International students bound for schools in the U.S. find Harker’s well-established English Language Institute (ELI) a near-essential part of their preparation.
The ELI students, aged six to 16, come primarily from Asia, but many of the continents were represented this year with students attending from such diverse countries as Russia, Bolivia, Brazil and Ethiopia.
Many students come to ELI to increase their chances of admission to college preparatory boarding schools in the United States, said Anthony Wood, ELI director. A few have been “admitted conditionally and referred to the program by their admissions directors,” he said, speaking to both the program’s renown and value.
Those with better English skills often have attended international schools in their home countries where much, if not all, of the instruction takes place in English. They come here, said teacher Lyle Davidson, “to either solidify or improve what they already know and to get extensive practice.” He noted students choose Harker because of its worldwide reputation, and, no surprise, “to experience California.”
As a mature program, the ELI provides value-plus and that includes a good look at U.S and California culture. While the focus is on learning English from 8:00-3:30 most days, cultural adventures this year included visits to the Roaring Camp Railroad in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the San Jose Tech Museum and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
While in the Monterey area, the group stopped at the Carmel Mission for some historical context on California’s development. U.S. history was integrated into the curriculum to give students moving on to U.S. schools a good background for learning more about the U.S. This year, Jared Ramsey, Harker history teacher, taught a specialized curriculum introducing major events that have shaped the United States. “He added great variety and expertise to our program,” said Wood, “and the students really enjoyed his creative teaching methods.”
At the conclusion of formal instruction each day, learning continues in the enrichment program, which takes different forms for different ages. The younger students swim and play games. On Mondays and Fridays, they join the summer camp program at Bucknall.
“It’s an opportunity for the kids to immerse themselves with American kids who speak English as their first language,” said Wood, “They get to make new friends and practice their English, but they also get to do the climbing wall, sports and other things.”
The most advanced students, usually aged 14-16, stay at the Saratoga campus and work on special projects tailored to their needs. For many, that means SAT preparation. They are assisted by mentors (sometimes called buddies), who are often Harker juniors, seniors or recent graduates.
Davidson, a 13-year ELI veteran who oversees the advanced students’ curriculum as well as the mentor program, said students arrive with a pretty good understanding of grammar, but they often need help in other areas. “The SAT asks very tricky questions in reading comprehension,” he says. “The buddies…are able to take a teaching role and model how they would confront the problem — and they do it all in English.”
Mentor Brian Lee, a 2010 graduate of Harker, says he really enjoys hanging out with the students. They talk about music a lot, he says, and, with the natural curiosity of young people, “they ask questions about our personal lives, like where we come from.”
One student “thought that I was Vietnamese, but I am actually Chinese…and I know Cantonese and Mandarin,” Lee said, but the real surprise came “when I said I came from here.”
“It’s good to keep them on their toes,” says mentor coordinator Cynthia Huang, who is working toward her master’s in education and speaks Mandarin, Taiwanese, and some Japanese. “Children that are out of their element are going to group together–by language, age or gender, because that’s their comfort zone. We want them to be outside their comfort zone in order to push them to that next step,” she says.
Not that they shouldn’t enjoy plenty of comforts while they are here. All of the students travel with a parent or guardian and most choose to stay next door in the Oakwood Apartments, with which Harker has a special arrangement.
Angel Lin, from Taiwan, thinks it’s fun to stay at Oakwood. “It’s all students,” she says. Indeed, Wood said he was impressed when he attended a party thrown by parents at the end of the first session. “They all seem close even though they are from different countries. They all get together and obviously the kids make friends.”
The school days are long, but the students seem to thrive on it. Huu Li, from Vietnam, is in Davidson’s advanced class and says he really likes his teacher. “He’s very funny. He knows how to make the students feel happy and we never feel tired when we study.”
As announced in the spring, the Harker Conservatory has again been invited to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in summer 2011. Originally, the group had planned to perform “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” However, that show is currently making its British premiere in London’s West End theater district, so rights to perform it in the U.K. have been restricted.
Undeterred, Laura Lang-Ree, director, and her creative staff brainstormed and have announced that “Pippin” will replace “Spelling Bee” as next year’s spring and Fringe musical.
The show, the 30th longest-running production on Broadway, is an unusual take on Pippin, son of Charlemagne, and his voyage of self-discovery. The play will be updated to modern times and given a current sensibility along the lines of the Broadway smash “American Idiot.”
Audition times have not changed, and more information is available in the Harker Parent Portal (HPP),in the back-to-school hub under Optional Programs and Forms in Encore!, the Conservatory’s newsletter.
Designs by Priya Bhikha ’10 were featured in her show, 13 = B, at Harker’s Saratoga campus on a sunny Friday morning in August. Outfits included saris, salwar kameezes and churidars, modernized.
“Although I do identify with Indian culture, a large part of who I am is American,” said Bhikha. “I’ve added elements of Indian fashion to a more modern take of the ’50s. I love the feminine silhouettes of the mid-20th century.”
Bhikha’s 13 designs, mostly suited for young women, included an elegant red sari with detailed gold patterns and a polished yellow churidar with gold embroidery that would turn heads in any setting. Another notable outfit was a more traditional lovely gray sari with beautiful sequin work.
Bhikha, whose recycled designs were featured in the 2009 Harker Fashion Show, “Outside the Box: Chic and Unique,” also had a number of items for sale. Following the runway portion of the show, many of the 50-plus attendees browsed the items on display. Sales were good, said Bhikha, who already has a special order for an outfit for an acquaintance attending an Indian wedding later this year.
Bhikha is set on a career in fashion and is in the process of developing her website, www.beemusing.tumblr.com. Her challenges in putting the Harker show together included coordinating the accessories for each outfit and matching them to her models. “I’m really happy with my models,” she said. “I thought it went well.”
Families looking for a two-week summer camp for grades 1-4, or for a different kind of academic experience, find it in Harker’s thematic curriculum option. Like their four-week counterparts, two-week campers study in the morning and join activities in the afternoon. But instead of focusing primarily on math and language arts in the morning, they examine a broad topic from a variety of disciplines.
In this year’s thematic program, titled Big Blue Marble, three sessions explored Africa/Asia, Australia/Antarctica and the Americas, respectively. The curriculum integrated science, history, the arts and social studies–and of course math and language arts–into a multidisciplinary study of the continents.
Veteran Harker teacher Kathleen Ferreti taught all three modules this summer. Early on in their study of Antarctica, she equipped the students with compasses, which they calibrated and learned to use before trooping outside. “If we’re going exploring like scientists, we need to be able to find our way,” she says.
During this hands-on lesson, they answered questions like: What is the eastern- or western-most part of the campus? What direction is our classroom from where we now stand? “My classroom has no walls,” says Ferreti. “My objective is to take it outside as much as I can, and to do real-life stuff.”
When they did get back inside, the students were tasked with making their own compasses by rubbing a steel needle in one direction on a magnet, attaching a cork and floating the apparatus in water. It points north!
Some of the lessons tend to integrate a lot of science, like this one did. Others lean toward culture and the arts. Among Ferreti’s many talents is taiko drumming. During the study of Asia, her taiko group paid a special visit to the class.
During the Africa module, students made hummus and fufu (sweet potato balls). They also used a spaghetti maker, not to make pasta but to press beads for African-style necklaces. They studied mummies and hieroglyphic writing, and created 3D square and triangular pyramids.
In each two-week session, students write in their travel journals, count in different languages and read fiction–some historical, some classic.
Language arts and mathematics are inseparable when it comes to reading and discussing “One Grain of Rice,” a folk tale that has taken many forms throughout Asia. It always features a peasant hero who is awarded one grain of rice, doubled each day for a month. He ultimately feeds his whole village; meanwhile, Ferreti uses a matrix to show each step, from one to more than 1 billion grains of rice.
“I really enjoy the integrated curriculum. It gives me a chance to explore things in a way I don’t have time to do during the school year,” she says, adding that students who attend Harker also seem to find it something of a break. “It’s a chance to look at things in a different way and have a lot of fun doing it.”
The thematic approach appeals to more than just Harker regulars. Third-grader Natasha Goudarzi attended Harker for the first time this summer to study the Americas. Of Ms. Ferreti she says, “She’s really nice and cheerful and we do a lot of games with her and fun stuff.”
In class, Natasha made fast friends with Hailey Horton, Gr. 3, and her sister, Caroline, Gr. 4, both of whom were also new to Harker. The class read “The Great Kapok Tree,” and the girls enjoyed creating a play in which each student took on a rainforest animal role (or three) and admonished a would-be woodcutter.
Their favorite thing, however, was a taste test of Brazilian agricultural exports, specifically chocolate and bananas. The coffee beans were not for tasting, said Caroline, “but we got to smell them.”
“And some crunched-up ones, too,” volunteered her sister. “They smell a lot like coffee.”
Harker Summer Camp brings students from all over the San Jose area for learning and fun–often both at the same time.
The summer academic program differs from its school-year counterpart in a number of ways. For one thing, “It’s just more relaxed,” says Summer Academic Principal Diann Chung. “It’s still education, but it has a different vibe.” One reason may be that the day starts a bit later, at 8:30, and the academic schedule ends at 11:30 to make way for afternoon activities.
Offered for children entering kindergarten through grade 8, the curriculum is not just school-year redux. Chung, who chairs the regular K-1 academic team, works closely with the other department chairs to make sure the summer curriculum is compatible with that for the school year, and not redundant. “We try to make sure they are seeing and doing something different,” she says.
It can’t be easy to meet the academic needs of students with a wide variety of baseline skills in only four weeks, but that is what happens. The key, says Chung, is “differentiated instruction.”
Operating under this principle, teachers adapt the curriculum to the individual student’s level. Within the classroom, the children work in small groups, with each group offered a slightly different take on the lesson. With the help of an aide, the teacher makes sure that every student is challenged, but not too much.
There are fewer subjects to study, too. The morning consists of one class period each of math and language arts, and one 45-minute elective. Everyone is conscious of the fact that it’s summertime, so teachers have a great deal of latitude with which to incorporate games, crafts and activities into the curriculum.
Teacher Alice Cooley makes sure to read a silly story to her first-graders every day. “They think it’s great to hear me get my tongue twisted” while reading “Fox in Sox,” she says.
In math, she uses a lot of manipulatives, objects students handle to help them learn. For example, she noticed that the kids knew the value of individual coins, but had trouble combining them. So she put together a little bag of faux coins for each child. “We’re working with things they are missing, but doing it in a fun way,” she says. “It’s hands-on learning.”
Elective topics run the gamut from math to language arts, science, technology and the arts. During each four-week session, students select two from such intriguing choices as Hopscotch Math, Kitchen Chemistry and Jump Write In.
On a recent day, third- and fourth-graders from the Enviro-Kids class were running across the field with their homemade dust collectors for a study of air pollution. Later they would be using computers to learn more about the Gulf Coast oil spill and writing about experiments with different ways to clean up oil.
Grade 1 parent Trupti Kapadia likes the balance of choices that the four-week program offers. “There is some pre-designed curriculum, some electives that offer parents a choice on what extra academic emphasis to give their kids, and then the 3:30-5:00 Special Interest Hour, where the kids get to make their own choices,” she says.
She enrolled her twins, Nikki and Kaden, in KinderCamp last year to help them adjust to Harker. Now first graders, they are enjoying camp just as much. In fact, says Kapadia, “As the first session was ending, they checked in with me to make sure they were signed up for the second session.”
A young boy whose mother has died is told by a wizard that he can bring her back to life with a magical “Liferock,” but he will have to fight an evil villain atop Mount Everest to obtain it. There are twists and turns, but our hero triumphs over all and is reunited with his mother.
Reminiscent of a fairy tale, this short story actually sprang from the fertile mind of Young-Jae (Andrew) Chang in Write 4 Life, one of the two-week summer courses available to students in grades 5-8. The classes go all day (8:30-3:30) and offer a fun take on a single subject area.
Flexing Their Creativity
Write 4 Life Teacher Martin Walsh is thrilled to see Chang and his other students implementing Freytag’s structure for dramatic storytelling, which is one of the key concepts he tries to drive home in the class. But he is equally excited to see their creativity bubbling over.
A former teacher in international schools (Caracas, Phnom Penh) and university admissions director, Walsh is currently a college counselor at Harker’s high school. “My colleagues and I in the college counseling department think that writing your personal statement for college, being creative on that application, is a muscle,” he says, and “like any muscle, it needs to be worked out.”
His students are indeed getting a workout, and one that will serve them well. Chang, hailing from Korea, is fairly typical among his classmates. Most are international, many from Asia, and Walsh anticipates that nearly all of them plan to attend college in the United States.
When asked what he thinks of the class, Chang indicates that he really likes his teacher. Walsh is “very congenial and kind to everyone,” he says.
Walsh is, in fact, quite congenial, but since when did fifth graders use that word? The answer is since teaching assistant Diana Lai, a Harker alum and sophomore at Washington University, collected a list of common PSAT words to use in daily vocabulary games.
Students will not be tested on the words, though. Summer courses are “a lot lighter,” says Walsh, “If you get the vocabulary, great, but there are no grades and no homework.”
All the better to let the students’ ideas flow where they will. “On the board is a list of all the ways I have been killed in their stories,” says their teacher and muse, “and then there are the Walsh Aliens and Walshettes….”
Next up was a factual writing exercise in which the students were to watch video of a rocket launch and write a news story about it. No offense to the Walsh Aliens, but they were not invited.
In Robotics, another of the two-week gr. 5-8 courses, students use Legos to construct robots of all kinds.
Middle school computer science and robotics teacher Michael Schmidt models the class on his required 7th grade course. Aside from a few key concepts, much of the curriculum emerges naturally he says, “I just start them off and go where they go.”
Of course, it’s not too hard to predict where they will go. “Once they can make the robots move, the natural tendency is to make them slam into each other,” he says, “So we end up with a lot of robots just pushing against each other in the middle of the room. They think this is hilarious.”
It’s also a teachable moment in which Schmidt offers, “If this is what we are going to do, then we have to make proper bumpers and devices to flip the other person over.” Robot wars, anyone?
The next step forward comes when students get frustrated with the wires connecting their robots to the remotes they are holding. “True robots are autonomous,” Schmidt points out as he teaches them how to program the robots in advance.
Girls Rock Robot Wars
Schmidt always has a mix of boys and girls in the class, and one needn’t worry about how girls fare in the realm of robot wars. This year, “the girls were the first ones to figure out how to win consistently,” he says.
He attributes this to the fact that, while the boys tended to focus on combat apparatus, the girls “started making their robots more streamlined and protected.” The last robot moving freely is the winner, and those with too many appendages inevitably got tangled together.
At the beginning of the course’s second week, Schmidt shifted the focus from destruction to construction, mandating the students to come up with a robot that does something useful.
Products included several Lego motorized wheelchairs, robotic pets, a grocery scanner, and a vending machine–made out of Legos–that operated perfectly during the parent demonstration before slipping off the table and falling apart. With a maturity beyond his years, the builder shrugged, “That’s why vending machines aren’t built out of Legos.”
Schmidt imparts some essential take-aways while his students are having fun making fighting, singing, or vending robots. To be successful in the class, they need to learn about sequential ordering. He says, “I push the concept that programming is a big set of instructions broken down into smaller ones that they can manipulate using modifiers.” He also introduces one electrical engineering concept: that of polarity. “It just means the direction the electricity is running,” he explains, “We talk about alternating current vs. direct current.”
Of course, the students usually end up way beyond that. This summer, says Schmidt, “We started talking about subroutines and using stored memory.” Clearly, they are not just playing with Legos.
Their teacher’s enthusiasm for robotics is infectious. “The more fun I’m having the more fun they’re having,” says Schmidt, “I don’t ignore the rules, but if I’m looking at something and thinking it’s fun, then 90% of them are probably doing that, too.”
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) recently released its list of Academic Team Champions for the 2009-10 school year, and Harker’s upper school football, wrestling and boys swimming squads were all named state champions for their exceptional GPAs. Harker tied with San Diego County’s La Costa Canyon High School for the highest number of teams to win the honor.
First day jitters at the start of kindergarten are expected, but many families skip the butterflies altogether by participating in Harker’s KinderCamp, which provides a gentle transition into the school’s youngest grade level.
While conforming to the summer format of morning academics and afternoon activities, KinderCamp’s primary objective is to help students become familiar with the Harker environment, and allow them to learn and practice some of the skills needed for kindergarten.
Faculty never lose sight of the fact that this is a first experience for the kids. “It’s very nurturing,” says veteran kindergarten teacher Grace Wallace. “That is my number one goal: for it to be very welcoming for both the parents and the children.”
The morning academics are designed to engage students in learning through games, songs, crafts and manipulatives. “Summer is very hands-on,” says Wallace. “We want to promote learning in an environment that is really enjoyable, one that makes them curious and want to explore.”
On a recent day, the students stacked Fruit Loops in different combinations adding up to the number five, for a delicious take on problem solving and computation. Playdough provided an opportunity to build finger strength and motor control while learning and practicing shapes.
Weekly themes include Pets and the Fourth of July. Cat crowns, puppy puppets, and Uncle Sam hats challenge a variety of motor, computational, and phonetic skills. “I’m a big believer in implementing a skill through crafts,” Wallace says. Hence the patterns practiced in red, white, and blue pinto beans and the puppets printed with three-letter words. There is a lot of learning going on under the guise of fun and games.
Wallace says she feels like she has done her job if the kids “are happy and love coming to school, and feel that they can succeed here socially, developmentally, and academically.”
Gr. 1 parent Trupti Kapadia is glad she took the advice of other Harker parents and enrolled her twins in KinderCamp last year. “The summer is so relaxed and fun that my kids loved school from day one,” she says. “There was really no breaking in period when school started, because they were familiar with the campus and the people.”
In addition to offering an unusually hands-on curriculum, the summer program differs from the school year in that classes are smaller and fewer in number. This provides an opportunity for the children to become familiar with the kindergarten environment when it is less busy.
The schedule is more relaxed as well. During the school year, kindergartners often visit a different teacher for either math or language arts. They have a separate science and social studies curriculum, and they go to P.E., Music, Art, and Library. During the summer, they remain with the same teacher all morning and, while other disciplines are integrated into the curriculum, the focus is on math and language arts.
The students practice more than their letters and numbers, however. “We’re focusing a lot on social skills and listening skills,” says Wallace. “We do it during the school year, too, but summer gives us a chance to really zero in on those. They learn social skills in the morning in the classroom, and they learn them in a different way playing in the afternoon.”
During the optional afternoon program, the youngest campers form their own group, known as the Sparrows, and take full advantage of camp activities, including swimming, archery, crafts, and games. “With the exception of the climbing wall, they get to do everything the big kids do,” says program director Vanessa Bullman.
Of course, some activities look a little different when it’s the Sparrows’ turn. Their swim lessons, for example, are conducted in very small groups, with no more than 3 students per instructor. Also unique to this age group is naptime. Each day, one 45-minute activity period is allocated to nap or rest time. Children are not required to sleep, but it’s a quiet interlude guaranteed to inspire envy among grown-ups.
Perhaps most popular with the kids are the field trips. Twice during each four-week session, the Sparrows don their trademark orange camp T-shirts and head for such destinations as Happy Hollow, the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, indoor playland Jungle Island, and Ardenwood Farm in Fremont.
The Kapadia children liked KinderCamp so much last year, their mother says, that “every day, they woke up and couldn’t wait to go to school. In fact, one Saturday, my daughter asked just to drive by and see the school, even though no one was there.”
Adding to the long list of recent speech and debate accomplishments, the Harker middle school debate team claimed the 2010 National Junior Forensic League championship in Public Forum Debate in late June in Des Moines, Iowa. Based on the school’s cumulative accomplishment across all debate events, coach Steve Clemmons took the stage to collect one of only five School of Excellence in Debate awards bestowed at the tournament. Students will be entering Gr. 9 in the fall unless otherwise noted.
In public forum, debaters evaluated whether current trends in political dialogue compromise meaningful democratic discourse. All three Harker teams advanced to competition in the elimination round bracket. While Stephanie Lu and Maneesha Panja fell in the Octafinal round on a 2-1 decision, Harker’s two other teams, Adarsh Battu and partner Arjun Kumar, along with Claudia Tischler and partner Shilpa Yarlagadda, reached the final round and were thus named co-champions. Tischler and Yarlagadda were also undefeated in preliminary competition.
In Lincoln-Douglas, debaters considered whether inclusion of non-felons in DNA databases is unjust. Travis Chen, advanced to semifinals before falling on a 2-1 decision to the eventual champion. Srikar Pyda and Brian Tuan also both made elimination round competition, falling in Octafinals. Rohith Bhethanabotla and Azhar Huda, Gr. 8 (in the fall) competed valiantly in Lincoln-Douglas debate as well, falling just short of reaching the elimination rounds.
Pulling double-duty at the tournament, Kumar complemented his Public Forum championship by reaching finals in Congressional Debate.
Congratulations also go to Mr. Steve Clemmons, Director of Middle School Forensics. Mr. Jonathan Peele, Director of Upper School Congressional Debate and Individual Events, traveled with the team and served as an assistant coach. Ms. Carol Green, Communication Studies Department Chair and Director of Upper School Public Forum, assisted by working with students to organize practices and enlisting the enthusiastic help of many upper school debaters to lend peer-coaching. The success of our middle school debaters at NJFL Nationals truly demonstrates the power of the unified Harker Forensics Team!
Teachers from around the Bay Area came to the Harker Teacher Institute at the Saratoga campus last month to learn more about technology and methods available to help them improve their classroom effectiveness.
During a wide variety of sessions, teachers learned about such skills as using digital content and grading quizzes with Moodle, creating collaborative documents in Google Docs, making high-quality graphics with free software and even filming documentaries.
In contrast to last year’s Teacher Institute, no keynote speaker was featured this year. Participants preferred “to spend most of their time on things that would make a difference in their classes next year rather than hearing about things to come,” explained Dan Hudkins, director of instructional technology.
Hudkins said this year’s institute was “very smooth and successful,” thanks to the careful coordination and arrangements made by Harker’s instructional technology staff of Fred Triefenbach, Lisa Diffenderfer and Angela Neff.