This article was first printed in the Summer 2014 Harker Quarterly
The San José City Council honored The Harker School at the Dec. 9, 2014 council meeting for “dedication to environmental stewardship and successful implementation of the wet/dry collection program.” Chris Nikoloff, head of school, along with the teachers who spearheaded the new wet/dry initiative – Katherine Schafer, Diana Moss, Gerry-louise Robinson, Enni Chen and Margaret Huntley – accepted the recognition on behalf of the school. The real payoff is that, thanks to the entire school’s efforts, Republic Services reports that Harker’s diversion of waste from landfill has gone from 15 percent to 70 percent. To read more about Harker’s wet/dry program see Harker Quarterly, Summer 2014, page 16.
The much-anticipated Jan. 16 arrival of grade 10 students to the lower school campus signaled the start of two beloved annual Harker happenings: the schoolwide Pajama Day Assembly and grade 3 Eagle Buddies get-together.
The sophomore students participated in the assembly as part of the Eagle Buddies program. Held in the gym, the event celebrated a grade 3 service project in which students collected items to donate to the Pajama Program (www.pajamaprogram.org), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing new sleepwear and books to kids waiting to be adopted.
For the past eight years, to make life a bit better for children living in local shelters, the lower school has donated countless pairs of pajamas and boxes of books to the program. While the final numbers for this year’s drive are still being tallied, last year’s drive collected 2,000 pairs of pajamas and 2,400 books, according to representatives of the Pajama Program’s local chapter.
Although the drive was primarily a grade 3 effort, all elementary school families were invited to participate by dropping off items in the gym’s lobby. Prior to the assembly, Ken Allen, lower school dean of students, urged parents to encourage their children to bring a pair of never worn pajamas or a new book to donate to the program, noting that each “small donation will go a long way for someone that is less fortunate.”
The assembly occurred on a special dress pajama day, when all the students and faculty were encouraged to wear their favorite jammies to school. The program got underway with Butch Keller, upper school head, reading from the book “The Most Magnificent Thing” by award-winning author and illustrator Ashley Spires. Students enjoyed hearing to story, and seemed equally enthralled with seeing Keller donned in a comfy robe and slippers, seated in a rocking chair on the stage.
“Raise your hand if you brought a book for your Eagle Buddy to read,” said Keller, after he finished the story. A bunch of eager hands went up. Shortly after, the third grade students had the opportunity to read with their upper school Eagle Buddies, who had also been encouraged to bring items to donate to the Pajama Program.
Wearing a colorful assortment of robes, pajamas, slippers and snuggly knit hats, the grade 3 students and their big buddies then headed outdoors for a pizza lunch, socializing and field games.
“I have a little sister at home, so I am used to being around younger kids. However, it is always the same group of younger kids – her friends – so I really liked getting to know a totally new group of lower school students through this program,” said grade 10 Eagle Buddy Kshithija Mulam.
Her grade 3 pal, Alisha Jain, said “I like hanging out with my buddies. I really liked doing the relay races together. That was a lot of fun.”
Jain’s other buddy, sophomore Vienna Wang, observed that “being an Eagle Buddy is a great stress reliever. You get to act like a kid again!”
Keller created the Eagle Buddies program to help bridge the upper and lower school campus divide. The buddies stay together for three years, until the sophomores graduate and the third graders matriculate into middle school.
Another Eagle Buddies activity is slated for Jan. 29, when the juniors will host their fourth grade friends for “clown day” at the upper school. After eating lunch in the gym together, the students will watch a performance by professional clowns and even get to try a few clown tricks themselves.
A group of Harker’s upper school performing arts and journalism students attended a local YWCA luncheon, where academy award-winning actress Geena Davis gave the keynote address to an audience of over a thousand.
Davis is one of Hollywood’s most-respected actors. She earned the 2006 Golden Globe Award for best performance by an actress in a television series – breaking ground in her portrayal of the first female president of the United States in ABC’s hit show “Commander in Chief.”
The YWCA of Silicon Valley’s annual luncheon features guest speakers who serve as role models for women and girls. Held every October at the Santa Clara Convention Center, event proceeds help support the group’s much-lauded services.
Harker regularly hosts a table for upper school students who have a special passion for that year’s topic. The Harker group who attended this year’s event, all seniors, were performing arts students Ishanya Anthapur, Caroline Howells, Juhi Muthal, Madi Lang-Ree and Zoe Woehrmann, along with journalism students Jessica Chang and Riya Godbole. Accompanying them was upper school performing arts teacher Laura Lang-Ree.
Each year, more than 40 companies and hundreds of individuals sponsor the YWCA’s luncheon. The mission of the YWCA is to empower women, children and families, and to eliminate racism, hatred and prejudice. The organization provides programs in the areas of sexual assault intervention and prevention, counseling services, domestic violence, child care, youth programs, family services, and social and racial justice.
The YWCA of Silicon Valley serves nearly 18,000 Santa Clara County residents each year, and has provided countywide services for more than 100 years. More information can be found at www.ywca-sv.org.
In November, students in Elise Robichaud’s grade 3 morning and afternoon language arts classes collected candy and created cards for Operation Gratitude, a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization that annually sends more than 150,000 care packages to U.S. service members, new recruits, veterans, first responders, wounded warriors and care givers.
The students also sent cards to local veterans, including Harker alumni who have served in the military. Then, in December, the students were treated to a surprise visit by one of the vets they had written to, who came to their classroom to personally thank them for their efforts.
“My little ones made 163 cards that were mailed out on Nov. 10, and they collected 72 pounds of candy! I’m very proud of them!” enthused Robichaud. The surprise visit from Captain Michael Gerold (a friend of fellow grade 3 language arts teacher Heather Russell), who was injured during his service, really brought the Veteran’s Day project full circle, she added.
“It is a rare opportunity when the students can see a recipient of their service projects, and it was a great experience for them,” Russell recalled.
The students collected 6.5 bags of non-chocolate candies, 17 bags of chocolate candies, and a bag containing toothbrushes, dental floss and toothpaste for Operation Gratitude.
Going the extra mile, Robichaud designed a PowerPoint presentation for her students, featuring veterans who are Harker teachers and friends of faculty members, saluting them for their service. Among them was upper school math teacher Anthony Silk, who several years back spoke to lower school students about his experiences in the U.S. Navy flying the electronic warfare plane the EA-6B Prowler. (https://staging.news.harker.org/math-teacher-and-veteran-speaks-to-grades-4-and-5-on-veterans-day/)
“I wanted my third graders to see some of the faces of the people who have served or who are currently serving our country, so I made this PowerPoint to share with them,” explained Robichaud, who had previously put out a request to staff to provide names of any military members they knew personally, so that the students could write to them.
“It means so much to the third graders to actually know some of the people who are getting the cards,” she noted.
Kudos to inspiring young social entrepreneur Suraya Shivji, grade 12, who created an altruistic app to raise money to help African orphans become self-sufficient.
Shivji taught herself to program iPhone gaming apps and get them posted on Apple’s app store. She is now using them, along with a crowd-funding campaign she began this year on her website, Rizikitoto, as a source of revenue for the needy orphans.
The website has generated about $1,300 for the children at a Ugandan orphanage, Bright Futures Home, with money from each app designated for a particular child. The orphanage program is further supported by Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit group that seeks to close the gender gap in technology and engineering.
In mid-December, lower school students completed a service project culminating in presents under the trees of many families who were otherwise unable to afford them. While the massive toy drive was a grade 4 service project, many other lower school families joined them in donating toys, explained Ken Allen, lower school dean of students.
Grade 4 students went the extra mile by not only collecting toys, but also counting and loading them for delivery. At the end of the project, more than 275 toys were delivered to Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose.
“We wanted to take a minute to thank those of you that have already participated in the fourth-grade toy drive. The items are continuing to come in daily and we are extremely grateful,” Allen said during the drive.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Numerous fall events sponsored by Harker’s DECA chapter and business and entrepreneurship department set the tone for an exciting year. Activities included the kickoff of the annual Stock Market Game (in which Harker is the reigning champion), DECA Month and the ambitious BEcon2014.
DECA started the year with a flurry of events designed to introduce the student body to its mission and goals, while also preparing for competition season. In November, the chapter coordinated numerous on-campus events in conjunction with DECA Month, an international DECA celebration.
An ice cream social, hosted by the DECA chapter in early November, gave students the chance to ask officers about the upcoming DECA year while enjoying a mouth-watering treat.
In mid-November, more than 60 Harker students attended Silicon Valley DECA’s Leadership and Competitive Excellence (LACE) Conference. This three-day event was targeted at underclassmen with limited experience in competitive DECA events. The keynotes were delivered by motivational speaker Scott Greenberg and Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and marketing professor at Stanford University’s School of Business. Events were created to be informative and welcoming, with hands-on workshops in the fields of hospitality, investment banking, fashion and venture capitalism. Sophia Luo, grade 11, said, “In my opinion, the best part of attending LACE is the networking opportunities that it provides. Students from all over the Silicon Valley who have the same interests in business congregate and exchange stories, memories and knowledge.”
DECA gives back
A large part of DECA’s charter focuses on giving back to community. During DECA Month, the chapter hosted events to raise money for and aware- ness of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Red Cross and organizations dedicated to ending world hunger.
The first of these events was the Nov. 12 Hoops and Scoops basketball game, which raised money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The game pitted faculty against students on the court, while DECA members sold ice cream on the sidelines. The raucous crowd watched as the faculty battled the freshmen in the first quarter, followed by the sophomores and the juniors. The faculty finally fell to the seniors in the final quarter, with a score of 72-59.
Then on Nov. 15, DECA members gathered to assemble more than 100 Red Cross disaster kits for families who homes were damaged by natural disasters.
The DECA chapter then paired with Students for Charitable Causes to organize a movie night to raise awareness of world hunger. The groups sold more than 60 tickets to the Nov. 21 premier of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” with proceeds from the event going to Second Harvest Food Bank.
Playing the market, staying connected
The 2014 season of The Stock Market Game is also in full swing, with Harker students and faculty working to create portfolios to outperform the S&P index. The national competition pits teams and individuals against each other, both at Harker and across the country. For the first 10 weeks of the competition, Harker had two to four teams in the top 25 in the Western region. Last year, three Harker teams finished in the top 25 in the Western region, a high standard that current competitors hope to match.
This year, the B.E. podcast series picks up where it left off last year by “gather[ing] influential people from the Harker community and beyond to share their experiences with students, parents and even the public,” explained Glenn Reddy, grade 12, founder of the series.
“The podcast team has been working to expand outside of the B.E. department” and recently put out a series of weekly podcasts leading up to the midterm elections, Reddy explained. The series included a number of thoughtful interviews with high-ranking officials, including U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (California’s 19th district) and U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (California’s 17th district). The final interview, released Nov. 17, featured Mike Wasserman, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Stay tuned, as the team plans to expand into more areas this year.
One of B.E.’s biggest returning programs is Career Connect, which includes a mentorship program, career panels and a professionalism program. Career Connect aims to prepare students not only land the careers they want once they graduate, but also to excel in them. To this end, the B.E. department organized a resume workshop led by Michelle Vitus, founder of Slate Advisers, a company dedicated to helping professionals manage career transitions. Laya Indukuri, grade 12, who helped organize the event, said she thought “hearing a professional talk about major do’s and don’ts really helped to give [the students] a big picture of what a resume should look like.”
Students, Speakers Shine at Inaugural BEcon2014
BEcon2014, the B.E. department’s largest event to date, was a daylong conference comprising multiple keynotes, student presentations and guided activities that explained the principles of business and economics. It was “essentially a research symposium [that] explored the marriage of economics and business,” summarized Juston Glass, head of the B.E. department.
The event gave B.E. students the ability to showcase their classroom efforts. The students worked early in the year to create advertising campaigns for products and companies of their choice, which were showcased during the first BEcon session.
Ran Abramitzky, associate professor of economics at Stanford, opened the day’s events in earnest. His keynote address focused on the economics of education. Abramitzky’s talk was based on his research, which emphasized the importance of education on economic situations for immigrants. Samuel Lepler, Harker economics teacher, praised Abramitzky’s discussion for being “both a great introduction to the economic way of thinking as well as an interesting investigation into a topic that most people take for granted. Namely, whether college is actually a good investment. It was both informative and inspirational!”
The mentor luncheon provided an informal atmosphere in which students could meet with their mentors to discuss their future careers as well as their mentors’ career accomplishments.
Perhaps the best-received session of the day was the sHarker Tank event, which paired the ingenuity of Harker’s students with the format of the popular TV show Shark Tank. Teams presented business proposals to a panel of judges. The winning product, a laser-guided device to provide superior feedback to blind users (a virtual “red cane”) was both philanthropic and entrepreneurial in nature.
Jeremy King, CTO of global e-commerce for Walmart Labs, closed out the day with his keynote, focused on his success in increasing Walmart’s global footprint. He used the success of Walmart Labs to highlight the overall industry themes involving the movement away from traditional brick and mortar stores to e-commerce.
In the first few months of the school year, the DECA chapter continued its work at Harker, while maintaining its national reputation as a top performer at competitions and conventions. Meanwhile the B.E. department put its best foot forward with the ambitious BEcon2014 event. In the coming months, Harker’s entrepreneurs surely will have more in store to keep students, teachers and parents engaged and active in the community.
For many years, grade 5 math teacher Pat Walsh has spearheaded the annual fifth-grade food drive. This year, the effort took place in November and culminated with a delivery to St. Justin’s Church in Santa Clara, where several hundred bags of canned goods and other non-perishable items were used to make meals and food bags for those in need. Monetary donations, totaling $6,700, also were collected.
Walsh explained that that the holiday season is a good time for students to reflect on the good fortune they have been blessed with, while also making a concerted effort to improve the lives of others who are less fortunate.
At their community social in mid-November, grade 6 students made warm blankets for Project Linus, a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization that provides blankets to children who are seriously ill or living in shelters.
Project Linus works to provide a sense of security, warmth and comfort through the donation of handmade, washable blankets lovingly created by volunteer makers or “blanketeers.”
This was the middle school students’ community service project for this year. In just one afternoon, the sixth graders produced 46 blankets for donation to the local branch of Project Linus, providing comfort and warmth to children in need for years to come.
Project Linus has delivered more than 4 million security blankets to children around the world and has nearly 400 chapters in the United States. The organization originally donated blankets to pediatric cancer patients, however, recipients now include any child who is seriously ill or traumatized.
In mid-October grade 9 students spent their “freshmen service day” volunteering at the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. Freshmen service day is a mandatory, daylong event designed to introduce students to community service.
“Working in the beautiful fall sunshine on their annual day of service, the students gardened in many flower beds – hoeing, weeding and raking. They perfected their wheelbarrow skills, learning the fine art of balancing a full load. With the cooler and shorter days ahead, the roses are now winding down and will soon go dormant for a short period. Because of the teens’ help, the grounds are ready. Thank you volunteers!” wrote San Jose Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services in an appreciative post on their Facebook page.