Harker will offer a beginners’ water polo program this summer for students in grades 4-8 looking to learn more about the sport. The coed program will teach crucial skills necessary to compete, such as water and dry land conditioning, treading water, passing and shooting. To be eligible for the program, students must be able to swim 25 yards.
Ted Ujifusa, who directs the program, has been coaching water polo for nearly 40 years, and is the only coach in CCS history to lead two different public high schools to championships. He will be working with Allie Lamb, a 15-year water polo veteran, and swim coach Ron Usher, who has worked with every level from beginners to national champions.
This program will be held at the Singh Aquatic Center at Harker’s upper school campus, and runs from June 25-29, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. each day. More information and registration are available at the Harker Summer Camp water polo pages.
On Sat., March 24, Harker will host the seventh annual conference for Silicon Valley Computer-Using Educators (SVCUE), titled “T3: Teach Through Technology.” The conference will contain a variety of presenters and workshops designed to help teachers integrate technology to enhance the classroom experience.
As many as 200 teachers and administrators have attended previous conferences. Last year, Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, showed off Scratch, a new open-source programming language for children and teenagers, and Paul Vallerga, a teacher and designer in Harker’s performing arts department, demonstrated Google SketchUp, a free 3-D modeling tool, for student art projects, demonstrations and more.
This year, demonstrations will include how to use Google apps to reduce email clutter, the benefits of utilizing iPads as teaching tools, strategies to involve disengaged students and using video to enhance instruction. Vendors exhibiting at the event include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education, Krause Center for Innovation and more.
A program with a full list of presentations and exhibitors is available for download at the SVCUE event page. Attendees can register at the registration page on the Harker website.
It’s not exactly business as usual in the main office lobby at Harker’s upper school campus. Sure, there are phones ringing, copy machines whirring, visitors popping in asking questions, the sound of papers rustling. And yet, despite these typical happenings, there’s something very different about the place: it is doubling as an art gallery for the middle school’s impressive visual arts program, presenting select student work created during the school year.
Each spring, all of Harker’s campuses hold art shows to give students a venue for the works they have completed thus far, but the Saratoga exhibit includes specially selected works. The exhibit kicked off with an opening reception this month and will run until April 6. On April 23 the main middle school art exhibit will open on the middle school campus, where it will run until May 15, with an opening reception held there on April 24.
In the Saratoga exhibit, colorful paintings and ceramics, from figurines to wire sculptures and mobiles, filled the outer walls on all sides of the room, giving a lovely, transformative ambience to the office setting.
On display from sixth graders were assorted plates and bowls with tempting fake food such as pie, French fries, vegetables and fruit. One particularly cheery plate radiated with painted-on yellow smiley faces. Grade 7-8 ceramics included a section of sea animals titled “Formed by the Sea.” They also had a table at the show containing glass fusion and casting, comprising sculptures illuminated by lights revealing the intricacy of the work.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but Harker’s top artistic talent went the extra mile, by showcasing written statements alongside original artwork at the recent AP Studio Art Exhibition.
Featuring unique works in various media, the exhibition was held during a long lunch in the light-filled Nichols Hall atrium. The professionally-styled show was open to both students and faculty who strolled the hall admiring projects ranging from photography to sculptures and drawings.
AP Studio Art is a high-level class for talented artists, mostly seniors, interested in both 3-D art, taught by Jaap Bongers, and 2-D art, taught by Pilar Aguero-Esparza.
Commenting on the work of his student’s, Bongers, who is also chair of the art department, said he had been fortunate to follow many of the exhibitors’ evolving styles over the course of several years, having had them in various previous art courses.
Many of the students at the annual show were not artists themselves. However, after attending, they said they had a new appreciation for the artistic friends they’d come out to support.
“Some of my friends do art; I’ll probably take it next year,” said Eric Swenson, grade 11, who especially enjoyed reading the artists’ personal statements and seeing what inspired them.
Each of the student artists chose a theme that recurred throughout their works and wrote statements explaining their inspiration for the exhibition. These artist statements were prominently displayed next to their pieces.
In her statement about her cat sketches, artist Iris Xia, grade 11, wrote that her concentration involved the objectification of feelings. By illustrating cats placed into typical household tools and later luxury items, she said she sought to demonstrate how degrading people could be when they exploit innocent animals for their own benefit.
Meanwhile, senior Karen Wang’s whimsical, colorful paintings focused on the idea of freedom and escape. “What is freedom and how do I communicate my perception of it?” she questioned in her artist statement.
One thing that all of the exhibiting artists seemed to agree on was the joy they personally took in having the freedom to create their own themes, rather than following a more standard project based on a class assignment.
Explaining that process, exhibiting artist Tariq Jahshan, grade 12, stood in front of his 3-D sculpture display, and allowed that most of his ideas start out as a very basic abstract form. Then he “just kind of goes with it” until it becomes more conscious. “At that point, what’s going to come out takes over and I’ll then follow that.”
Jahshan’s work, and all the exhibiting artists’ pieces, will continue to be on display in Nichols Hall for Harker students, parents and faculty alike to enjoy until March 23.
Harker’s summer Tennis Camp is a great opportunity for tennis enthusiasts aged 7-14 (entering grades 2-8 in fall 2012) to improve their knowledge and skills. For competitive tennis players aged 6-18, the Harker Oakwood Tennis Training System (HOTTS) will have team practices and interclub matches, in addition to instruction on advance techniques, strategy, footwork and sports psychology.
Both programs will incorporate physical training, on-court instruction, technique practice and practice with both instructors and ball machines. “For the past two years, we have been using the Spanish developmental foundation used by the renowned Sanchez Casal Academy for our aspiring players,” says Harker tennis couach Craigh Pasqua, certified by the United States Professional Tennis Association. “This foundation emphasizes a different way to address the ball and includes techniques to mitigate the high levels of repetitive stress placed on one’s body by using today’s angular strokes.” Emilio Sanchez, who developed the technique and has helped develop top players such as Rafael Nadal and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, personally introduced Pasqua to the method.
New to this year’s program is the Quickstart League. Geared toward players under 10, the league will hold regular afternoon practices and offers participants the opportunity to play on smaller courts with smaller nets. Students will also attend the Bank of the West Classic tennis competition at Stanford University. “During our annual visit, our campers have the opportunity to meet many of the players and participate in a special program for junior players,” Pasqua said.
In addition to coaching, Pasqua also directs Standing Tall Tennis, a nonprofit organization that specializes in helping at-risk youths on Indian reservations through tennis instruction. For his years of community service, he was recently recognized by the Northern California chapter of the United States Tennis Association, who honored him with a “Trailblazer” award for his years of service.
The Tennis Camp and HOTTS both take place at the Oakwood Tennis Center in San Jose, located at 700 Saratoga Ave. Both programs run from June 25 through Aug. 10, 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. More information and registration are available on the Harker Summer Camp Tennis web pages.
The Harker’s School Summer Institute gives students from grades 6-12 the chance to earn credits, learn new skills and follow their passions. Harker students aren’t the only ones with these options; students from other schools are welcome at most of the classes.
This year’s institute will run from June 18 to Aug. 10, and will have a variety of new two-week courses. Also new this year are art classes, including portfolio preparation in drawing, 2-D and 3-D. The for-credit courses include a variety of classes in math, history and technology. Upper school enrichment courses span math, writing, art, history and driver’s education. Middle school enrichment will also be offered, and will include several core subjects as well as classes such as So You Think You Can Cook? and Champion Chess.
Middle school and upper school activities programs will also be offered, and will include access to the libraries, the pools and prepared lunch. The middle school activities program will also feature planned group events like piñata-making, checkers tournaments and an Iron Chef competition.
The wide range of choices and flexible program allow each student to design a schedule around his or her own academic needs and personal interests, giving everyone just the right mix of summer activity and fun.
The Harker School has been offering extensive summer programs for more than 50 years, and is accredited nationally by the American Camping Association.
In January, three seniors made their directorial debuts at this year’s Student-Directed Showcase. This year’s directors, Tina Crnko, Sebastian Herscher and Alex Najibi, each chose a play to direct and produce, learning a great deal in the process.
From auditioning actors to arranging sets to technical planning, directors gained a wealth of hands-on experience during the class, taught by Laura Lang-Ree, which many apply for but few get to take. “I think that students find interpreting and creating the ‘big picture’ really intriguing,” said Lang-Ree. “So often in their lives they focus solely on one thing very well, be it a subject or a song. But with directing, you have to have vision and be able to work on the smallest details with the big picture always in mind.”
This year’s productions were “Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead,” directed by Herscher, “Voices in Conflict,” directed by Crnko, and “How to Succeed in High School Without Really Trying,” directed by Najibi.
For Crnko, the opportunity to direct in the showcase brought her full circle, and she views it as a way to bring other students into the arts. “I became interested in the performing arts by accident, through Student-Directed Showcase,” she said. “Being offered a spot in an SDS play my freshman year shaped my love for theater and pushed me deep into the Conservatory.”
Apart from the general busywork and day-to-day activity of being a director, students also learn how to be leaders, as well as how “to always keep trying new and different ways to motivate a cast and to create a vision,” Lang-Ree said.
Despite the many challenges directors face, Crnko said the biggest obstacle was herself. “I was taking on a monster of a play,” she said. “As ‘Voices in Conflict’ is a documentary, the pressure of doing justice to these remarkable stories was almost crippling at the start. I was also incredibly afraid of how the show would be received by our community.” She was pleasantly surprised to find out that her project was enthusiastically received. “I found 20 students who were as excited as I was, and their spectacular energy and work ethic brought this powerful play to life.”
“I love the ‘aha’ moments students in SDS get when they learn the method to the madness with directing,” said Lang-Ree. “[When they see] that there really is a process and a way of creating that opens up, rather than inhibits, a show’s growth potential.”
Albert Wu and Ramya Rangan, both grade 12, were recognized at a special assembly Wednesday morning for their accomplishment of being the first pair of students from the same school to receive the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement. Jennifer Harper-Taylor, president of the Siemens Foundation, and Diane Tsukamaki, director of the College Board, traveled from the east coast to attend the assembly and personally congratulate the students and tell the audience of their accomplishments.
Tsukamaki said that eight of the 42 state and national award winners from California since the program’s launch in 1998 have come from Harker, a figure of 20%, “a statistic that should make this school proud.”
A 2009 study of 65 countries, she continued, found that the United States ranked 23rd in science proficiency and 31st in math proficiency. “AP science and math courses and exams are one way that we hope our country can regain its lead,” Tsukamaki said. Students who enroll in AP math and science courses, she said, are much more likely to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics in college.
Harper-Taylor then shared with the assembly just some of Rangan and Wu’s many accomplishments. Amazingly, both took AP classes while they were in grade 8 and both are experienced pianists. Wu was invited to the 2011 Research Science Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is also captain of Harker’s swim team. Rangan, meanwhile, was a semifinalist in the 2011 Siemens competition and represented the US in the 2009 China Girls Math Olympiad, winning a bronze medal.
After receiving their awards, Rangan and Wu shared some words with their fellow students. “None of this would have been possible without the support of the Harker community, the teachers, especially the math and science department,” he said. “The school has really given me so many opportunities to expand my intellectual horizons and also to provide me with avenues to explore and pursue my passions.” He also thanked his parents, who he said blessed him with a curiosity and love of learning.
Rangan said the reason Harker has had such success in this program is “because the school has provided all its students with such a great opportunity to be able to pursue what they want to pursue at the highest level possible for them,” she said. “And I would of course like to thank my parents a lot for giving me the great opportunity [and] the drive to pursue these things.”
March 6, 2012
The Siemens Foundation and the College Board recently announced that Harker students Ramya Rangan and Albert Wu, both grade 12, have each been named the top U.S. female and male AP scholars in the Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement. Rangan and Wu are the only two students in the U.S. to receive the scholarship, and were selected based on their performance in Advanced Placement math and science classes. Each student had the most scores of 5 on AP math and science exams for a male and female student. The last Harker student to receive a national award was Yi Sun ’06. Wu and Rangan each received a $5,000 scholarship for earing the top spots.
“I was excited and honored to receive this award in December,” Rangan said. “I didn’t expect to be one of the national winners, so I was pretty surprised when I was notified about this.”
Wu said he was also a bit honored and surprised to receive the award. “I did not know I had the top aggregate score on AP math and science tests in the entire nation,” he said. “Of course, it would not have been possible without the support of the community around me.”
Awards are given to students each year based on their performance on AP exams in the following courses: Biology, Calculus BC, Chemistry, Computer Science A, Environmental Science, Statistics, Physics C Mechanics and Physics C Electricity and Magnetism. Two winners, one male and one female, are chosen from each state to win a $2,000 scholarship, and two national winners, also a male and female, receive a $5,000 scholarship.
Both students thanked their teachers, families and the Harker community for helping them reach this milestone.
“I received so much support from my teachers. Harker is a place that offers such a large range of courses, and the teachers do a great job of teaching them and caring about the individual student,” Wu said.
“Without Harker’s amazing teachers,” said Rangan, “I really would not have been able to learn the AP coursework to achieve this award. My teachers have done much more than train me for AP exams. They have prepared me for future encounters with their fields, and they have instilled in me an excitement for the subjects they teach.”
Lawyer and author Joel Bakan appeared at Harker’s upper school campus as part of the Harker Speaker Series on Jan. 22 to discuss the topic of his latest book, “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.” The book details the many increasingly insidious ways in which children are targeted by marketers, especially with the advent of the Internet and social media.
Bakan, who also authored “The Corporation,” which was made into an acclaimed documentary, was spurred to research the topic after experiencing two “pivotal moments,” as he called them. The first was hearing the famous quote by Nelson Mandela, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
“[Children] are the most tangible representatives of what the future society is, and will be,” Bakan said.
The second came when he saw his 11-year-old son huddled around a computer with his friends, and felt compelled to ask him what they were doing. His son then directed him to a website containing a wide variety of games, many of them with shocking or violent subject matter.
“It’s important to note that these games are not in some dark corner of the Web,” he said. They are, in fact, offered by Nickelodeon, a leading provider of children’s entertainment.
Concerned about the “increasingly brazen” tactics marketers use to target children, Bakan interviewed several leading marketers for the book, and found them to be candid about their goals, proclaiming that their mission is “to uncover and then manipulate kids’ emotional hot buttons and desires” in order to sell their products. Companies on average pay marketers $15 billion each year for these kinds of services.
These hot buttons include obsession with sugary foods, a fascination with violence, their preoccupation with what their peers think and their desire to appear older than they are.
“These tendencies and predilections, which for us as parents are things we want to protect our kids from, for marketers are resources to be mined for profit,” he said.
He cited another example, a Facebook application called “Honesty Box,” which allows users to anonymously gossip about their friends. Adolescent obsession with peer approval, Bakan said, has made Honesty Box very popular, and creates possibilities for online bullying. When Bakan suggested to his daughter that she stop using Honesty Box, “She said, ‘I can’t, because then I won’t know what people are saying about me.’”
Bakan also talked about how pharmaceutical companies have marketed more and more toward children in the last 30 years. While he does not believe that children should never be prescribed medication or psychotropic drugs, “what I do think is happening is that there is a trend of overmedication,” which he partially attributes to marketing tactics used by pharmaceutical companies.
He cited the tragic story of Caitlin McIntosh, who committed suicide at the age of 12 after being prescribed Zoloft by a doctor. It was later found out that Pfizer, the company that makes Zoloft, had known that the drug could induce suicidal thoughts but chose not to reveal that information. Because the Food and Drug Administration did not require private companies to disclose the negative results of their own tests, Pfizer was able to keep these and other findings from the public.
Fortunately, in recent years key laws have been passed that make it easier for consumers to know the risks in using prescribed pharmaceuticals. One of them, passed in 2007, requires companies to disclose the details of their clinical trials to a public registry maintained by the FDA. Although this can be a valuable resource, Bakan said, it unfortunately is bogged down with jargon not understandable by much of the public. Another law passed just this year requires pharmaceutical companies to disclose any payments they have made to doctors greater than $10, so that patients can find out if a doctor’s prescription of a certain drug is suspect.
Bakan concluded by saying that even though parents now have less control over how their children are marketed to, it is nonetheless important for parents to speak up at the government level to make sure companies are required to conduct ethical business practices.
“Being a good parent today requires more, as if it isn’t enough, than making good choices as individual parents,” he said. “I think we also have to work to change the conditions under which we and other parents are making those choices, and we also have to become active in demanding public measures that protect children from harm.”
Thanks to donations from Harker and care and attention from Mike Bassoni, Harker’s facility director, two San Jose youth community centers have survived deep budget cuts to continue to serve the local community.
Through his community involvement with the Blackford Neighborhood Action Coalition (NAC), Bassoni, a 31-year Harker employee, learned of the Starbird Youth Center and their dire needs. Because of deep budget cuts last year, youth centers throughout San Jose were slated for closure, including the Starbird Youth Center. Community United, a nonprofit group focused on helping at-risk youth, came forward and offered to operate the Starbird Youth Center, as well as another center on Alma St. next to the downtown San Jose DMV office.
While the City of San Jose agreed to a one-year trial of this collaboration, it removed all electronic support – computers, video games, TVs, office equipment – from the centers, leaving them sadly bereft of the resources integral to community support.
Bassoni, who knew Harker regularly disposed of outdated computers, approached the Harker technology department. “They were great!” said Bassoni. The department donated 30 Apple Mac computers and supporting software that were delivered and installed at the two centers. In addition to the electronic supplies, Harker also donated art supplies, construction and office paper, TVs on rolling carts and art room seating.
“(Bassoni’s) contributions are fantastic and enrich these youths’ lives,” wrote Donna Stewart, executive director of Community United.
Bassoni believes the key is getting many people involved. “The formula of local and broad-based efforts has been the catalyst for a successful reopening of a community resource that appeared to be headed for the scrap pile,” said Bassoni, adding, “50-80 youth find daily refuge because of the efforts of several charitable groups, including those of Harker.”