Saturday’s CCS Cross Country meet in Toro Park, Salinas.
Tennis
The girls qualified for CCS! The Eagles will begin with a first-round match-up when the team hosts York School today at 2pm at The Bay Club-Santa Clara, where a win would send the girls to Menlo tomorrow.
Both the boys and girls teams ended the season with wins! The boys trumped Lynbrook 8-7 at to finish in third place with a 12-11 record, while the girls wrapped up their year in fifth place with a 12-7 victory over Cupertino, giving them a 9-12 overall record.
Football
The Eagles and the cheer squad have their senior night this Friday under the lights against St. Francis-Watsonville at 6pm. Come support senior players Sid Krishnamurthi, Keanu Forbes, Alyssa Amick, Christian Williams and Allen Huang in their final game and cheerleaders Riya Godbole, Daniela Lee, Erika Olsen and Mariam Sulakian.
Earlier this week, Rajiv Movva, grade 9, was announced as a first-place mathematics award winner in the Broadcom MASTERS competition, the finals of which took place in Washington, D.C. Movva’s project, which focused on discovering a natural method for treating type 2 diabetes, earned him a $3,500 prize, to be put toward a summer STEM experience of his choice, and an Apple iPad. “It was really an amazing experience to meet all the other finalists and compete with them,” Movva said. The prizes from the contest were not the only rewards received by the finalists. “All finalists also had a minor planet that was discovered by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named after them, and they also announced that finalists’ teachers would get their own minor planet as well!”
Another big highlight was meeting President Barack Obama at the White House. “Obviously, meeting the President was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we were all very excited to have,” Movva reminisced. “That being said, Broadcom MASTERS finals week as a whole was an experience too great to be justly described by words.”
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Oct. 21, 2014:
Freshman Rajiv Movva was recently named a finalist in the Broadcom MASTERS competition and will be headed to Washington D.C. on Oct. 24 for the national stage of the competition, where . “I look forward to meeting and competing with the other students who share similar interests as me!” Movva said. The national winners will be announced on Tues., Oct. 28.
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Five Harker students – the most from any school in California – are among the 300 national semifinalists in the 2014 Broadcom MASTERS program, a science and engineering competition for middle school students sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation and the Society for Science & the Public. Michael Kwan, Rajiv Movva, Anooshree Sengupta and Shaya Zarkesh, all grade 9, and Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 8, completed and submitted their projects during the 2013-14 school year; their projects were chosen from more than 6,000 nominees nationwide.
On Sept. 17, the 30 national finalists will be named. Finalists will be eligible to travel to Washington, D.C., for the final competition; the winner will receive a $25,000 prize from the Samueli Foundation.
Two Harker students were featured in the San Jose Mercury News in early October for extracurricular projects they completed with friends from other schools. Leo Yu, grade 12, worked with friends from Leland High School and Monta Vista High School to create a 3-D printed prosthetic hand that can be attached to a human arm and hopefully will be used to improve the life of a child in need. Vineet Kosaraju, grade 11, and a friend at Monta Vista established their own nonprofit called Math and Coding to help students as young as 8 foster their interests in math and programming. Since founding Math and Coding in the spring, the students have traveled around the country to show it to various libraries. In December 2015, another article appeared on Kosajaru’s good works in the Los Altos Town Crier!
A number of students successfully auditioned for two American Choral Directors Association Coastal Region Honor Choirs. Ishanya Anthapur, grade 12, Madhu Karra, grade 11, and Krishna Bheda and Jessica Susai, both grade 9, earned spots in the women’s choir, while Maya Nandakumar, grade 12, Sahana Narayanan and Gurutam Thockchom, both grade 11, and Ashwin Rao, grade 10, made the cut for the mixed choir. According to upper school music teacher Susan Nace, 350 singers auditioned and 247 were selected. Last year, five Harker students earned honor choir spots.
“The regional honor choir is the first step in the graduated process of going to other more advanced levels,” said Nace. “The next levels are All State (California) and National Honor Choirs.” Each audition had students sing a solo piece and test their proficiency in sight reading and ear training.
The students will perform with the Coastal Region Honor Choir on Nov. 22 at 2pm at the First United Methodist Church, located at 625 Hamilton Ave. in Palo Alto. Tickets will be sold at the door for $10.
Sophomore Niki Iyer was featured in the San Jose Mercury News last week as the Santa Clara County girls Athlete of the Week in recognition of her 10th place finish and personal-best 18:18 run at the Clovis Invitational, a multi-state championship race.
This week, Iyer and senior Corey Gonzales each placed second in their races at the team’s second WBAL league meet of the year. A number of Eagles posted great marks in the race en route to a sixth-place finish for the girls and a fifth-place finish for the boys. Sophomore Dylan Hwang ran well in his first race of the year, while junior Jack Rothschild ran his best race of the year, his first as a cross country runner for Harker. Junior Alex Dellar, meanwhile, finished 16th and qualified for the CCS championship next month.
Football
After being down 21-0 in the first quarter, the Eagles roared back to capture a 32-28 victory on their final drive of the game when senior Keanu Forbes bolted into the endzone to cap off a magical game. The Eagles also scored on sophomoreWill Park’s interception return for a touchdown, two scrambles into the endzone by freshman quarterback Nate Kelly and a 30-yard field goal by senior Alyssa Amick. The team plays Friday at 7pm at home against Emery in their penultimate game of the year.
Golf
Freshman Katherine Zhu was named to the American Junior Golf Association’s Gary Gilchrist All-Star Team, which includes the top 10 girls golfers between 12 and 15 years old. Back at home, the Eagles lost to rival Sacred Heart Prep last week.
Water Polo
Last week was a spectacular one for Eagles water polo as the boys varsity, girls varsity and boys JV teams scored a perfect 6-0 combined against Fremont and Santa Clara. The most exciting contest belonged to the girls varsity club, which, after trailing 7-1 at halftime against Fremont, came roaring back for a stunning 10-9 victory. Senior Anushka Das had the greatest individual game, scoring six goals against Santa Clara. Water polo’s senior night on Oct. 28 will celebrate Das and fellow seniors Delaney Martin, Jackelyn Shen, Sheridan Tobin, Dipam Acharyya, Annirudh Ankola, Aadyot Bhatnagar, Jeremy Binkley, William Bloomquist, Eric Holt, Siddhant Jain, Mohannad Khadr, Hemant Kunda, Ryan Palmer, Alexander Thomas and Harry Xu.
Volleyball
The girls volleyball team crushed both Mercy-SF and rival Sacred Heart Prep last week in straight games. The Eagles hit the road to face Menlo and Notre Dame this week.
Tennis
Girls tennis lost to Menlo last week, then rebounded with a clutch 4-3 victory over Castilleja. This week, the girls take on King’s Academy and Crystal Springs.
Lower and Middle School Fall Wrap-Up
Football
Varsity A flag football (grade 8) went 4-2 in league (third place) and 10-2 overall. The VA team also took first place at the Harker Flag Football tournament! Team awards went to Demonte Aleem (MVP), Jackson Williams (Eagle), and Charlie Molin and Zachary Hoffman (Coaches).
Varsity B flag football (grade 7) went 3-3 in league (fifth place) and 7-5 overall. The VB team also took first place at the Harker Flag Football tournament! Team awards went to James Rugnao and Aaron Featherstone (Co-MVP), Jeffrey Liu (Eagle) and Naveen Mirapuri (Coaches).
Junior varsity A flag football (grade 6) went 5-1 in league (second place) and 6-1 overall. Team awards went to Michael Mitchell (MVP), Srinath Somasundaram (Eagle), and Arjun Virmani and Marcus Anderson (Coaches).
Junior varsity B flag football (grade 5) went 5-1 in league (tied for first place). Team awards went to Eric Bollar (MVP), Rishi Jain and Anquan Boldin Jr. (Eagle), and Raj Patel (Coaches).
Intramural flag football (grade 4) enjoyed their inaugural season of play. Although they do not compete in games, the boys learned a lot and had fun with their friends. Team awards went to Rohan Gorti (Eagle), and Freddy Hoch and Dylan Parikh (Coaches).
Softball
Varsity A softball (grade 6-8) went 6-1 in league (second place) and 6-2 overall. Team awards went to Lilly Wancewicz and Taylor Lam (Co-MVP), Alaina Valdez (Eagle) and Cameron Zell (Coaches).
Junior varsity A softball (grades 4-6) went 1-5-1 in league (sixth place). Team awards went to Alexandra Baeckler (MVP), Brooklyn Cicero (Eagle) and Emma Crook (Coaches).
Intramural softball (grade 4) enjoyed their inaugural season of play. They did not play in any games, but the girls learned a lot and had fun. Team awards went to Brooke Baker (MVP), Keesha Gondipalli (Eagle) and Allison Lee (Coaches).
Cross Country
Cross Country (grades 6-8) enjoyed a phenomenal season! The final three meets of the season, the team really turned it on.
The following were first-place finishers at the Harker meet: Julia Amick, Lilia Gonzales, Anika Rajamani, Alycia Cary and Aneesha Kumar (8th grade girls team); and Gina Partridge, grade 7.
The following were first-place finishers at the Menlo meet: Julia Amick, Lilia Gonzales, Anika Rajamani, Alycia Cary and Aneesha Kumar (8th grade girls team); and Julia Amick, grade 8.
The following were first-place finishers at the WBAL final meet: Julia Amick, Gina Partridge, Anika Rajamani, Lilia Gonzales and Alycia Cary (grade 7/8 team); and Julia Amick, grade 8.
Team awards went to Mihir Sharma and Julia Amick (top runners), Gina Partridge, Arya Maheshwari and Alex Rule (co-MVP), Anna Weirich, Noah Lincke and Lilia Gonzales (Eagle), and Jasmine Wiese, Aneesha Kumar and Grant Miner (Coaches).
Swimming
The lower and middle school swim team participated in the Harker and Castilleja meets. First-place finishers at the Harker meet were Lorenzo Martinelli, grade 4 , in the 100 IM and 100 freestyle; Ysabel Chen, grade 5, in the 100 IM and 100 freestyle; Ethan Hu, grade 7, in the 100 IM and 50 freestyle; Angela Li, grade 8, in the 100 IM and 50 backstroke; Bobby Bloomquist, grade 8, in the 50 freestyle; Rhys Edwards, grade 6, in the 50 breaststroke; and Matthew Hajjar, grade 8, in the 50 breaststroke. First-place finishers in the Castilleja meet were Brandon Wang, grade 4, in the 100 IM and 100 freestyle; Ethan Hu, grade 7, in the 100 IM and 50 freestyle; Anh My Tran, grade 7, in the 50 freestyle; Bobby Bloomquist, grade 8, in the 50 freestyle and 50 backstroke; Angela Li, grade 8, in the 50 butterfly and 200 breaststroke; Leland Rossi, grade 6, in the 50 backstroke; Andrew Fox, grade 4, in the 25 breaststroke; and Leon Lu, grade 8, in the 50 breaststroke.
Awards for middle school swimming went to Angela Li, grade 8, MVP; Leah Anderson, grade 6, Eagle Award; and Evan Bourke, grade 6, Coaches Award. Awards for lower school swimming went to Lorenzo Martinelli, grade 4, MVP; Arianna Martinelli, grade 4, Eagle Award; and Daniel Fields, grade 5, Coaches Award.
Harker upper school math students collectively placed first in the country in the 2014 Fall Startup Event math contest, administered by National Assessment and Testing. The test consisted of 100 problems and had a time limit of 30 minutes, requiring students not only to have the skills to solve problems quickly, but also to know which problems to skip.
Students were coached by upper school math teacher Misael-Jose Fisico. The combined placements of all the students led to Harker being declared first place nationwide.
Swapnil Garg was the first-place winner in the ninth-grade division, with classmates Rajiv Movva, Joanna Lin and Shaya Zarkesh earning fifth, 11th and 18th, respectively. In the 10th-grade division, Misha Ivkov placed sixth and David Zhu placed 11th. Harker’s other first-place winner was Richard Yi in the 11th-grade division. Also placing in this division were Allison Wang (fifth) and Lawrence Li (13th). Finally, in the 12th grade division, Ashwath Thirumalai took third, followed closely by Patrick Lin in fourth, while Rahul Jayaraman and Suzy Lou placed 14th and 16th, respectively.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome the classes of 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 to the 2014 matriculation ceremony. Matriculation is a ceremony initiated with the first class of the Harker upper school, the Class of 2002. During this ceremony new students to the upper school take an oath promising to follow the Honor Code, a document written by students in the early years of the Harker upper school and updated periodically. The Honor Code outlines how students as a community wish to live together and wish to be treated by each other. Honesty and respect, for instance, are important tenets of the Honor Code.
Each year I begin matriculation with an aspiration I have for the students for the school year. Because I have basically invited myself to speak at both matriculation and graduation, and I have accepted my own invitation, I try to confine my remarks to one page of single- space, size-12 font. I am adapting my aspiration for you this year from a TED talk given by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking Fast and Slow.” Kahneman begins his TED talk by pointing out that studies of happiness are often confused by a lack of clarity around which self’s happiness we are discussing, the “experiencing self” or the “remembering self.”
What are the experiencing and remembering selves? According to Kahneman, the experiencing self is the self who lives his life from moment to moment; the remembering self is the self who thinks about his life. The experiencing self is the self the doctor inquires about when he pokes you and asks, “Does this hurt?” The remembering self is the self he inquires about when he asks how you have been feeling over the last few weeks. If you go on vacation, the self who is enjoying each moment is the experiencing self; the self who is planning the vacation beforehand and recalling it fondly while looking at pictures afterward is the remembering self. The experiencing self is your life and the remembering self thinks about your life. What is my hope for you this year? My hope for you this year is that you achieve a healthy balance between your experiencing self and your remembering self.
We need both selves. If we only had the experiencing self, we would live like a piece of music in which each note has no relation to the note that went before or the note that comes after. I think we all know people like this, and in some ways kids live more as an experiencing self. We need the remembering self to have what the philosopher Alan Watts calls “resonance.” It isn’t much good to be happy unless you know you are happy. Memory and metacognition are forms of feedback that give life resonance, just as good acoustical feedback gives our voice resonance. The remembering self is a kind of a neurological echo.
However, we can live under the tyranny of the remembering self, especially in high school. The remembering self compares with others, makes judgments, sets expectations and plans. The remembering self, when hyperactive, can create the same kind of zaniness that occurs when we have too much feedback, like when a cave produces too much echo or when we are overthinking a performance. Here is one of Alan Watts’ favorite limericks:
“There once was a man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, yet what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.”
Kahneman asks what kind of vacation you would choose if you could take no pictures and your memory would be wiped upon return? High school is a time for planning and preparing, but what kind of life would you plan if your experiencing self, not your remembering self, were choosing? Too often we choose a path based on the remembering self’s ideas, not the experiencing self’s intuition. Whichever path you choose, hopefully your experiencing self will have some say and will be there to experience the joy of your flourishing.Living too much with the remembering self can remove us from the life all around us. John Lennon sang in his song “Beautiful Boy,” “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” By achieving the right balance between the experiencing and remembering selves, we hope that you will find the life that is waiting for you, both this year and beyond. Thank you.
Representatives from Harker joined parents, students, educators and the general public at Stanford University for an engaging discussion about how to help students balance academic achievement with personal well-being.
The Sept. 26 event was part of a larger conference called “Success By Design: Is It Possible?” sponsored by Challenge Success, a nonprofit group associated with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. Held in the university’s Memorial Auditorium, it featured Challenge Success co-founders Denise Pope and Madeline Levine.
Other speakers included Wendy Mogel, clinical psychologist and author of New York Times bestselling book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” (and follow-up book “The Blessing of a B Minus”), and Dave Evans, a lecturer in Stanford’s product design program and co-founder of Electronic Arts.
Two Harker upper school students, Austin Lai, grade 12, and Naomi Molin, grade 11, also spoke at the event, which Challenge Success called its “biggest parent education event of the year.”
“Austin and Naomi spoke alongside some of the most well-respected educational authors, parental experts and voices on topics related to student wellness. Austin read his compelling personal narrative, then Naomi informed the packed audience about some of the recent efforts Harker made to further the engagement and wellness of our student body,” reported Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school, academic affairs.
The annual event marked 11 years that Challenge Success educators have collaborated with more than 100 schools. Participants from almost 30 middle school and high schools gathered for the conference.
“Throughout the conference, when I mentioned I was from Harker, I consistently heard how great our students are. I know many were impressed by the maturity of both Austin and Naomi,” said Gargano.