Tag: Featured Story

Environmentalist Bill McKibben to Speak at Harker Green Teen Summit this Saturday

The Harker School will host the first Green Teen Summit, a student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism, on Sat., April 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The half-day conference, held at the upper school campus, will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, will be one of two keynote speakers at the event. Called “the planet’s best green journalist” by Time magazine and “probably the country’s most important environmentalist” by the Boston Globe, McKibben has authored a dozen books on environmental issues, and started 350.org as a grassroots initiative to end the climate crisis. Since 2009, 350.org has organized 15,000 rallies in 189 countries. The conference’s second keynote speaker, Ethan Burke, is co-founder and director of operations for BioTour, a nonprofit organization that travels across the country via school buses modified to run on vegetable oil and solar energy. BioTour has crisscrossed the nation for two-and-a-half years, giving presentations on the environment at more than 150 universities, high schools and other venues. In addition to the speakers, the Green Teen Summit will offer training and resources provided by the Alliance for Climate Education, which organizes high school assemblies on climate-related issues. Students will also be able to enjoy lunch with green business leaders and attend workshops. The Green Teen Summit was organized by Harker students Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 12, who received a grant in 2009 to improve Harker’s energy efficiency. They used the grant money to place insulating film on upper school classroom windows and start an organic garden. Later, they were instrumental in getting smart meters installed at the lower and upper school campuses to monitor and reduce energy usage. The students have received extensive press coverage for their efforts, and appeared at the Clinton Global Initiative last year as part of a keynote panel. This event is open to all high school students and campus green club advisors. A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the ticket price. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee) and can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.

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Clean Tech Team Wins Third in Alternative Energy Competition

Harker’s Clean Tech team, a new club sponsored by Smriti Koodanjeri, upper school chemistry teacher, came in third at the inaugural Clean Tech Competition Student Challenge on March 20, announced the National Science Teachers Association and Applied Materials, Inc., which sponsored the competition.

The Clean Tech competition is a collaborative student design contest developed to inspire the next generation of leaders and innovators in the field of clean technology. It immerses high school students in real-world challenges that illustrate the powerful potential of clean technology to address problems that confront humanity.

The competition involved students, ages 13-18, from the San Francisco Bay Area and Xi’an, China. The challenge posed to students was “Solar Solution to the Rescue.” Under the guidance of a teacher or other adult team leader, teams of students designed solar-powered solutions to basic human needs identified in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

After identifying a situation, students explored the issue and presented their clean tech solution to a panel of industry and education experts for judging. Harker’s team, which consisted of Maya Sathaye, Shelby Rorabaugh and Lorraine Wong, all grade 11, won third place with its project: A Solar Alternative to Charge Electric Wheelchairs. In addition to the distinction of winning, the team won $1,000 to use toward education.

Students interested in alternative energy may want to attend the upcoming Green Teen Summit on Sat., April 14 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. hosted at Harker’s upper school campus. The student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee). A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the price of the ticket, which can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.

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Sophomores Come Together for Community Service at InnVision Sorting, Cleaning, Gardening and in the Kitchen

By Narendra Nayak

About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Signups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the signups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.

The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.

Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.

The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.

The shelter’s guests were a happy lot as they ate with relish. “The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.

The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s tenth grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime drop-in center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”

Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a class room and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.

Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.

“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.

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Harker Robotics Competes at Davis Tournament; Advisor Nelson Named Mentor of the Year

Harker’s robotics team  participated in mid-March in the University of California, Davis Sacramento Regional, where Eric Nelson, the robotics advisor, received the prestigious Mentor of the Year award. The Davis tournament was an excellent opportunity for the team to introduce its influx of freshmen students to robotics competitions as well testing its robot against teams from Northern California and the Sacramento Valley.

Robotics competitions involve pitting robots against each other in a game. This year’s game was called Robot Rumble, in which robots attempted to score points by shooting foam balls into basketball-like hoops of varying heights. The robots were controlled by a Kinect motion-sensing device as well as by remote controls. To see an entertaining animated walkthrough of the game, please click here.

Though Harker’s shooter had some minor problems, the team was confident they could have a fully-functional and proficiently-working robot at its next competition. Abhinav Khanna, grade 12, the team’s press liaison, said, “Overall, the team had an excellent opportunity to bond and put our engineering abilities to the test, and in the end, every member came away with a better understanding of the game.” The team also participated in the Silicon Valley Regional at the end of March – watch for the report – and will enter the championships in late April.

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Visiting Tamagawa Students Explore Classes, Make Trip to Stanford

A new contingent of visiting students arrived from Tokyo’s Tamagawa Gakuen last month, again experiencing the rich life of Harker students firsthand.

The 25 visiting high school students were on a nationwide tour of colleges, and took time out of their hectic schedules to tour Harker’s lower and uppe rschool campuses. They observed classes, spent time at college counseling and joined the junior class on an Eagle Buddies outing.

“The college tour was the first trip of its kind made by Tamagawa. They were visiting Stanford so decided they needed to come see us as well,” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education.

The Tamagawa teens were warmly escorted throughout the day by volunteer Harker students, including freshmen, juniors and seniors. They arrived in the morning and split up into two groups, one going to visit college counseling, the other observing such varied classes as theater, economics, English and Japanese. Then they regrouped as a team to join Harker juniors on a visit with their Eagle Buddies at the lower school.

“This was especially fun for them to observe, especially since they got to see the kids all dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day. They enjoyed watching them play various games and asked lots of questions about what the younger students were doing,” recalled Walrod.

After enjoying an outdoor lunch there, they returned to the upper school to finish class observations and visiting college counseling. Both Tamagawa teachers and students alike voiced how impressed they were at how many Harker students and teachers spoke Japanese.

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Harker Forensics Team Has Top Finishes, Qualifies Four to Nationals; Freshman Duo Team Almost Makes Nationals

Harker’s forensics team had a number of top finishes in March, both locally and nationally. At the California Coast National Forensics League Qualifier, Harker took third place in overall sweepstakes and second place in debate sweepstakes. Aakash and Akshay Jagadeesh, both grade 12, as well as Aneesh Chona and Anuj Sharma, both grade 11, qualified to the NFL National Tournament in Indiana in June. In Duo Interpretation, the team of grade 9 students Madhu Nori and Nephele Troullinos earned fourth place, coming ever so close to pulling off the rare feat of qualifying to nationals as freshmen.

In Humorous Interpretation, Andy Wang, grade 10, earned fifth place but is already the first alternate because one of the students who placed ahead of him is not attending in another event. Nori also reached finals in Original Oratory, earning sixth place honors, and she is now the second alternate to Nationals because one of the students ahead of her has also chosen another event. Several more students made semifinals at the tournament, including Ashwin Chalaka, grade 10, and Sonya Chalaka, grade 12, in Duo Interpretation, Vivek Sriram, grade 9, in International Extemporaneous Speaking, and Steven Wang, grade 9, in United States Extemporaneous Speaking.

Harker had many successful qualifiers to the state championship (held in April in San Francisco). Sonya Chalaka qualified in Impromptu, Andy Wang qualified in Humorous Interpretation, freshmen Nori and Troullinos qualified in Duo Interpretation and sophomore Arjun Kumar qualified in Congressional Debate.

At the JV and Novice Policy and Lincoln-Douglas Debate Nationals Tournament hosted by Woodward Academy in Atlanta, Ayush Midha and Arya Kaul, both grade 9, made it to the top eight policy debate teams in the country before being defeated in quarterfinals.

The largest regular season tournament the team attended during the year was in February at UC Berkeley. This tournament draws thousands of competitors from all over the country. Harker sent almost 200 upper and middle school students to the tournament and ook first in overall debate team sweepstakes and second in overall team sweepstakes!

Berkeley Middle School results included Aditya Dhar, grade 7, who made it to varsity Congressional Debate semifinals. Sophia Luo and Lisa Liu, both grade 8, went undefeated in junior-varsity Policy Debate preliminary rounds and made it to the sweet 16. Liu was also in the top 15 named speakers at the tournament. Panny Shan, grade 8, and Steven Cao, grade 7, made it to the double-octofinal elimination round in junior-varsity policy debate. Grade 7 student Divya Rajasekharan made it to the octofinal level of varsity Humorous Interpretation.

Upper school students at Berkeley produced some of the best in Harker’s history:

Sonya Chalaka, Sixth Place, Impromptu Speaking

Saachi Jain, grade 10, Sixth Place, Congressional Debate

Warren Zhang, grade 11, Finalist, Congressional Debate

Jacob Hoffman, grade 11, Finalist, Congressional Debate & Best Presiding Officer in prelims

Steven Wang, Octafinalist, Extemporaneous Speaking

Zina Jawadi, grade10, Octafinalist, Original Oratory

Rishi Bhandia, grade 11, Semifinalist, Congressional Debate

Kathir Sundarraj, grade 12, Semifinalist, Congressional Debate

Apricot Tang, grade 11, Semifinalist, Congressional Debate

Chaitanya Malladi, grade 12, Double Octofinalist, Varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Murali Joshi, grade 12, Triple-Octofinalist, Varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Leo Yu and Arya Kaul, both grade 9, Quarterfinalists, Junior Varsity Policy Debate

Nitya Mani and Samyu Yagati, both grade 9, Double Octofinalists, Junior Varsity Policy Debate

Aakash Jagadeesh and Akshay Jagadeesh, both grade 12, Champions, Public Forum Debate

Aneesh Chona and Anuj Sharma, both grade 11, Quarterfinalists, Public Forum Debate

Neil Khemani, grade 10, and Neel Jani, grade 11, Double Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

Ishan Taneja, grade 12, and Jithin Vellian, grade 10, Double Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

Rohan Bopardikar and Frederic Enea, grade 12, Double Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

David Grossman, grade 11, and Sreyas Misra, grade 10, Triple Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

Nikhil Agarwal and Shivani Mitra, both grade 11, Triple Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

Reyhan Kader, grade 11, and Kevin Duraiswamy, grade 10, Triple Octofinalists, Public Forum Debate

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Harker InvenTeam Showcases Innovative Generator for MIT Visitors; Project Moves Towards June Deadline

This past fall the Harker InvenTeam group earned a $9,110 grant which has now led to further research and development on an aquatic thermoelectric generator. The already twice-showcased device could go on to become a common sight, floating around backyard swimming pools.

The InvenTeam is run by the Lemelson-MIT Program and awards grants to teams of inventive high school students with the goal of turning their visions into reality. The Harker team developed a solar generator that uses swimming pools, or other bodies of water, as a potential new alternative and cheaper source of green electricity. Designed to power schools, homes and businesses, the device utilizes the power of thermoelectric panels capable of harnessing the temperature difference between a hot surface and cold water. Potentially, huge floating generators might someday create enough electricity to move beyond neighborhood swimming pools and help power entire coastal regions.

The groundbreaking generator was designed by Prag Batra, grade 12, and his team: Sachin Jain and Jay Reddy, both grade 12; Ramakrishnan Menon, Wilbur Yang and Shantanu Joshi, all grade 11; and grade 10 students Nikhil Dilip and Pranav Batra.

Anthony Silk, upper school math teacher and the team’s advisor, explained that as this device floats on water, reflector panels focus sunlight onto a black surface converting the solar energy to heat. The heat is then passed through thermoelectric panels and passively dissipated into the surrounding water.

A few weeks ago, Harker and the Lemelson-MIT Program jointly sponsored a special evening presentation of the InvenTeam’s  project. Held at the Nichols Hall auditorium, the event was attended by Harker families, administrators and board members. Following the InvenTeam’s presentation, special guest Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, spoke on the importance of creating an ecosystem for young inventors in Northern California.

Most recently, the students represented one of 14 student teams participating in the Open Minds exhibition run by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. They had received an invitation to do so from the NCIIA and Lemelson-MIT Program.

“I found the Open Minds event to be amazing. Our Harker students got to showcase their invention alongside some of the top college teams in the country,” said Silk. “They spent the evening answering tough questions from scientists, inventors and investors who all seemed extremely enthusiastic by the work done so far. It was also great preparation for EurekaFest, which will happen this summer at MIT, where the students will be presenting their project along with the other 15 high school teams from around the country,” he added, noting that a finished product should be ready by the time of the EurekaFest in June. The team is being sponsored by Lenyard Food Service for the trip to EurekaFest.

Upon receiving the initial grant award, Batra said possible applications for the generator were numerous. “For instance, the device could be used on almost any body of water and could be incorporated into future boats to provide renewable, portable power at sea,” he had said, noting that in the process, the device would help reduce reliance on nonrenewable energy sources such as fossil fuels and provide clean energy without negative environmental impacts such as air or water pollution.

Now, with the developing project generating so much early interest and excitement, it appears that Batra and his team have created a potentially marketable product!

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Second Annual Spaghetti Dinner Delights First and Second Grade Families

Lower school parents rose to the occasion in late March to serve first and second grade families, students and teachers at the second annual Spaghetti Dinner. Head chefs Mustafa Gurleroglu (Emma, grade 2) and Justin Bronder (Sophia, grade 1) led a diligent and dedicated crew of parents who spent much of the day preparing bread, sauce, salad and, of course, mounds of spaghetti noodles. They later served it to the many hungry attendees lining up at the lower school cafeteria, whose smiling faces (and empty plates) indicated that the meals were well-received.

With their hard work done, the parents who worked the event sat down to enjoy the food themselves, while meeting and socializing with other Harker parents. Rainy weather kept the festivities indoors at the lower school gym, but the students nevertheless had fun playing with their friends and making new ones.

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English Language Institute Brings Top-Quality English Instruction to International Students of All Ages

Harker’s English Language Institute (ELI) returns this summer to provide international students with top English language instruction. ELI offers three programs for students of varying ages and proficiencies. The beginner/intermediate program on the lower school campus is for students aged 6 to 10, the intermediate program for students aged 9 to 12 and the advanced program for ages 12 to 16. The intermediate and advanced programs both take place at the upper school campus.

With its small class sizes, bilingual assistants, proven teaching methods and experienced teachers, ELI has earned a reputation as an ideal option for international students. In order to provide students with the best instruction possible, ELI offers customized scheduling that places each student in a learning environment suitable to his or her needs. ELI also offers tutoring and preparation for SSAT, TOEFL and SLEP exams.

This year, because many ELI students plan to attend American schools and colleges, there will be more emphasis on education of American history and culture. “Jared Ramsey will work a revamped culture and history curriculum for all students at the upper school, which includes more depth and scope for our students,” said Anthony Wood, ELI director.

Laura Casellas, an instructor of English as a Second Language at San Jose State University, has also been brought on to help students with their speaking and pronunciation in structured breakout sessions.

In addition to learning, students will also have access to a wide variety of fun activities on campus. The Summer Institute offers classes in art, dance, music, computers, sports and more to ELI students, and there will also be days for themed activities and on-campus performances. As in previous years, field trips to several of the Bay Area’s famous and scenic locales will also be in store.

To find more information about ELI and register for the program, please visit http://summer.harker.org.

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Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Week Demonstrates Wonders of Science

The last week of February was a big one for Harker STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students, as various upper school clubs organized special science-themed events on the upper school campus for each day of the week. On Monday, members of the school’s various STEM-related clubs handed out fun crossword puzzles with science-themed clues for their fellow students to solve. The robotics team staged an indoor cart race on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the WiSTEM fair showcased a variety of scientific phenomena, such as a bubble machine and the use of liquid nitrogen to freeze various objects.

On Thursday, the Harker chapter of the Interscholastic Gaming League displayed a range of gaming platforms from the past several  decades, from Atari to the Xbox 360. Finally, on Friday, the Chemistry Club showed off some of the neat “magic tricks” that are possible with chemistry, including marble sculpting, an explosive hydrogen balloon and the famous Briggs-Rauscher color oscillation reaction, in which a variety of chemicals are combined to create a visually striking series of color changes.

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