The task of winning a single national championship in debate is demanding, but putting together victories in back-to-back years is particularly rare. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what the 23 middle school students who traveled to Dallas, Texas, last week for the 12th annual National Junior Forensic League National Championship Tournament managed to do. For the second year running, the team was recognized as one of the five Schools of Excellence across all of the debate formats offered at the tournament.
Pranav Reddy, grade 8, also extended a streak for the school by bringing home a national championship, this time in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Last year’s title came in Public Forum Debate, when two Harker pairs reached the final round and were declared co-champions. Reddy debated Resolved: When forced to choose, a just government ought to prioritize universal human rights over its national interest.
In Congressional Debate Aditya Dhar, grade 6, took third place honors nationally. When not busy winning the Lincoln-Douglas title, Reddy tackled the challenges of Congress as well, posting a fifth place result. Jai Ahuja, grade 8, and Misha Tseitlin, grade 6, joined their teammates in the Congress finals, placing them among the top 24 at the tournament.
The team of Azhar Huda and Vamsi Gadiraju, both grade 8, reached octafinals (top 16), while the team of Sophia Shatas, grade 8, and Sorjo Banerjee, grade 7, advanced to quarterfinals (top 8) of Public Forum Debate. Students participating in Public Forum considered the topic, Resolved: That the United States should intervene in another nation’s struggle for democracy.
Middle school director of forensics Karina Momary led her students to these accomplishments in her first year of coaching. “My strategy all year has been to have our middle school debaters compete against high school students, and I think that was a significant factor in our success this week,” explained Momary. The middle school team was also supported by the presence of Greg Achten, the upper school director of Policy Debate and Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and assistant coach Quinn Buniel.
This year marked the first time that the middle school NJFL National Tournament was held simultaneously with NFL Nationals for high schools. When not competing in their own rounds, all 23 middle school students had the valuable opportunity to learn by observing the high school debates.
June 13, 2011
Harker’s peripatetic Green Girls made another trip to Washington, D.C., this weekend, and this morning, Mon., June 13, shared a podium with Steven Chu, the United States energy secretary.
The event was a meeting where White House and Congressional officials discussed Building the 21st Century Grid, a report on restructuring the United States’ electrical grid to facilitate growth through the 21st century. John Holden, director of the office of science and technology, opened the meeting and Nancy Sutley, chairperson of the White House council on environmental quality, introduced Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, rising seniors, who shared their story of improving Harker’s energy analysis and consumption with 150-200 audience members. “There were government officials from every level, CEOs of clean tech companies, representatives of the Consumers Union and of private companies there,” said Lapidous.
The two climate crusaders were followed by Thomas James “Tom” Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, and Chu. After the meeting, the two girls attended a breakout session where policy was discussed. “At first it was difficult to understand,” said Lapidous, “but after we started listening it was pretty interesting. At other events they have had a lot of rhetoric; here they were actually being practical,” she continued. “They seemed much more willing to listen to young people,” added Indukuri.
The pair plans to ramp up their outreach this year to get more schools, including Castro Valley High School, Castelleja School and Bellermine College Preparatory, to agree to install smart meters or make other energy consumption changes. The pair is also working on a plan to get more Harker students involved in climate change to ensure a legacy of climate crusaders when they depart a year from now for college.
Lapidous and Indukuri began making a name for themselves as climate activists in their sophomore year. In September 2009 they were two of 25 climate youth leaders selected to attend the Governor’s Global Climate Summit co-hosted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; in February 2010 the girls spoke at Google’s offices in San Francisco at the annual Teens in Tech Conference; a year later the two spoke at Power Shift ’11 in Washington, D.C., to 8,000 attendees, then had a private meeting with Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer in the Obama administration, who blogged about the meeting later that week. For more about Indukuri and Lapidous’ activity, search on either name in Harker News Online
The San Jose Mercury News announced their boys tennis and volleyball all-stars today and Harker is well represented. Karthik Dhore, just graduated, was named to the First Team All Mercury News Boys Tennis.
Softball history! For the first time in Harker history our softball team qualified for CCS with a 10-0 victory over Alma Heights Saturday, solidifying third place in league and the last automatic league berth. The girls travel to Notre Dame-Belmont Wednesday for their first-round game. Please congratulate the girls and their coaches, Raul Rios, Dan Hudkins and Ray Fowler, for this outstanding accomplishment. Bracketdirections from the Saratoga campus As with all CCS games, there is an entry fee. For softball first-round games entry is $5 for all, children under 12 are free.
Here are details of the game from a message Dan Hudkins sent to team families:
“Wow! What a game! By defeating Alma Heights Christian (10-0 in 6 innings) we received an ‘automatic qualification’ for the Central Coast Sectional (CCS) softball tournament. This is a first for Harker’s softball program, and speaking as someone who was also an assistant coach in 2004 when we went 0-15, we’ve come a long, long way. Your daughter and her teammates did it by their continuous, enthusiastic support of each other.
“Coach Rios and I just got back from the tournament seeding meeting at the CCS office. We received the 12th of 13 seeds in Division III (smaller schools). This means the first round game will be played against the number five seed, Notre Dame High School – Belmont, at Belmont on Wed., May 18 at 4 p.m. Coach Rios will let everyone know departure time for the game on Wednesday; I suspect that it will between 2 and 2:30. The school’s address is 1540 Ralston Ave., Belmont, CA 94002. With any luck we’ll be back in time to participate in the sports award ceremonies that begin at 6:30 p.m. on the Saratoga campus (parents are welcome to that as well). CCS is single elimination. If we win, we continue, if we lose, it’s the end of the season. We hope that you can come out and support the team either at the CCS round 1 game, the sports award ceremonies, or both! It’s been a great season and a privilege to have been a part of it.”
Harker parents Samir and Sundari Mitra (Shivani, grade 10) have established The Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities which will match gifts for the Annual Giving Campaign up to a total of $100,000.
“The subject matters taught under humanities such as history, languages, communications and philosophy are critical skills and knowledge that develop well-rounded Harker students,” said Samir Mitra. “Humanities is the bedrock of a superior education and will enable our students to stand out as recognized contributors in their future professions.”
Those interested in helping the Mitras’ effort can contribute online at www.harker.org/onlinegiving or send a check to Harker Advancement Office, 3800 Blackford Ave., San Jose, CA 95117, or drop off a check at any campus front office.
“The Mitra family’s endowment offer, and every matching give from others, will benefit our students every year, for years and years to come,” said Melinda Gonzales, director of development.
[Update] The San Jose Mercury News has published a nice story about the victory – read all about it!
May 11, 2011
Harker’s Vandana Kadam, middle school math teacher, led Celine Liang, grade 7, from Harker, and three students from other California schools to the Mathcounts national championship in Washington, D.C.
Students from Redwood, Cupertino and Kennedy middle schools, California’s top finishers at the state level, were the other three members of the championship team. Liang was third in the state competition. Mathcounts was founded 28 years ago by the National Society of Professional Engineers, CNA Foundation and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
“Making it to the California state team itself is an accomplishment due to the population and the competition,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school.
A total of 250,000 students participated in MathCounts nationwide this year, coached by over 5,000 coaches, noted Kadam. There were 56 teams at nationals, which ran May 5-8. The teams come from each of the 50 states, plus the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico, and added teams from the District of Columbia, Department of Defense and the State Department. No matter how large or small the state is, only four top students represent each one.
Students are graded individually for individual prizes and also on the team score. The team score comprises the average of the four individual scores and an additional team round. California beat all top teams to clinch first place and each member of the winning California team won a $2,000 scholarship and a trip to space camp. “The students did an awesome job. Harker was well represented by Celine Liang,” said Kadam.
Harker’s nursing staff, under director Debra Nott, ran the big Pertussis booster raffle in late April, rewarding Larissa Wen, grade 7 and Gerry Glasauer, grade 11, and their families, for having gotten their Tdap shots early. Proof of a Tdap shot is required by a new California law and Harker’s nursing staff is doing all they can to encourage students to take care of the obligation now to avoid an August rush. California schools, public and private, cannot not allow students without proof of the Tdap shots to attend classes.
Over the weekend, 15 Harker students traveled to the University of Kentucky to compete in the 40th Tournament of Champions. The Tournament of Champions (TOC) is an elite national tournament that requires students to earn qualifying legs at national circuit invitational tournaments during the school year. With each preliminary round akin to an elimination round at a regular-season invitational, Harker students competed in Public Forum, Lincoln-Douglas and Congressional Debate.
After seven preliminary rounds, four Harker Public Forum teams made it to the sweet 16 (octofinal) elimination round bracket. This is the first time in the Public Forum division that a school has made up 25 percent of the elimination round pool. Senior Ziad Jawadi and sophomore Reyhan Kader as well as sophomores Aneesh Chona and Anuj Sharma were eliminated in the round of 16. Juniors Rohan Bopardikar and Akshay Jagadeesh were the fifth seed going into elimination rounds and won their octofinal, however juniors Frederic Enea and Aakash Jagadeesh were the fourth seed and also won their octofinal round. This meant that Harker eliminated itself from the tournament with Enea and Jagadeesh advancing over their teammates to the semifinal round.
In the semifinal debate, Enea and Jagadeesh debated Ridge MP (New Jersey), a team that had been in finals of both the TOC and Grand Nationals in 2010. On a 2-1 decision, Enea and Jagadeesh advanced to the final round of competition. The final round, against a team from Lake Highland (Florida), ended in a 5-0 decision in favor of Harker.
This is the second time that Harker has won the Public Forum Tournament of Champions, with Kaavya Gowda ’09 and Kelsey Hilbrich ’10 winning in 2009. Harker is the first school in the history of the Public Forum division of the Tournament of Champions to win multiple championships.
The Harker Forensics Team thanked the entire Harker community in an email message. “In the final round of competition, Fred took a moment before his speech to thank all of the teachers, staff, and students at Harker and while you may not have been in Kentucky with us this weekend, the spirit of Harker helped propel these students to this historical level of success. Thank you!” wrote Carol Green, forensics teacher.
Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, has written an extensive blog about his visit with Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 11. Read the blog here. Read our story on their visit, too!
[Updated] In mid-April Harker’s Key Club took a trip to Anaheim to attend the annual Key Club district convention. More than 3,000 students attended from all over California, Hawaii and Nevada. The group, chaperoned by Kerry Enzensperger, activities director, and Kevin Williamson, upper school dean of students, also spent a day at Disneyland.
“Our focus for our visit to the convention was primarily to become exposed to the diverse world that Key Club is a part of,” said Farrah Gulzar, grade 11, vice president of Key Club. “Not only were we able to meet new people, but we were informed of fundraising ideas, amazing organizations and various projects that we may be able to integrate into our own club for the 2011-2012 term.
“I was really intrigued by the project that Kiwanis and UNICEF are working on, “Project Eliminate.” This project focuses on helping children with the disease MNT, and the information they gave us and the videos we were presented created a new awareness in many of us. I’m hoping that in next year’s term we can focus our efforts on this project,” Gulzar said.
“At DCON, there are group sessions, where all 3000 of us are gathered into a giant room where we are updated on the progress of our entire district,” said Jennifer Nguyen, grade 12, president of the club, “covering things like new membership, the total community service hours we all have donated, the amount of money we raised and so forth.”
“Then, there are also seminars which are typically smaller, about 50-60 people per seminar,” Nguyen continued. “You get to choose which seminar you would like to attend and they range anywhere from “How to be a Successful Leader” to “Key Club 101,” thus, every Key Clubber can personalize his or her agenda to suit what they have in mind for their involvement in Key Club.
“Because our club arrived to convention early, we were able to spend a day at Disneyland. The weather was perfect and we were all able to have lunch together,” said Nguyen. “It was amazing! We were also able to squeeze in about an hour poolside where Mr. Williamson treated us all to refreshments and we were able to talk freely with him about the community service policies at Harker. It was very interesting to be able to talk as a group and communicate our thoughts and ideas directly to the administration.”