This story was originally published in the Fall 2010 issue of Harker Quarterly Harker junior Margaret Krackeler signed up to get a course out of the way and found she liked it.
“The teachers are really fun and I’m there with my friends,” she said during the final week. As a bonus, she was able to enter AP Biology this fall, skipping the otherwise-required year of Honors Biology.
Chris Florio, Summer Institute principal, said that most students enroll in the Institute as a result of academic planning: either to knock off a required course or to get ahead in a subject area of interest. Many classes are in core subjects, but enrichment courses are also offered in art, forensics and even driver’s education.
Honors Geometry teacher Misael Fisico revealed how he captures students’ attention as they face the prospect of fourplus hours of geometry daily. “I know my students are into computers,” he said, “so there are always computer activities in my class, especially for the first two weeks. Then, I let them do the thinking once I’ve bombarded them with the fun stuff!”
Computer science teacher Susan King noted that, while many students take programming to complete academic requirements, “it isn’t all that rare for kids to find out they like it and go on to take the AP course as a result.” Like Fisico, King works hard to make her instruction and classwork relevant and fun.
“I try not to be the sage on the stage,” she said, “but to have the kids be very active – not only programming on their computers, but also writing on the white boards and working in teams of two.”
It’s not all fun and games for sure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any: King and her teaching assistant, Partha Vora, grade 11, put on a version of “The Dating Game” in the Advanced Programming class to illustrate the operation of data structures.
Data structures can represent many, many data points, explained King, “or just three pieces of information, like Bachelors One, Two and Three.” In the game, “the bachelorette could question the bachelors but she had to use the correct index,” she said. “If she rejected one, she removed that bachelor from the database, using all the appropriate concepts.”
Prag Batra, grade 11, got to the crux of the matter: “It’s kind of frustrating when it’s not working, and you have to spend all this time debugging. But thinking of the idea and trying to come up with the logic is kind of fun,” he said.
Five Harker students took high honors at the the 13th Po Leung Kuk Primary Mathematics World Contest (PMWC), held in July in Hong Kong. David Zhu and Peter Wu, now grade 6, were on the Silicon Valley team that took first runner-up in the Po Leung Kuk Cup. Cindy Liu, Rachel Wu and David Lin, all now grade 8, helped the East Bay team reach second runner-up.
In individual competition, Liu had a perfect score and won a first place honor, Zhu earned a second place honor and Peter Wu and Rachel Wu won third place honors.
Each student at the competition was selected from two tryout rounds. Both rounds were administered by MathEdge, an organization that trains students in problem-solving and competitive mathematics. The first round attracted 154 students from 76 Bay Area schools. From the first round, 15 were selected to attend a 12-week training camp. Of those 15, eight were selected to compete at the PMWC after a second tryout.
Gr. 4 and Gr. 5 students posted their highest scores ever during Harker’s annual in-house Math League contest in May. This year, 41 fifth-graders had scores of 28 or higher, with 13 students earning perfect scores. Gr. 5 contestants who scored perfectly were: Steven Cao, Ryan Chen, Cuebeom Choi, Rishab Gargeya, Andrew Gu, Conor Martin, Kshithija Mulam, Eric Pei, Divya Rajasekharan, Aneesh Samineni, Austin Tuan, Peter Wu and David Zhu.
The fifth-graders with a score of 28 or 29 were Sana Aladin, Varun Baldwa, Sarah Baz, Brandon Chow, Quentin Delepine, Aditya Dhar, Elan Friedland, Kedar Gupta, Joyce Huang, Emaad Hussain, Aashish Jain, Preethi Kandappan, Alexander Lam, Lauren Liu, Nikhil Manglik, Anuva Mittal, Judy Pan, Albert Pun, Alayna Richmond, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Scott Song, Meilan Steimle, Ed Tischler, Lindsey Trinh, Misha Tseitlin, Derrick Wang and Edmond Wu.
A total of 29 Gr. 4 students scored 28 or higher, with four of them having perfect scores. Perfect scorers in the fourth grade were Adrian Chu, Vivian Huang, Rajiv Movva and Shaya Zarkesh. Students who had scores of 28 or 29 were: Niko Bhatia, Rahul Bhethanabotla, Megan Cardosi, Siddarth Chari, Kate Chow, Griffin Ellis, Rose Guan, Alan Hughes, Julia Huang, Rishi Iyer, Tanay Kamat, Ania Kranz, Jerrica Liao, Edgar Lin, Taylor Kohlmann, Michael Kwan, Victor Shin, Aadith Srinivasan, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Su, Shushant Thyagoraj, Gary Tsai, Jessica Wang, Roy Yi and Kaitlin Zhu.
Dazzling the Gr. 5 students with his cool Martian moves, Rudy the Rover made a guest appearance on the Bucknall campus March 26 in celebration of National Engineers Week.
Math teacher Pat Walsh invited IBM engineers Diane Reese and Eric Butler ’81 to teach his students ways to apply their math practically. Reese, a mother of two Harker graduates, and Butler challenged the students with simple programming, manipulating the different paths Rudy, a Lego Mindstorms robot, could take to reach his target.
By also pulling numbers and word problems off the desk and highlighting the potential for practical applications, the two engineers gave the students a peek into an engineer’s life in research.
Students from Gr. 3, 4 and 5 had impressive results in this year’s math competitions. All Gr. 3 students recently completed participation in the Continental Mathematics League (CML) contest, where the high team score earned Harker a regional award. The six problems for each meet require logical thinking and reasoning, and schools compete internationally. Earning a perfect score of 18 over the three meets this year was Brandon Ma, who earned a medal for his achievement.
Although the top-scoring student always wins a medal, this is only the third time since Stephanie Woolsey, Gr. 3 math teacher and contest advisor, began administering the contest approximately six years ago that a perfect score has been earned. Ma earned an additional medal for being a national student winner for his perfect score.
Previous scores of 18 were earned by Grace Guan in 2007 and Rishabh Gargeya in 2008. Scoring a total of 16 points and earning certificates of recognition were Lilia Gonzales, Jerry Peng and Tiffany Wong.
Two students, Sahana Narayen and Nishant Ravi, both earned scores of five on each meet, for a total score of 15. The meets occur once a month in January, February and March during regular math classes. Scores are reported as both team and individual scores, with the highest possible team score being 36 for each meet. The highest six scores for the grade are reported as the team scores each month.
This year, students earning a score of six for at least one meet, in addition to the winners listed above, included Priya Bhanot, Bobby Bloomquist, Tim Chang, Brian Faun, Jacob Kim and Gene Wang. “These questions are challenging, and require students to think creatively and work carefully,” said Woolsey. She added, “It’s a great way for students to demonstrate their problem-solving abilities outside of the normal course material.”
The cumulative Harker team score was 101, which tied with the Mirman School for the Gifted in Los Angeles and earned a regional award. This team score is in the top five percent of the 462 schools that participated this year.
Gr. 4 ranked in the top five percent of all 271 schools, earning 168 points out of a possible 180 points. Rajiv Movva, scoring 26 out of 30, was the fourth grade leader. The following students scored a perfect score of six on one or more contests: Movva, Michael Kwan, Shaya Zarkesh, Adrian Chu, Amy Dunphy, Edgar Lin, Griffin Ellis, Justin Su, Sahana Srinivasan, Neeraj Aggarwal and Rose Guan, who competed as a Gr. 3 cross-grader.
The Gr. 5 competitors were regional winners and ranked in the top two percent of all 287 schools, earning 172 out of a possible 180 points. Two students, David Zhu and Aneesh Samineni, earned regional individual awards and both had a cumulative score of 29 out of 30. The following students scored a perfect score of six on one or more contests: Zhu, Samineni, Peter Wu, Quentin Delepine, Steven Cao, Aditya Dhar, Alexander Lam, Antony Sagayaraj, Eric Pei, Kshithija Mulam and Rishab Gargeya.
A team of 13 Harker students, advised by upper school math teacher Anthony Silk, were among the top 20 teams in the National Engineering Design Challenge (NEDC), organized by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS).
The team’s project was called the Cellular Attachable Rotating Earpiece (CARE), a device that attaches to an electric wheelchair, allowing amputees to speak on their cell phones normally instead of having to speak loudly or yell. A prototype of CARE was tested with Donna Yeager, a good friend of upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss. Yeager visited the Saratoga campus in December to test the device, which is conveniently located on the headrest and includes an earpiece and microphone.
Yeager brought three of the students along with Moss onto the set of her cable access show “On The Move” to discuss their project and the process of its design and implementation. During the competition, the students produced a video detailing the design and construction of the device.
Harker students continue to perform well in this year’s Continental Mathematics League competition. After three meets, the current lower school leader at the Gr. 4 level is Rose Guan, Gr. 3, who has solved 17 of 18 problems correctly. The Gr. 5 level leaders are Peter Wu and David Zhu, both Gr. 5, who have correctly solved 18 of 18 problems.
At the CML meet held Jan. 7, Gr. 4-level competitors Guan and Shaya Zarkesh, Adrian Chu and Griffin Ellis all had perfect scores. Earning perfect scores at the Gr. 5 level were Zhu and Wu, as well as Antony Sagayaraj, Aneesh Samineni and Steven Cao.
Ramya Rangan, Gr. 10, recently earned a bronze medal at the 2009 China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO), held Aug. 12 – 16 in the city of Xiamen. Rangan was one of seven medalists on the U.S. team, four of whom were from high schools in Silicon Valley. The girls received a warm welcome upon their return home, and were interviewed by both ABC News and KTSF (Chinese).
A total of 51 teams from China, the U.S., Russia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore were present at the Olympiad. The U.S. team comprised finalists in the U.S. Mathematical Olympiad held earlier this year.
Aside from the math competition, an aerobics competition was held to promote togetherness among the CGMO competitors. Rangan and her teammates also did some sightseeing during their stay, going on a shopping excursion in Xiamen and visiting the Ocean Park Hong Kong theme park.
Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, thanked US math teacher Misael Fisico, who coached Rangan and the other Harker math students who competed in the various Olympiads throughout the year. “Your work is very much appreciated,” she said.
Fisico led the team from his native Philippines at the CGMO. “Despite the fact that I was the leader of the Philippine group, the U.S. team and the Philippine team bonded together on several occasions,” he said.
Aneesh Samineni, who enters Gr. 5 this fall, achieved a placing in the top two percentile nationally at the Math Olympiad for Elementary Middle Schools (MOEMS) held by Mathedge, an educational program that focuses on real-world problem solving skills. According to MOEMS, 150,000 students from 6,000 teams worldwide participated in the Olympiads last year. Samineni received a trophy, certificate and gold pin for his achievements. In the competition, he scored a 24 out of a possible 25. The Olympiad was created in 1977 by Dr. George Lenchner, an internationally known math educator.
This summer, Harker math students took on a writing project. Teacher Margaret Harris’ pre-algebra class wrote letters to the publisher of their textbook regarding some errors and received a response from the publisher thanking them.
In their letters, the students carefully explained which problems contained errors by describing the mathematical principles involved. According to Harris, “The students were careful to be polite and considerate as they, too, understand mistakes.”
Harris became aware of the errors when students questioned the solutions. “Believing in my students, I checked out the questions myself and the students were correct. I encouraged them to write their corrections to the publisher,” she added.
Katherine Tang, Gr. 6, even went so far in her letter as to explain how she thought the publisher achieved the incorrect answer. “On the answer key you got the wrong answer because I think you forgot to subtract 1s2 from 8s2.” She said she felt like “I was a mathematician. I felt respected and learned a lot.”
Tom Hamilton, supervising editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, replied in an e-mail to Kelly Espinosa, director of summer programs. “I wanted to express our appreciation to Ms. Harris and the students for bringing these errors to our attention. Both errors will be corrected in the next printing of the book. We appreciate the efforts of all the teachers and students who help us achieve this goal (of providing mathematically accurate materials).”
Anika Krishnan, Gr. 7, said that writing the letters was a good idea so “other people would not get stuck on the same problems.” Arman Mortasavi, Gr. 7, agreed, and added, “I felt closer to the math world because I helped to make the changes.” Annika Jackson, Gr. 7, didn’t expect a response, but thought they would fix the mistakes. Huck Vaughan, Gr. 7, said he was surprised that the publishers didn’t send an automatic e-mail response. “I helped out the pros!” Vaughan exclaimed.
Although these students enjoyed doing tessellations, meeting new people and learning new math concepts, this experience was definitely not one they expected to occur in a summer math class. As Leela Amladi, Gr. 6, explained, “I didn’t expect it to be such a big deal, I just didn’t want others to be stuck on those problems. It’s like we corrected Grand Masters!”