A dynamic group of Harker moms and their student daughters participated in this year’s Relay for Life event, held in Los Altos on June 9-10 in support of cancer research. Relay for Life is the signature activity of the American Cancer Society and the Harker team “Girls for the Girls” has raised nearly $3,872 towards the cause. Shown here are team members (from left) Sue Prutton and daughter Hannah Prutton, Chris Douglas and daughter Michelle Douglas, Heather Wardenburg and daughter Amy Wardenburg; all daughters are grade 12.
Members of Harker’s Key Club had a busy and productive spring, collecting clothing, toys, food and animal carrier crates for the Sacred Heart Community Center and raising some $1,100 for the Silicon Valley Humane Society.
The funds were raised by selling baked goods, bagels, and root beer floats. Additionally, one student opted to anonymously donate $500 towards the cause.
Kerry Enzensperger, director of the upper school community service and activity program, reported that Key Club participants were thrilled with the results.
The Key Club is part of an international high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International. Key Club members assist Kiwanis in carrying out its mission to serve the children of the world.
High school student members of the club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and organizing food drives. They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district and international levels.
This past April, Harker hosted the first Green Teen Summit, featuring appearances by 350.org founder Bill McKibben and the co-founder of BioTour, Ethan Burke. Harker journalism students put together this video report of the event!
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
Students Bring Flair to Service Efforts Grade 10 Students Help Clients of InnVision Shelter
About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Sign-ups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the sign-ups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.
The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.
Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.
The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.
“The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors, but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.
The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s 10th grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime dropin center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”
Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a classroom and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.
Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.
“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.
Middle School Students Donate Placemats to Senior Center
In March, the middle school’s Service Club organized a project to make placemats for the Alma Senior Center, which serves meals to local seniors unable to buy or prepare meals on their own. Students made a total of about 50 placemats using crayons, markers and other supplies. The placemats will be put to use daily at the center, which serves 50-60 meals each day.
“The project was a pretty simple one, and it enlisted the help not only of the middle school Service Club students, but the efforts of kids throughout the middle school,” said Steven Hewitt, English teacher and the club’s advisor. “Many students even beyond the Service Club itself contributed to the collection drive.” Annual Toiletries Drive Exceeds Last Year’s
In May, middle school history teacher Pat White announced that her grade 7 advisory’s annual toiletries drive, which collects items that students acquired while on vacation and donates them to the Gloria Travis Center for Women and Children, collected a total of 462 bags of soap, shampoo, toothpaste and other items this year, shattering last year’s number of 322. Grade 1 Students Organize Donation Drive For Humane Society
Grade 1 students organized a donation drive that provided more than 60 bags filled with food, toys and other supplies to the Humane Society of Silicon Valley in March. More than $300 in cash was also donated. “Several children did small jobs at home to earn money that they then donated,” said Cindy Proctor, grade 1 homeroom teacher. “Children also made sock toys and braided toys and fleece blankets for the cats at the Humane Society.”
The students visited the Humane Society in Milpitas in February, where they learned about the organization and its goals, toured the facility and learned about how to better take care of animals. Later in the year, the students were visited by a representative from the Humane Society, who brought two rescue dogs and taught the students about how to safely approach dogs who aren’t familiar with them and how to understand what dogs are telling them based on their actions.
About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Signups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the signups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.
The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.
Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.
The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.
The shelter’s guests were a happy lot as they ate with relish. “The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.
The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s tenth grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime drop-in center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”
Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a class room and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.
Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.
“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.
Kicks Against Cancer raised nearly $12,000 in January and February for Camp Okizu, a program for families affected by childhood cancer. Money was raised by selling T-shirts and wristbands, as well as through traditional donations.
On Feb. 1, the varsity boys and girls soccer teams played their evening home games wearing the purple Kicks Against Cancer T-shirts. Both teams won their games, with the girls defeating Immaculate Conception Academy 7-0 and the boys winning over Eastside College Prep with a score of 2-1.
Profits from the food sales at Carley’s Café, which nearly ran out of supply to feed the hungry attendants, were also donated to the campaign.
“I think that this event really lets Harker have a direct impact on the lives of pediatric cancer patients and their families,” said Nicole Dalal, grade 12, who organized the event and scored a goal in the girls varsity game. “I would just say that it is incredibly rewarding to know that the game of soccer can bring together our entire community and the Okizu community as well!”
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.
Last week, the lower school held its annual Jump Rope for Heart event, which saw the students take to the fields and blacktop to jump rope, shoot hoops and enjoy other activities to celebrate their efforts to raise money for the American Heart Association.
The students had been collecting donations since January and had raised nearly $600 as of the day of the event. In addition to jumping rope, students also had the option of doing high jumps over a rope onto a mat, bouncing on a trampoline, running through an obstacle course and also dedicating a paper heart to someone to be posted on the “heart wall,” a tradition at every Jump Rope for Heart event. One of the students’ favorite activities was the “Tidal Wave,” which had the students run under a rope then quickly run back without getting the rope caught on their feet.
Donations are still being collected through March 30. Those interested in donating can contact lower school physical education teacher and Jump Rope for Heart coordinator Jim McGovern at JimM@harker.org.
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.”
On Jan. 20, the lower school celebrated the success of this year’s pajama donation program and book drive with a special assembly, during which all the students wore pajamas. This year, 425 pairs of pajamas and 475 books were donated to families in need. Pallie Zambrano, co-president of the Northern California chapter of the Pajama Program, congratulated the students on their accomplishment, noting that in the last five years, Harker has donated more than 1,800 pairs of pajamas.
The assembly also had some special visitors from the upper school, as grade 10 students visited their grade 3 friends in the Eagle Buddies program. The sophomores, also wearing pajamas, sat down with their third grade friends, and each pair or group read a book that the grade 3 student chose for the assembly.
Butch Keller, upper school head, then read to the students a book call “The Spiffiest Giant in Town,” which fittingly enough tells the story of a giant who offers his clothes to those in need.