Rising junior Sarah Fathima Mohammed today was named one of five National Student Poets of 2021. The National Student Poets Program, which is run by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, selects five young poets each year from different regions of the country as National Student Poets. The program was started in 2012 by Michelle Obama and the Presidential Arts Committee and is open to students in grades 10 and 11 who have received a gold or silver medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. After being selected, National Student Poets spend the next year promoting poetry in their communities through works such as service projects, poetry readings and workshops as well as attending a variety of events.
In late March, upper school English teacher Jennifer Siraganian was named the next Poet Laureate of Los Gatos. Over her three-year term, her duties will include planning an annual poetry program at the local library, engaging with a local school to promote poetry education and surveying poetry for a collection that will be submitted to the local library archives at the end of her term.
“I am thrilled, flattered and honored to be selected,” Siraganian said. “I’ve been an educator, poet and literary organizer for almost two decades, so when I saw the opening for Los Gatos Poet Laureate, I knew it was made for me.”
The application process included submitting a selection of her work and a letter of interest as well as reference letters. Upon being named a finalist, she interviewed with the mayor of Los Gatos and members of the city’s Library Board and Arts and Culture Commission. She was voted unanimously to be the city’s Poet Laureate. She was formally inaugurated on April 6 during the Los Gatos Town Council meeting.
The reception began with opening words by the co-directors of the programs, upper school history chair Donna Gilbert and upper school librarian Lauri Vaughn, who commended the students on their hard work and intellectual curiosity in creating this year’s papers. Joe Rosenthal, executive director of strategic initiatives, then recapped the history of the endowments and announced the Chen-Lin Family Inspiring Faculty Growth in the Humanities Endowment, a new professional development opportunity for Harker faculty.
Following an introduction by Harker advancement director Kim Lobe, each of this year’s scholars and their respective mentors spoke on the experience of creating their research projects.
2019-20 Near Scholars:
Simar Bajaj, mentored by Katy Rees, Mike Pistacchi and Meredith Cranston: “Wealthy White Men Only: Examining the American Medical Association’s Use of ‘The Flexner Report’ as Propaganda to Reform Medical Education”
Ellen Guo, mentored by Donna Gilbert and Meredith Cranston: “Bi Means of Queer: A Bisexual View of Sedgwick’s ‘Closet'”
Madison Huynh, mentored by Julie Wheeler and Amy Pelman: “Door Half-Open: Postwar American Legislation’s Failure to Support Vietnamese Assimilation”
Kalyan Narayanan, mentored by Pauline Paskali and Lauri Vaughn: “’We’ve Got to Fight the Powers That Be’: Discourse and Disobedience in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing”
2019-20 Mitra Scholars:
Prerana Acharyya, mentored by Roxana Pianko and Lauri Vaughn: “Dancing into Propaganda: Nazi Appropriation of Ausdruckstanz”
Kathy Fang, mentored by Beth Wahl and Lauri Vaughn: “’But a Woman’: Reassessing Portrayals of Women and Sex in the Restoration ‘Tempest'”
Jeffrey Fung, mentored by Byron Stevens and Meredith Cranston: “Take Up the Cross: Pagan Elements in Lactantius’ De Mortibus Persecutorum” Anya Gert, mentored by Amy Pelman, Damon Halback and Trish Ludovici: “Squatters and Their Street Art: How the Counterculture Undermined Sanctioned Artwork in Occupied West Berlin”
This year’s collection of papers written by John Near and Mitra Family endowment scholars have some fascinating titles. Each year, the scholars are honored at a reception in the Nichols Hall auditorium, celebrating the completion of their intensive research and writing projects.
At the reception, each student talked about the journey to self-knowledge that comes from writing such a complex paper. Each was generous in acknowledging the program’s value to their growth and in praising the mentors who helped them succeed. Each scholar had vivid memories of the road to completing their paper.
2018-19 Near Scholars:
Logan Bhamidipaty, mentored by Byron Stevens and Lauri Vaughan: “Plain Language: Henry George, Denis Kearney, and the Anti-Chinese Movement in Nineteenth-Century California”
Prameela Kottapalli, mentored by Mark Janda and Sue Smith: “Deliberately Unafraid: Audre Lorde as a Pioneer of Intersectional Feminism”
Leon Lu, mentored by Carol Green, Susan Nace and Meredith Cranston: “Soul of the Jazz Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement”
Kelsey Wu, mentored by Kelly Horan and Sue Smith: “The Loneliness Disease: Challenges of First-Generation Chinese-American Parents of Autistic Children”
2018-19 Mitra Scholars:
Nikhil Dharmaraj, mentored by Clifford Hull and Meredith Cranston: “The Evolution of Evolution: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species”
Ryan Guan, mentored by Ruth Meyer and Meredith Cranston: “The Rattle of the Bones: Reading T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ as a Response to World War I”
Haris Hosseini, mentored by Andrea Milius, Josh Martinez and Sue Smith: “Unveiled: The Appropriation of Afghan Women in the War on Terror”
Katherine Tian, mentored by Damon Halback, Chris Spenner and Lauri Vaughan: “Does God Play Dice? Understanding the Role of Uncertainty at the Intersection of Antirealist Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics”
Harker is pleased to announce its 2018-19 endowment awardees. Each student will receive a grant to help him or her write a research paper on a humanities subject. The scholars, all seniors, work throughout the year to define, research and write on a topic of their choosing, and papers are presented at a reception in the spring.
The two endowments, the John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund, established in 2009, and the Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities, established in 2011, provide funding each year for eight or nine seniors to pursue topics of their choice in depth. Previous papers can be found on the Harker website.
The awardees are:
2019 John Near Scholars: Logan Bhamidipaty, mentored by Byron Stevens and Lauri Vaughan; Prameela Kottapalli, mentored by Mark Janda and Sue Smith; Leon Lu, mentored by Carol Green, Susan Nace and Meredith Cranston; Kelsey Wu, mentored by Kelly Horan and Sue Smith.
2019 Mitra Family Scholars: Nikhil Dharmaraj, mentored by Clifford Hull and Meredith Cranston; Rose Guan, mentored by Ruth Meyer and Meredith Cranston; Haris Hosseini, mentored by Andrea Milius, Josh Martinez and Sue Smith; Constance Horng, mentored by Roxana Pianko, Susan Nace and Lauri Vaughan; Katherine Tian, mentored by Damon Halback, Chris Spenner and Lauri Vaughan.
Earlier this week, several Harker students were named national medalists in the 2018 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Jacqueline He, grade 12, earned a gold medal for “Mollusk Threnody,” her entry in the poetry category. Junior Annabelle Perng was awarded a silver medal for her flash fiction piece, “Name Tag,” and Katherine Zhang, also grade 11, received a silver medal in the journalism category for her article, titled “Trump’s Proposed Budget Cuts Throw the Future of Research into Question.”
At the middle school level, eighth grader Michelle Liu was awarded two gold medals for her submissions in the drawing and illustration category, “The Feast of Harvest” and “Leisure Time.”
As national medalists, these students are invited to attend the national events this summer in New York City. Gold medalists are invited to the national ceremony at Carnegie Hall.
Congratulations to these students for receiving this remarkable recognition!
In October, senior Meilan Steimle and junior Jacqueline He we named as two of the 166 national finalists in the 2017 YoungArts competition, which received more than 8,000 entries. Both students submitted entries in the short story writing category.
As finalists – the highest honor offered by the National YoungArts Foundation – Steimle and He are eligible to participate in National YoungArts Week, which will take place in Miami in January and provide the opportunity to engage with and learn from industry professionals. They also will be eligible to win up to $10,000 in cash prizes, and considered for nomination to become a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.
In addition, He recently had her poem, “Death as a Mother,” published in the online literary journal Eunoia Review.
HELM, the upper school’s literary magazine, was recently named a finalist in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s 2017 Crown Awards competition. These awards are presented annually to the top publications from CSPA-member schools. The 1,100 publications eligible for the awards included magazines, yearbooks, newspapers and online outlets.
As a finalist, HELM will receive either a Gold Crown or Silver Crown award. The winners will be announced at the CSPA Spring Scholastic Convention, to be held in March in New York City.
Students in Allen Lyle’s grade 8 history class have been studying the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, along with the navigation methods they used during the Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. One of these navigation methods, known as “the log and line,” helped navigators determine the speed of their vessels by counting the number of knots on a rope that passed through their hands in a set amount of time as measured by a sandglass. Eventually, the term “knot” came to mean 1 nautical mile per hour, a measurement still used today. Like the navigators, students were able to calculate their own speeds in knots for a variety of movements – from walking and running to bear crawling and cart-wheeling! Go Harker history Eagles!
Over spring break, a group of 16 Harker history students in grades 9 and 10 took an amazing trip through Italy and Greece, absorbing the rich history and culture of both countries. The journey gave the students the rare opportunity to see many historical sites in person and hear the fascinating stories behind them.
The students, accompanied by upper school world history teacher Andrea Milius and upper school dance teacher Karl Kuehn, arrived in Rome after a 12-hour flight. They checked into their hotel, then headed off to dinner, which included authentic Italian pizza and fried mozzarella. The next day they ventured to the famous Trevi Fountain and Piazza Venezia before heading to Piazza Navona for gelato. After trekking through the city and sampling more local food, they headed to the Spanish Steps for a bit of shopping, then to the Piazza Del Popolo to take in some local scenery.
A highlight of the day was a trip to Vatican City, where the group toured the lovely gardens and a museum filled with papal carriages that had been used in the last several centuries to protect the pope on international visits.
While visiting the Vatican’s renowned art galleries, the students viewed works such as the sculpture of “Laocoon and His Sons.” They also got an up-close look at the many paintings adorning the walls and ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, including the famous works of Michelangelo and Botticelli, and took a stroll through St. Peter’s Basilica, which houses Michelangelo’s sculpture of “Pieta.”
Following lunch at St. Peter’s Square, they explored the Domitilla Catacombs, which Milius observed “were comprised solely of volcanic ash, which we could scrape off with our fingernails.”
Day three started with an extensive guided tour of the Colosseum, followed by a walk past the Arch of Titus, the Temple of Vesta, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Senate House and more.
Their hike through Rome continued with stops at the Castel Sant’Angelo (the burial site of Hadrian, one of the “Five Good Emperors”), the Palazzo delle Esposizioni museum and Via del Corso. The day was capped off by another delicious meal.
On the fourth day of the trip, the students traveled by bus to Naples, where a spectacular view of the Mediterranean Sea awaited them. The group took a boat to the nearby island of Capri, where they admired its amazing rock formations and learned about its history as a popular vacation spot for Roman emperors and home to authors such as Norman Douglas, Friedrich Alfred Krupp and Axel Munthe.
At Capri Village, the group explored the various shops and purchased products made from lemons, a fruit for which Capri is particularly famous. They then boarded a boat bound for Sorrento, where they stayed the night. After unloading their luggage, they enjoyed dinner and a sampling of Sorrento’s nightlife.
“It was awesome,” reported Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 9, “We bought many different things, like ties, tea cups, leather gloves, sunglasses and clothes for great prices. We even saw a mini puppet show!”
The next day, everyone traveled by bus to Pompeii, the city famous for being buried under ash and rock during the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The students viewed casts of some of the bodies discovered by archaeologists. Their tour guide gave them a look into Pompeiian daily life and commerce. Later, in Bari, the group boarded a ferry to Greece to begin the second stage of their trip.
On their first day in Greece, the group took a lengthy trip to Delphi, where they explored the narrow streets and local shops, and purchased food to feed the stray dogs they encountered. After dinner, they retired to bed to prepare for the full day ahead.
The next day they saw more of Delphi’s historical sites, including the Temple of Apollo, and learned that Delphi was originally more of a religious center than a city. It was unique in that it was administered primarily by priestesses, who received divinations by inhaling gases and then shared their insights with visiting diplomats and rulers. The group also explored the ruins of the stadium, which was the site for many Olympic games.
En route to Athens, the group admired the Greek countryside and stopped a local restaurant for lunch. Upon arriving, they enjoyed a short walk through the town square and briefly explored the city. Following dinner, they took a guided tour of the legendary Greek Orthodox church, the Metropolis.
While in Athens, the group toured numerous landmarks, including the statues of important Greek Civil War-era politicians and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. At the Acropolis, known first as a citadel for Athens and later as a place of religious significance, the students saw many statues and other sculptures that once sat in the structure.
“While many of the statues were damaged in some shape or form, we were able to see how careful the sculptors were in constructing them,” observed Brian Park, grade 9.