In January, Manami Iso, a teacher from Tamagawa Gakuen in Tokyo, visited Harker for a chance to see and experience the school first-hand. She observed several classes during her stay, including those taught by Eric Leonard, Katherine Molin, Colin Goodwin and Kathleen Ferretti.
Iso also got to do some teaching of her own. She showed several classes how to make carp kites (koinobori), which are flown in Japan to celebrate Children’s Day. She also taught fourth graders about the Setsubun springfestival, celebrated Feb. 3 of each year. During the holiday, a member of the household dons an oni (“demon”) mask while other members of the family toss roasted soybeans at them. This practice is said to purify the household and protect it from demons and bad luck. To demonstrate, Gr. 4 English teacher Goodwin put on the mask and played the part of oni while the students pretended to ward him off.
While staying at Ferretti’s home for the duration of her visit, Manami also got to see a number of California landmarks, such as Muir Woods National Monument and its famous giant redwoods, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
In late July, 10 US students along with US science department chair Anita Chetty embarked on an eye-opening journey to scenic Costa Rica. Accompanied by US physics teacher Chris Spenner, the group spent approximately two weeks performing research, conservation work and keeping tabs on the country’s wildlife.
Students on the trip were Amy Rorabaugh, Noriko Ishisoko, Miriam Lee, Adrienne Wong, Tiffany Kyi, Erica Hansen, Carina Fernandes, Alex Creasman, Brittany Chu and Melanie Herscher, all currently Gr. 12.
After arriving in Costa Rica with five large tubs of research equipment, the team embarked on a lengthy bus and boat trek to Tortuguero National Park the following day. On Sunday morning, the students performed a beach clean-up to prepare for tagging sea turtles for the Caribbean Conservation League that evening.
Creasman nearly became “the first Harker student whose turtle built a nest and for all intents and purposes, was on target to deposit eggs,” Chetty said. Just as Creasman was about to start counting, however, the turtle had a change of heart and decided not to lay eggs after all!
A highlight of the trip to Tortuguero was the opportunity to work with Costa Rican school children in educating the locals about electricity use and carbon load. “The local people tend to leave their lights on throughout the night as a safety and security measure,” Chetty said. “Our students worked with local school children to create posters advertising the advantages of using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of regular incandescent bulbs. They then walked through the town distributing bulbs that we purchased in San Jose. The local shopkeepers were very enthusiastic about putting up the posters in their shops and the people were very grateful to receive the bulbs, which are very expensive in Costa Rica.” Chetty added, “This was a great chance to practice Spanish as well.”
After two days of turtle tagging and egg counting (Chu was the record holder at 92 eggs counted), students headed back to the hotel to begin research projects in the conference-room-turned-research-lab. “The objective of the trip was to immerse students in field research so they could experience first-hand the excitement of discovery with the challenges of conducting research in the wilderness,” Chetty said. “Unlike a controlled laboratory setting, the field presents many unpredictable variables such as sudden weather changes, bugs and just simply the unpredictability of animal behavior.”
It was a great opportunity for the young scientists to display their problem-solving and troubleshooting skills. Ishisoko discovered a long PVC pipe in a remote hardware store and used it to connect to her microphone. The long pipe allowed her to record frog calls at a safe distance so that the frog behavior was not affected by her presence.
Spenner’s skills in computer programming came in handy when he helped Chu and Creasman predict the behavior of leaf cutter ants. A program he created predicted how long it would take a disturbed leaf cutter ant to reorient itself back to its original path. Chu and Creasman then conducted studies to determine how long it actually took the ants to find their old path and compared it to the predicted value.
Lee and Kyi spent many hours collecting ants that gathered around flowering plants. Their prediction was that ants were unlikely pollinators of plants. Carrying their digital microscopes all over Costa Rica, Kyi and Lee collected and stained ants and the pollen that collected on their bodies, taking digital images to show that pollen that collects on ants does not germinate.
Hansen examined soils in banana and coffee plantations to determine whether the overuse of fertilizers might be impacting the nitrate levels in water that leeches out of the soils. She was fortunate to culminate her research in Monteverde under the mentorship of a soil scientist. Herscher reconstructed hummingbird feeders trying to examine how the presence of feeders affects those birds’ social behavior, while Wong examined butterfly diversity in forests and plantations. Rorabaugh and Fernandes conducted a water quality assessment using digital monitoring equipment.
At Monteverde Institute (MVI), the students worked many hours refining and writing up their research findings. They presented their findings at the institute and are expected to present at Harker’s own research symposium in March. “The mentors at MVI became so attached to our students that the director of the program shed tears as we were leaving,” Chetty said. “She ordinarily works with UC students and told me that she had never met such talented and motivated students.”
The next stage of the trip took place back at the MVI, where the students continued their work alongside research assistants. They did more field work, examining Costa Rica’s abundance of varied wildlife, although the elements nearly stymied their efforts. “It rained hard last night and we are waiting for things to dry up so they can observe their leaf cutter ants,” Chetty wrote in one of her frequent updates back to Harker. Students caught some notable lectures, one given by Dr. Alan Pounds, whose papers in the journal “Nature” have shed light upon the relationship between climate change and the extinction of the golden toad. They also attended a talk by world-renowned bat specialist Dr. Richard LaVal.
Days of field work, research, observation and preparation at last culminated toward the end of the trip when the students presented their results at the Monteverde Institute.
At various points during the trip, the student researchers also managed to get away for some fun, spending some time whitewater rafting, swimming and even salsa dancing. They also went zipline riding and visited a cacao plantation, where they learned how the “drink of the gods” was made for the Mayan kings. “Grinding roasted cocoa beans and making hot chocolate and chocolate bars was a highlight,” Chetty said.
Chetty said next year’s trip to Costa Rica will occur over the same time period. She explained that there will be some changes made to the itinerary and that a new collaboration with the University of Georgia will expand the research component of the trip.
Two Harker teams placed among the top ten finishers in the 2009 national J8 competition. All together, 32 Harker students in eight teams of four students each submitted applications to this year’s J8 contest – the winners of which are invited to attend the annual G8 Summit with world leaders, to be held in Italy this year.
Applications included nine separate essays, three of which address global issues discussed at the G8 Summit. Over 50 applications were submitted from 14 states. Harker earned the distinction of having the greatest number of applications and of being the only school to advance more than one team to the final round, including one group that was named second runner up to the winning Nor th Miami Beach High School team.
Team Paritas et Pax was awarded third place and included juniors Connie Lu, Brandon Araki, Vishesh Jain and Andrew Zhou. Making the top ten was Team 2.2 Billion, composed of juniors Shefali Netke, Elaine Song, Curran Kaushik and Carissa Jansen. Other participants included freshmen Rohan Bopardikar, Jaya Chandra, Frederic Enea and Katie Marcus Reker; sophomores Appu Bhaskar, Jacob Chappell, Tyler Koteskey, Justine Liu, Kristi Liu, Isaac Madan, Shreya Nathan and Olivia Zhu; and juniors Ankur Ahuja, Namrata Anand, Nathaniel Edwards, Kelsey Hilbrich, Andrea Lincoln, Arjun Mody, Kendra Moss and Haran Sivakumar. Carol Zink, history teacher, and Lauri Vaughan, librarian, acted as co-facilitators for the students.
In 2007, a team of eight Harker students won the event and attended the G8 Summit in Wismar, Germany, as U.S. representatives. Significant portions of all eight applications have been posted on the GEO Club’s Web site and are available for your reading pleasure at http://web.harker.org/geo/j8/j8.html.
Global Empowerment and Outreach (GEO) reached unprecedented levels with its efforts during its week-long focus from April 6-10 on United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2, Universal Primary Education. After raising over $14,000 in its fight against poverty in the fall, GEO concentrated its efforts on activism this spring. Over 200 students signed a petition created by GEO supporting Education for All, an act that aims to bolster the U.S.’s involvement in the international effort to provide all children with a quality basic education. A group of students – GEO president David Kastelman, Gr. 12 and members Shefali Netke, Gr. 11, Ariel Fishman, Gr. 11 and Katie Forsberg, Gr. 10 – met with U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren to present her with the petition.
Fishman was inspired by the trip. “I thought she was very friendly and helpful in letting us know what we could do to ensure provisions for worldwide primary education in the Foreign Relations Act,” she said. “Representative Lofgren also loved that we were high school students taking an active interest in a cause and I would encourage other students who are passionate about various issues to meet with her in order to find out what they can do to change things. She made me feel like we, a couple of high school students, really did have the power to change the world.”
“When we asked Representative Lofgren about steps Congress can take to promote universal access to education, she suggested the ongoing task of rewriting America’s Foreign Assistance Act,” said Kastelman. “The act hasn’t been reformed in decades, and it essentially governs America’s international aid, and there has been talk of incorporating the MDG’s into the act,” he explained. “She also said that if we got her another petition on this matter of reforming the Assistance act, she could hand deliver it to Howard Berman, the representative heading efforts to rewrite the act.”
A new petition was promptly constructed and was put up for signing on May 4. Over 100 Harker students had added their signatures before it was presented to Lofgren two weeks later.
Harker welcomed a group of thirteen high school students and their chaperones from Fribourg, Switzerland’s College de Gambach during the week of April 6. The teens, who lived with Harker student host families, caught a glimpse of Harker life and saw some signature California landmarks along the way.
The visitors spent a good portion of the week observing classes with their buddies, including a Shakespeare class where students participated in acting exercises by passing a bean bag to one another.
Their week also included a couple of special field trips. Students were treated to a tour of the Google campus in Mountain View and got to visit the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, in addition to getting an up-close look at the Pacific Ocean.
An appearance at the April 10 Multicultural Assembly and a farewell party in the Edge put the finishing touches on a memory-filled trip.
Merci beaucoup to all the host families who supported our guests during their visit:
Gr. 9: Shivani Bigler, Neda Ghaffarian, Neha Kumar, Daniela Lapidous, Jay Reddy and Shreya Indukuri
Gr. 10: Michael Patland, Jason Young, Michelle Vu, Amanda King and Margaux Nielsen.
Advanced technology has brought Harker students father down the global education road. Tobias Wade‘s Gr. 5 World Geography class enjoyed a video conference with teacher Joe Chung while Chung was on a teacher exchange in Shanghai, using Skype, a free video phone technology. Chung talked to the students about his experiences in Shanghai and answered student questions.
Lisa Diffenderfer, assistant director of instructional technology K-Gr. 5, provided tech support for the conference which required no special equipment other than a computer.
“What a cool piece of technology!” said Wade. “Seeing him while he answered the students’ questions really brought China into the classroom, giving the students a window into another culture, literally!”
Chung noted that one of the oft-asked questions was about weird foods, “so I thought it was fitting to challenge Tobias that if I tried one of the weird foods that I happened to have with me – duck neck, foot, heart, tongue – that he would have to try it next week as well.” Wade accepted the challenge and had his students vote on what food Chung should try – duck tongue was the preferred choice. Once the conference started, Chung took out the tongue and bit into it. “It was slimy and chewy, but not a whole lot of flavor. Luckily it was not gamey!” he said.
Alex Chien wanted to know what types of computers students in Shanghai use (PCs) and several questions revolved around the Great Wall of China. Cameron Palte asked, “How does the Great Wall of China look up close?” Given the grandeur of the structure, said Chung, “It is difficult to put into words the awe of it all, when you’re standing in the middle of the Great Wall. The amount of construction for many years to put this wall together is unimaginable. It is a sight to be seen!”
Grace Guan said the Skype conference “was cool because he answered all our questions. Also because we got to see him eat duck tongue.” Classmate Aashika Balaji agreed. “It was cool to see Mr. Chung eat the duck tongue. It looked gross but then he brought it back to see and smell it.” All in all, the conference was a sensory experience for the eyes, ears and, finally, the nose!