2004 April Harker News by The Harker School

APRIL 2004 (VOL. 10, NO. 7)

M O N T H L Y

N E W S L E T T E R

est. 1893 • K-12 college prep

F R O M

T H E

H A R K E R

Science Bowl Team Wins Regional, Heads to D.C.

inside

since the team’s inception five years ago. “I have done this with three schools since 1991 and Harker is by far the best team. They’re not afraid to be wrong, and that’s the key – they are a very bright, confident group willing to push the buzzer.” Korin said their training has included weekly practice sessions at school and added that a few are also members of Harker’s Quiz Bowl team, and their participation on the popular “Quiz Kids” Peninsula-based TV game show (see story, pg. 13) has helped, as well.

US Quiz Bowl team makes it to championship ................... 13

Another successful year for annual Mentor Program for Juniors. ............................ 18 US Community Service update ....................................... 17

Photo courtesy of Dept. of Energy

JETS teams place first in Bay Area ................................ 16 BKN Destination Imagination teams rule ......................... 8

Harker’s US Science Bowl team won its first regional competition of the Department of Energy’s Annual Science Bowl held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Feb. 28 and will represent Nor thern California on an allexpense paid trip to the National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C. next month.

DAMN YANKEES The Harker Conservatory presents

The Harker team, comprised of Yi Sun, Anjali Vaidya, Mason Liang, Lev Pisarsky and Jasper Shau,

competed in this fast-paced Jeopardy-like competition against 16 Bay Area teams answering questions in a variety of academic disciplines including biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and computer and general science. “Harker was up against the traditional powerhouses of Homestead and Albany High and upset the contest with their sharp performance,” said Robbie Korin, US chemistry teacher and advisor

MS Publication Garners Silver Award April 15 - 17, 2004 8 p.m. Saratoga Gym April 17 BBQ Tailgate for Sat. show

for Gr. 3-8 families

See page 2 for ticket info and details!

Lee Trotter

PLUS! April 14 Preview Night

S C H O O L

Last spring’s MS literary publication, enlight’ning, was chosen earlier this year as a finalist in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s Crown Award winners. Harker is one of only five middle/

junior high schools nationally to be selected (see story in Feb. 2004 edition). Stacie Newman, Gr. 7 expository writing teacher and club advisor, attended the March 2004 Scholastic Spring Convention in New York, where Harker was presented a silver award for its 2003 issue. Congratulations to those students (pictured) who worked so hard last year and

The competition, established in 1991 by the Department of Energy, encourages high school students from across the nation to excel in math and science and to pursue careers in those fields. In this year’s event, Harker defeated 16 other Bay Area high schools in the day-long competition, and team members each received medals, along with a trophy and banner for the school. Our congratulations to these students, and we wish them the best at the national competition to be held April 29 - May 3 in Wash., D.C.

earned this special recognition: Stephanie Benedict (not pictured), Ben Enlgert, Alice Liang, Shibani Mehta, Swapanthi Nagulpally, Erin Newton, Mansi Shah, Daniella Shulman, Allison Wong and Kimberly Wong. This year’s staff is currently editing and producing the latest edition, which will publish in mid-May:

Kristina Bither, Elizabeth Case, Sasha Desai, Christy Emery, Michelle Hong, Gracy Hudkins, Alice Liang, Callie Medin, Sophi Newman, Alison Palmintere, Natalie So, Tonia Sun and Nikki Woods.

APRIL

reminders

volunteer needs

A new Tradition for Senior Parents and Students!

april dates NOTE: Key vacation dates for the 2004-05 school year are now posted on the Web site. We will notify you when division calendars for the fall have been posted.

Apr. 20, 8 a.m. – Grandparents’ Day gift assembly, BKN staff lunchroom

■ Mon., Apr. 5, All Classes Resume. ■ Sat., Apr. 10, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Bucknall front circular loading zone Freshman Class Car Wash. $5 for cars and $7 for vans/trucks. Proceeds go to Class of ’07 to support class activities.

May 4-7, hours vary – Display and sales help during the BKN Book Fair May 4, 8 a.m. – Grandparents’ Day nametag preparation, STG Ledge

■ Wed., Apr. 21., 5 p.m., FDR - Cantilena /Guys’ Gig Spring Concert. Free admission.

May 7, beginning at 1 p.m. – Grandparents’ Day, BKN

■ Thurs., Apr 22 - 7p.m, BKN Gym - Full Orchestra Concert. Tickets $5 at tickets@harker.org

May 17, 11:30 a.m. – Senior Moms’ Tribute Luncheon, hosted by usMOMS, Manzanita Hall patio (see details, back page)

There are lots of other ways you can help – see the volunteer pages on the Web site for a complete list!

■ Sat., Apr. 24, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Bucknall front circular loading zone - Sophomore Class Car Wash. Cost range is $5 to $10 based on size of car. Proceeds go to Class of ’06 to support class activities.

Harker Archives

Ongoing – Harker Bookstore, STG campus – Parent volunteers needed Mon.-Fri to work a couple hours a day organizing shelves, assisting customers and helping with displays. Please contact Bob Benge at bobb@harker.org

Harker Archives

Apr. 7, 8 a.m. – Grandparents’ Day invitation mailing

■ Sat., Apr. 10, 7:30 to 11p.m., BKN Gym - 2nd Annual Garbha. This parent- and student-organized event is to celebrate the Hindu festival Navratri. The entire K-12 Harker community is invited to enjoy food, fun and dancing - last year over 150 parents and students attended this event! Tickets: $5 for singles, $7 for couples. Purchase at the bookstore (after April 6) or at door. ■ Fri., Apr. 30, 7:00 p.m., Petit Trianon, San Jose - Senior Showcase. Annual Hammies (for students) immediately following show. For info contact jeffreyd@harker.org .

gotta laugh! My third period was filing into class for an exam with the all too familiar looks on their faces, ranging from apprehension to determination. John Ammatuna struts up to my desk oozing with confidence and belts out, “Mr. Walsh, I've got three words for you: BRING IT ON.” The class burst out laughing and John's good humor loosened everybody up for the test. Thank you, President Bush and Senator Kerry! — Pat Walsh, Teacher

correction The photo credit for the artwork for last month’s Artist of the Month feature should have been J. Gaston.

US Conservatory Presents Damn Yankees Thurs., Fri. and Sat., April 15 - 17: 8 p.m. SARATOGA GYM

PLUS! Preview Night: Wed., April 14, 5 p.m. For Gr. 3 - 8 Families Special Preview Night for Gr. 3-8 Harker families to learn about the US Performing Arts Dept. and have a chance to talk with the cast after the show. Optional pizza dinner offered at intermission (see prices below). BBQ Tailgate Event: Sat., April 17, 6 p.m. Enjoy a fun pre-show BBQ dinner and baseball-themed festivities and priority seating for the show. Ticket Prices: $15 reserved / $10 general / $5 seniors & students $5 Preview Show, plus $2 for optional pizza dinner at intermission $35 BBQ Tailgate Party (includes show ticket and priority seating) A family of four or more pays only $115. Children under 7 years of age eat free! Contact the Harker Bookstore at tickets@harker.org or 408.345.9226.

Mark your calendars for… Tues., April 6 from 6-10 p.m. in the Edge Senior parents will gather to create senior posters to honor the 2004 graduates, and all senior parents

Class of 2004 and/or seniors are welcome to participate in this new tradition. These posters, which are due April 19, will be displayed around the walls of the Harker gym for the entire month of May. Senior parent Alice Bracken, who is coordinating the effort with Chris Daren, US activities coordinator, offered these helpful tips: Think of a theme: Something that best captures your senior, such as hobbies, athletics, theater, and/or outside interests. Then gather photos, ribbons, awards, favorite music, photos or quotes from family, teachers and/or friends anything you want to include that will reflect the character of the senior. This collage can feature the senior’s entire life or just the high school years. Remember, this will be their keepsake so bring all items with you on April 6, and we will have a lot of fun celebrating and creating together. Things to bring: Scissors, double sided tape, glue sticks, exacto knife, a ruler, a cutting mat and colorful markers are a must! Memory book items, lettering, borders, color paper, stencils, ink stamps, dried flowers, CD covers or anything flat that will fit in a frame are optional. You can bring your own frame (20" x 30" maximum size) or you can e-mail Chris Daren (chrisda@harker.org) to purchase one for $34 from the bookstore to have that night. Bring all your photos, mementos and supplies with you April 6 and work side-by-side with other parents and seniors as they create these special posters. Light snacks and drinks will be served. Please RSVP asap and direct questions to Bracken at afumakb@aol.com or Chris Daren at chrisda@harker.org. Harker News — April 04

Event

recap

Important US Message from Harker Tech Department

All students are already required to have a current virus scanner running on their laptops. Beginning in mid-April, Symantec Anti-Virus for both Mac and Windows will be available as a free download for Saratoga students with laptops. All they will need to do is go to http:// students.harker.org and then to the Student Tech Help area for instructions. In addition, next year we will facilitate automatic updating of virus files by hosting the update packages and providing automatic update features on the Harker campus. Thanks to Jeffrey Niederauer and Andrew Hansen (Harker’s network co-managers) for making this possible. For further information contact Dan Hudkins, director of US instructional technology at danh@harker.org or 408.345.9631.

■ Attendance Reminder to US Parents US students are permitted TWO unexcused tardies per quarter per class without penalty. If a student is tardy a third time (per class per quarter), an hour of after-school detention will be assigned by the dean of students. Parents, please help your child avoid detention by ensuring a timely arrival well before their first academic class of the day. The campus opens at 7:15 a.m. daily. Please report all late arrivals or absences by calling 345-9247. ■ Affordable Teacher Housing Harker likes to assist teachers in finding affordable housing. If you own rental homes or apartments that can be offered at a reasonable rent, please contact Triona Coyne at tcoyne@harker.org with a brief description of the rental property, rental cost and contact information. ■ Kleenex Caper In an e-mail on March 9 we notified parents of a story in the San Jose Mercury News entitled “Extra Credit for Kleenex” about ways some schools are meeting their need for classroom supplies. A number of schools were interviewed for this article, which included a few quotes from a Harker teacher. We want to officially clarify the school’s policy on this. While Harker has always Harker News — April 04

welcomed and encouraged donations of tissues for classroom use from Harker families, the administration does not think it appropriate to offer extra academic credit for supplying tissues. Any extra credit awarded to students is to be based on academic work. While we’ve discovered a few harmless, well-intended tissue collection projects, we wish to reassure our families that whatever extra credit has been awarded for this in the past has been nominal, and the few extra credit projects for tissues are being phased out. Harker teachers submit a maintenance request to receive tissues for their classroom. Parents may still feel free to send tissues with their students to class - the donation is always appreciated! ■ Host Family Needed Lenka Pelakova, a senior from Bardejov, Slovakia, is interested in studying at Harker next year. Lenka has studied English for seven years and her interests include drawing and debate. For selected international students like Lenka, Harker covers all school costs including tuition, books and fees; the student provides her own medical insurance; the host family is responsible for her room and board. If interested, contact Bill Bost at billb@harker.org or 408.345.9656.

Lee Trotter-all lunch photos

As part of our continuing efforts to make laptop computing safe at Harker, we have renewed the school’s Symantec antivirus software package to include registered student-owned laptops used on the Saratoga campus. As many of you know, we lost significant time in the fall of 2003 when student laptops brought a worm and several viruses into our network. We are working to reduce that risk.

Luncheon Honors Volunteers About 70 parents attended an invitationonly luncheon to thank those volunteers who helped in the following areas this year: Parent Volunteer Leadership Councils, After-school Rec Art volunteers, January mailing helpers, Destination Imagination coaches and Fashion Show volunteers. Many thanks to this wonderful batch of volunteers!

Harker Summer Programs offer a unique blend of academic enrichment and sports and recreation activities to create a fun and learning-filled experience for our campers. Join us!

Now registering for the following sessions of Harker Summer Programs: 5-WEEK SESSION: June 21 - July 23 3-WEEK SESSION: July 26 – August 13 NEW! 2-WEEK SESSIONS: June 21 - July 2 & July 12 - July 23

THE HARKER SCHOOL Bucknall Campus: 4300 Bucknall Rd., San Jose 408.871.4600 Saratoga Campus: campinfo@harker.org 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose Visit our Web site & register now for best selection!

www.harker.org 3

“Being a host at the fashion show gave me an exceptional opportunity to help raise money for Harker. It felt really good to support my school during my last year here and to know that what I did will help future Harker students.” —Thomas McMahon, Class of 2004

“Modeling in the fashion show was an incredible experience. It was fun to be with my peers doing something so unique and to step outside the box and dress in outfits that were so different from those I wear in my daily life. Best of all, it was for a good cause: Harker!” —Karla Bracken, Class of 2004

“This was Santana Row’s first time to be involved in a school fundraising event, and we could not have been more pleased with the innovative show, which perfectly complemented the style-defining fashions of Santana Row’s world-class boutiques and shops. Our collaboration in the event supports Santana Row’s mission to be a dynamic part of our local community, and we’re proud to know our efforts will directly benefit Harker’s students and teachers. Santana Row and Harker both truly places like no other!” —Billur Wallerich, Director of Marketing for Santana Row

“It was such a wild feeling watching the event and seeing all of our many months of planning and hard work come together. Working on the fashion show committee gave me a great opportunity to meet some truly wonderful people who are now my very good friends.” — Leslie Nielsen, Events Chair Assistant

“The show itself was an amazing production! Seeing everyone, especially the students, looking so sure and confident made me realize yet again what a wonder ful learning environment Harker is for our students. It really was worth all the hard work that so very many people put into making the show possible!” — Heather Wardenburg, Centerpiece Committee Chair

fund Lights, Camera…PASSION! Harker Fashion Show — A Celebration and a Look Back! The first-ever Harker Fashion Show, our new philanthropic event for the Harker community, has proven to be one of three pivotal annual fundraising activities that supports The Harker Fund. We thank you for giving generously and passionately for the benefit of our students and our community as a whole – it’s the many families, faculty, alumni, sponsors and volunteers who made this event such a success. Your continued support of this new event, as well as the annual Alumni and Family Picnic and the Annual Giving campaign, will ensure the success of the annual Harker Fund and the important programs this fund makes possible.

Celebration Santana Row generously hosted a thank-you event for the fashion show committee in the V Bar at the Hotel Valencia in March, where cochairs Christine Davis, Ellen Harris and Marcia Riedel announced the financial results of the show and thanked the committee. “We are very proud of everyone affiliated with the Fashion Show for all their

hard work and support. This premiere year was a lot of fun, but it also presented many challenges, and everyone rose to the occasion to make Lights, Camera…PASSION! a resounding success. We look forward to next year’s show, and many more years of expressing our passion for education. Thank you for helping to make Harker truly a place like no other!” They also announced that a plaque with the names of all the founding committee members will be installed on the Saratoga campus by the end of the year to honor the inaugural committee members.

Finances

Fun Facts

We are delighted to announce that the net proceeds from the event totalled:

$201,769.23! All net proceeds directly benefit these valuable programs, resources and facilities necessary for the growth of our students and faculty: ■ Scholarship Fund – provides financial assistance to students schoolwide. The fashion show will provide six families with a total of $70,000 in financial support.

■ 250+ students, faculty, parents and alumni modeled, performed or volunteered ■ Over 1,400 guests attended the lunch and dinner events ■ We significantly raised awareness of the caliber of our students and programs in the greater community. News of the event ran in the Mercury News, Silicon Valley community newspapers and the April San Jose Magazine. ■ The overwhelming response has been that this new event was topnotch, memorable and worthy of being a new Harker tradition.

■ Teachers’ Fund – supports and encourages professional development among faculty. The fashion show proceeds will provide $65,000 for teachers to attend conferences and workshops this year. ■ Math, Science and Technology Complex – Funding of $65,000 of will go towards the construction of a brand new classroom in our new Math, Science and Technology Complex.

Harker Archives

HARKER

Watch next month's edition for the announcement of the 2005 Fashion Show date!

Special Fundraising Event “An Enchanted Fall Evening” It’s a wonderful social opportunity for the Harker community! Join us for a romantic evening of fine dining and dancing under the stars hosted at the Doherty’s beautiful “Italian Country” home in Los Gatos on Sat., Oct. 2, 2004. The official guest list is filling up quickly, so reserve your spot now by emailing nancyr@harker.org (cost is $200 per couple and $100 per person). Harker News — April 04

harker

summer

Harker Goes to the Olympics - with this Summer’s Theme!

Annual Giving Update ■ Gr. K, 3 and 6 top the class participation chart with over 70%!

The recent spell of hot weather has reminded us all that summer is just around the corner. The summer offices at both campuses have been busy with registrations and are gearing up for this year’s Olympics theme. Get your registration in soon while spots are available!

■ 90% of $1 million in funds needed to support student programs this year has been received. ■ Spring Calls: Parent volunteers will contact families who have yet to participate – the campaign ends May 31!

We thought you’d all enjoy meeting some of these great Harker students and alumni who work in the Harker Summer Programs: Michael Leonard (’04) will spend his fourth summer as a lifeguard at the Bucknall pool this summer. “What makes me want to come back to work at camp is definitely the kids… because when you can make them smile, it’s all that matters,” said Leonard, who was a summer camper himself for many years.

■ Reminder: President’s Circle Celebration is Fri., April 23. We hope to see you there! —Bran-Dee Torres, Donor Relations Manager, brandeet@harker.org

William Waggoner (’06) was also a summer camper once and decided to return as a Counselor in Training (C.I.T.) last year. After a student’s first year in high school, he or she can apply for the five-week C.I.T. program, which teaches leadership skills and requires active participation with campers. Will comes back to work summers “because it’s a fun job in the sun, and much better than waiting tables.” Katie Ball (’05) recalls the fun she had “traveling from place to place on campus singing songs with the kids.” Harker freshmen are encouraged to apply, and two of this year’s applicants, Matt Wong (’07) and Ashley Morishige (’07), are also past

Your Generous Annual Giving Dollars at Work! Your gifts continue to provide Harker students and faculty with tools and resources to make so many of our schoolwide programs successful. In this issue we are proud to showcase the following: MS Literary Magazine wins silver award page 1 Annual Gr. 6 Production: “Free to Be You and Me” page 10 21st Annual Dance Production: “Let’s Show ’Em” page 6

Harker News — April 04

Class of 2004 Parents… Join these fellow senior families and honor your graduate with a special inscribed brick: Karla Bracken, Eric Berglund, LeAnn Duong, Anita Gupta, Laena Keyashian, Irina Khaimovich, Kathryn L. Lee, Jennifer Lin, Jessica Liu, Sergey Lossev, Jacinda Mein, Lisa Nakano, Thomas Polzin, Sumana Rao, Danna Rubin, Matthew Vucurevich, Wesley J. Wu. Contact Amalia Keyashian, Sr. Parent Committee member, at 408.345.0107.

Lee Trotter

THANKS

Move Your Grade Level to 100% Today!

Some of our US students that you'll see working this summer!

campers. Morishige said of her days as a camper, “The overnights were awesome because we got to bond as a group. I especially remember the overnight with the first dance - Coach K taught us disco!” Current Harker students who worked last summer include: Mike Leonard (’04), Jacinda Mein (’04), Estelle Charlu (’05), William Waggoner (’06), Katie Ball (’05), Rachel Newman (’05), Roberta Wolfson (’05), Casey Near (’06), Casey Blair (’06), Shivani Bhargava (’06), Gavin Dutrow (’06), Rohini Venkatraman (’06), Michael Hammersly (’06), and Lauren Gutstein (’06). After the C.I.T. program, many students return as counselors and then group leaders. Three alumni, Lisa Bowman (MS ’95), Danielle Lawrence (MS ’95) and Ashley Sukovez (MS ’96), started in the C.I.T. program and have returned every summer since. They now hold positions on the camp’s administration team. Harker Summer Programs are widely known for the caliber and quality of their staff. With so many of our wonderful students and alumni participating in the summer programs, it comes as no surprise! See you at camp!

DANCE

production ...Did Just That! and costumes were outstanding, and the show flowed through dancing styles from ballet to hip-hop. Once again, Laura Rae was the artistic director and choreographer and also assisted with the story concept. Her colleagues, dance instructor Adrian Bermudez and drama teacher Jeff Draper, also assisted with much of the show. New this year the show featured some of the work of student choreographers from the US Conservatory, Maya Hey and Kimberley Wong, who each choreographed a dance on their own. US students Sasha Stepanenko and Julia Havard also worked with lower school students, and Naeha Bhambhra assisted with the finale. In addition, special thanks go to the following Harker staff: Brian E. Larsen, Gail Palmer, Paul Vallerga, Natti Pierce-Thompson and Marc Hufnagl.

Chris Daren - all photos

The 21st annual Saratoga dance show involved over 200 students over three days of performances and weeks of rehearsals. This year the K-12 production storyline featured three main US actors who were working together to come up with a theme for a dance show: choreographer, Maya Hey; director, Jo Tsai; and visionary, Fiona Lundie. They paved the way for each dance number aided by two Gr. 3 actors, David Cutler as a videographer and his agent Sarah Coyne-Croft. The lights, sets, sound, props

Harker News â&#x20AC;&#x201D; April 04

FROM

the archives

Put on Your Dancin’ Shoes for Harker’s History of Dance choreographed the leads as well as the large group numbers. At the same time, I started making up little routines for students to perform at the awards assemblies. The first dance routine was ‘Shake It Up’ by the Cars.” So impressive was the performance that dance performances soon became part of every school assembly, as well as the annual Holiday Show and Spring Musical. The after-school dance program began in 1983 with 50 students of various grade levels and skills. Dancers performed in a recital at the end of the school year. In the early years Dan Gelineau worked on sound, Mike Bassoni on lights, and Jack Bither was master of ceremonies. Within three years the program grew to include 150 students who participated in the after-school program, parent/ child dances and a faculty routine with a mother/ faculty dance. By the late ’80s, Harker Academy dancers had developed a solid base of skills. Parents helped build sets and costumes were ordered through professional catalogs. Dance became a hit at Harker! By now Rae was teaching dance full-time, and the dance program now included a required course in the K-8th grade

’65

folk dancing. The dance curriculum was expanded to include clogging in the ’30s, which was thought to increase flexibility and a sense of rhythm. In the ’40s, creative, interpretive and social dancing were recognized as integral to the curriculum. As the Miss Harker School expanded to include K-12 in the 50s, dance was introduced into the primar y school curriculum. Kindergarteners practiced folk dancing every day, and additional dance instruction was available after school. Intermediate students learned interpretive dance, and the upper school students were exposed to a variety of dance traditions. Through the merger of the Palo Alto Military Academy with the Harker Day School in the early 1960s, dance was always part of the summer programs and of their annual Maypole celebrations. In the early days of Harker Academy, spring musicals provided the main venue for dance performances. However, when dance teacher Laura Rae came to Harker in 1982, the dance program really began to flourish! Laura’s earliest memories are of the spring musicals, in which all 7th and 8th graders participated, and each P.E. class selected dancers for specific routines. Rae recalls, “My first year the musical was the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ and I Harker News — April 04

’89

Harker Archives - all photos

From our school’s earliest beginnings dance has played an important role at Harker. The 1903 catalog features dance instruction, offered to the girls for $20 per term. By the ’20s dance became part of the curriculum and one period a week was devoted to “natural [interpretive] dancing” and

P.E. program, the annual spring musical (required for MS students) and an after-school elective for performance in the dance show. Dance was taught in a small room which had an open dance deck attached (these rooms now function as Laura Lang-Ree’s room/Mr. Micek’s computer room). Rae remembers “first position feet” painted on the floor, flowers and a heater on the dance deck, and

’96

being part of the life of the boarding students. She remembers, “Many of the boarders danced in the program, since we were just downstairs. This opened

the doors to ethnic dances and boys entering the program.” Student participation after school increased and Rae began to contract with outside choreographers to assist with the dance numbers. The annual show began to have standard routines that included jazz, ballet/lyrical, modern and a new style known as hip-hop. “At this point, I was still working with a phonograph and those big CDs known as vinyl records,” Rae laughed. “By the late ’80s I couldn’t keep up with the demand of student interest.” So the dance program further expanded in the 1990s as Gail Palmer came aboard. Rae and Palmer became a team that made the program what it is today. Rae said the program has flourished as a result of the creativity and support of many, and she feels a special indebtedness to Howard and Diana Nichols: “I am amazed that the dance program has become such an integral part of the Harker community. Howard and Diana have always been advocates of the per forming ar ts. To be able to work with wonder ful, bright students, hire outside choreographers and collaborate with the Per forming Arts staff has been a dream come true.” The tradition continues as we celebrated our 21st annual dance production, “Let’s Show ‘Em,” this year. Lucky indeed are the Harker dancers, who as part of their legacy have created lifelong memories for all and experienced the thrill of performing at Harker! —Sue Smith, Harker Archivist

AROUND

bucknall

Imagination Rules with Harker DI Teams

Kate Shanahan

breaking many structures until their guesses were on the mark. Using their best GuessDImate, they told the appraisers how much weight their structure would hold BEFORE they loaded it up.

Harker teams have been preparing for months for the Desination Imagination (DI) regional finals held in early March, and they were once again very successful. Two Harker teams won the 1st and 2nd place spots and will be presenting at the State Finals in Clovis in April. The 1st place team was the Harker Brainstormers, consisting of Gr. 3 and 4 students Tyler Yeats, Saagar Sarin, Suchita Nety, Bradley Araki and Neha Kumar, coached by parent Nina Yeats. The team presented a challenge called GuessDImate where students built a structure of wood and glue and estimated how many pounds of weight it could hold. They gathered the data needed by building and

Lee Trotter - all lip sync photos

■ Valentine’s Day just wouldn’t feel right without the fifth grade’s annual Lip Sync Show, and the students did another fabulous job of selecting songs and preparing routines. There was a wide variety of acts, from a Beatles number performed by John Ammatuna, Molly Mandell and Allika Walvekar

The 2nd place spot went to the Harker Swingers, consisting of Gr. 5 students Sonali Mehta, Abhilasha Belani, Ajit Punj, Molly Mandell and Shreya Nathan, coached by parents Vinita Belani, Nimish Mehta and Anoo Nathan. This team presented the challenge called The Plot and the Pendulum, where students created a theatrical presentation that featured two original stories that began the same way, but each split along the way and had different endings. They were aided by their team-invented “plot diverter,” an actual pendulum that signaled the pivotal events that set the stories in motion. A 3rd place spot went to Challenge Busters, consisting of Gr. 3 and 4 students Sonia Chalaka, Sonia Gupta, Daniela Lapidous, Ben

Yang, Rishi Bhandia and Laura Pedrotti, coached by parents Ravi Chalaka, Chris Apap-Bologna and Anita Bhandia, who also presented the The Plot and the Pendulum challenge. Two other Harker teams competed at the regional tournament. The ‘DI’fference,consisting of Gr. 6 students Joanna Melbourne, Claire Bredenoord, Stefan Eckhardt, Scott Underwood, Amiti Uttarwar and Alysia Patel, coached by parents Carol Underwood and Liz Melbourne, also did the The Plot

Congratulations to all the teams for working so hard all winter and putting so much creativity, effort and energy into their challenges. “Remember, sometimes the journey IS the destination,” said parent Nina Yeats! —Kate Shanahan, Gr. 5 teacher

volunteer of the month Destination Imagination Coaches We want to put our monthly spotlight on this year’s Destination Imagination parent coaches: Chris Apap-Bologna, Vinita Belani, Ravi Chalaka, Nimish Mehta, Liz Melbourne, Anoo Nathan, Carol Underwood, Anita Bhandia, Nina Yeats and Ram Appalaraju. These volunteers are so dedicated! They organized team meetings, drove all over the Bay Area getting supplies for their teams’ challenges, dealt diplomatically with other parents, controlled, focused, taught, organized and motivated young people, juggled weekend meetings and managed to feed hungry hordes, lay awake at night wondering how on ear th their teams would ever be prepared sufficiently to compete, and were prepared to share the joy of winning (or the sadness of losing!) and the impor tance of TEAMWORK. Kate Shanahan, G5 teacher and DI coordinator extraordinaire, asks us all to give these patient and diligent volunteers a special thank you for their effor ts! —Nancy Reiley, Community Relations Director

Idol was hiding somewhere in the audience,” reported teacher Pat Walsh. The finale had the kids awestruck as teachers Walsh, Kristin Giammona, Kate Shanahan

to an Indian Remix featuring Ayesha Malik, Malika Mehrotra, Riya Parikh, Sonika Suri and Anisha Agarwal. Leo Funaki had the audience rocking out with his rendition of “Faint.” “At this point there was talk that a talent screener for American

and the Pendulum challenge. There was also a team working outside of Harker of Gr. 5 students Isaac Madan, Ambrish Amaranathan, Monisha Appalaraju, Nidhi Gandhi, Anisha Agrawal, coached by parent Ram Appalaraju.

and Rob Reagan came out singing and dancing to “One” from the Broadway musical, “A Chorus Line.” In addition to the above, other singers were Alice Loofburrow, Sheridan Jones, Miranda Gorman, David Wu, Peter Auvil, Naomi So, Tiffany Chang, Henna Mishra,

Priya Sadhev, Janisha Patel, Abhilasha Belani, Nidhi Gandhi, Sonali Mehta, Jacqui Salinas, Olivia Zhu and Erica Woolsey. ■ Cindy Proctor’s homeroom class enjoyed a busy week of celebrations the first week in March. They celebrated Dr. Seuss’ 100th birthday by making “Cat in the Hat” hats, singing Happy Birthday to him and reading many of his fantastic stories. They celebrated the Japanese holiday of Girl’s Day (aka Doll’s Day) by having all the students bring a special doll or stuffed animal to school. “After introducing their special friend to the class, they shared cookies with them,” said Proctor. That same week, all students in Gr. 1 saw the play, “Harr y the Dir ty Dog” at the Sunnyvale Theater of the Per forming Ar ts. ■ The American Heart Association arranged with teacher Pete Anderson to have children’s author and heart disease survivor J.T. Harker News — April 04

bucknall

Kristin Giammona

■ Parent Peter Levy (Noah Levy) visited Kristin Giammona’s 5th period social studies class to share some interesting highlights about America’s most notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold. Levy grew up in Tappan, New York, where British officer Major Andre (Benedict

Arnold) was tried and hanged, and encouraged students to visit the related historical sites in New York if they ever were able to travel there. ■ Students in Jason Pergament’s science classes held a mini science Harker News — April 04

■ Linda Alexander reported that her Gr. 1 G+ Language Arts class “loves to write - they write every day in journals, word lists, sentences and stories!” She explained that recently the children composed their own stories based on a children’s book called “A Dinosaur Named After Me,” where the Brontosaurus in the book becomes a gentle Gillianasaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex becomes an even fiercer Ian-Rex. When the stories had been edited and all the mistakes corrected, the children copied them neatly on dinosaur-shaped stationery, drew pictures and made covers. “What a thrill it was for the children to learn what it means to be authors!” commented Alexander. “They took great pride in reading their books to each other. Now, quite a few of the children think it would be exciting to be authors when they grow up.” ■ Megumi Kozu, parent of Hiro Kozu, brought the tradition of the Japanese Doll Festival to Rita Stone’s first grade classroom in

Chloe Nielsen, Gr. 3 Chloe exhibits a quiet determination and a great dedication to her work. A consummate artist, she can often be found in the afterschool art program continuing her artistic explorations outside of class. Chloe’s work displays an elegant sense of design and mastery in handling materials. In her logos project, Chloe created a graphic and typographic symbol for her name that at once represents her and at the same time cleverly represents her love of cats. Alexandra Walker, Gr. 1 A bright young artist, Alexandra’s work exhibits her dexterity in handling many art media as well as a poetic sensibility towards her subject matter. In the unit of study on owls, Alexandra created two distinct projects - a mixed media drawing and a clay sculpture (pictured). Both projects convey her strong sense of form and understanding of texture and her command of these different materials. They also display how she translated the subject matter learned and created a convincing mood that relates to each piece individually. —Pilar Aguero-Esparza, LS Art Teacher

with how hard each student worked to improve their paper folding skills. It’s a lot tougher than it looks,” she added. Thanks to parent Karen Saunders (Awen) who assisted in the activities.

early March, explaining why this is such an important festival in Japan. Students had the chance to taste special festival foods and practice the ancient and challenging art of origami, or paper folding. “My class really enjoyed the sharing of another culture’s festival,” said Stone. “I was quite impressed

■ Kindergarten students in Eric Hoffman’s art class recently worked on a textured ceramic clay fish project. Sudents cut out fish using templates, used a variety of tools to create textures and then painted their fish with ceramic glazes. The fish were on display in the gym lobby this past month.

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Cummins visit in February. He read aloud from his book, “Good Things to Share,” during his visit and had a short discussion about being kind, caring and loving. “The children welcomed him with Valentines and were quite excited about meeting a ‘real author,’” said Diann Chung, Gr. 1 teacher.

artists of the month

Nick Gassman

Lee Trotter

fair in February for other classes to view their science fair projects. Students were given an openended assignment to complete a geology-related science fair project. Each class chose a topic and then broke into focus groups to create a project of their choice. The topics included Earthquakes in California, Mt. St. Helens, the Hawaiian Volcanoes, Mt. Fuji, Mt. Everest and Mt. Vesuvius/Pompeii. “They came up with an amazing assortment of projects on these topics including short videos, exploding volcanoes, power point presentations, comparative models and rumbling fault lines,” said Pergament.

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club of the month After-school Art

Lee Trotter-both photos

Students in Gr. 1-6 have the option of After-school Art as a drop-in activity, and there are usually between 25 to 30 students each day working on either teacher-led projects like clay, embossing, printing or

drawing, or on independent projects like peg knitting, painting and crayon melt. Recently students finished making Puzzling Picture Frames, a project using glue guns to adhere puzzle pieces to a frame, and Creative Construction, a project using Fimo polymer clay and colored toothpicks to make sculptures. “There are a wide variety of projects for the students, from making picnic aprons to candle centerpieces,” said Sylvia Beals, after-school art instructor. Alumni Dana Luri (‘82) assists Beals in this program. Grade 4-6 sports participants can also include one day a week of art if it is prearranged and on a regular schedule. See the art department for more details.

Bucknall Performing Arts Notes ■ Sixth Grade Event Celebrates Possibilities Students in Gr. 6 put on a fun and entertaining musical in March entitled, “Free To Be You and Me,” based on the classic best-selling children’s book by the same title. The play was a delightful collection of scenes and songs that reminded us how fun it is to be a kid. A group of boys and girls discover who they are, learn how to express their feelings and learn to respect each other’s individuality. It also reminds us that boys and girls have limitless possibilities and can be anything they choose. The 6th graders were split into two casts that performed on different nights. Though the stage adaptation was written to be performed by four actors, director Michael Pease divided the scenes up so that close to forty actors could be featured individually per cast. Every student had plenty to do, acting in at least one scene and singing at least five different songs.

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■ Students in Pete Anderson’s Gr. 6 P.E. classes have been practicing the many arts of the circus, including diabolos, stilts, balance boards, scarves, club and ball juggling and plate spinning. “My students love it,” laughed Anderson!

Dancers in Gr. 1 through 6 are having a blast as they learn their routines for the 2004 Dance Concert at Bucknall. This year’s theme, Movie Madness, will have dance routines that represent favorite films of the Bucknall faculty and staff. Director Gail Palmer said that the 220 dancers are now asking, “When will we get our costumes?” Palmer wants to get the entire campus involved so each grade level recently had a lunchtime jam session. Three different songs were played, and the students voted on the one they wanted to be used for the finale. Many Bucknall students also submitted artwork to be considered for the show program cover. Three drawings will be selected to be the program cover, and the rest will be used to decorate the lobby. Plan to take a stroll down the red carpet on Fri., May 28 or Sat., May 29 at 7:00 p.m.! Nick Gassman

Lee Trotter - all circus photos

■ Bucknall Dance Concert – May 28 and 29

Harker News — April 04

MATH

competitions

L. Sun, parent

■ 2004 BAMO – Harker’s Yi Sun, 2004 Grand Winner, Harker Earns Second Place Overall Ranking For the first time in the history of the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad (BAMO), a sophomore – Harker student Yi Sun – garnered the highest points in this 4-hour problem-solving competition taken by nine Harker students on Feb. 24. Sun’s achievement as the youngest Grand Winner was announced March 7 at the BAMO Awards Banquet held at the Faculty Club at the University of California Berkeley. BAMO consists of five open-ended

questions with 35 points as the highest possible score. Yi received a score of 33 points, with the next closest scores earned by three senior veteran contestants from the other schools with a score of 31 points. The following students also received Honorable Mention Awards: 11th-12th Category: Mason Liang, Gr. 11; Middle School Category: Spencer Liang, Gr. 8 and Thomas Wang, Gr. 7. The other high performing students from Harker were Justin Wu, Gr. 11; Ethan Karpel, Gr. 11; Ozan Demirlioglu, Gr. 11, and Justin Chin, Gr. 9. Arkajit Dey, Gr. 9, also participated in the contest. Because of the very high scores of our students, Harker received 2nd Place Overall in the Olympiad. ■ California Math League (CML) – Harker Still Ranked #1 After round 4 of the California Mathematics League, Harker is still ranked #1 with a perfect score of 120 points. In the individual round, the following Harker students have been ranked the highest scoring students (cumulative) by the CML: Yi Sun, Gr. 10 – 24 points, perfect score; Mason Liang, Gr. 11- 23 points; Justin Wu, Gr. 11 – 23 Harker News — April 04

points; Justin Chin, Gr. 9 – 22 points; and Jerry Hong, Gr. 11 – 20 points. Last school year Harker was the overall winner in the CML and hopes to get the same award again after the remaining two rounds. Interested readers can view contest results and other CML information at http://www.mathleague.com/ reports/2003_04/CA4.HTM. ■ Mandelbrot National Contest After Round 3 Harker is doing very well in this year’s Mandelbrot National Competition, sponsored by the Greater Testing Concepts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. After round 3, Harker is still part of the elite tier 1 of top per forming schools that have received a score of 223 points or higher in the competition. In round 3 alone, our team received a per fect score of 21 points, and so far Harker has a team score of 276 points. The Harker team members who helped achieve the perfect score in round 3 were Yi Sun, Gr. 10, and juniors Mason Liang, Lev Pisarsky, Jerry Hong and Justin Wu. In the individual category, as of round 3 the following students have been commended: Tier 1 - Yi Sun, Gr. 10 - 40 points; Tier 2 – juniors Lev Pisarsky - 26 points, Jerry Hong 26 points and Justin Wu - 25 points; Tier 3 – Thomas Wang, Gr. 7 - 22 points and Daniel Hung, Gr. 11 - 20 points. ■ 41st SCVMA - Harker Students Earn Awards; School 4th Overall On March 6 Harker participated in the 41st Annual Santa Clara Valley Math Association (SCVMA) Mathematics Field Day, one of the major annual projects of this association. There are seven divisions in the contest: Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Open (Precalculus), Calculus, Leapfrog Relay and Discovery Quest. To be eligible in Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry or Open Competition, the students must be currently enrolled in that course this school year. Due to Harker’s mathematics curriculum and its tracking system, most of

our contestants were very young compared to the competitors from the other schools. In spite of the young age, Harker placed 4th overall in this tilt, due to the following individual awards: Algebra I: Jeanette Chin, Gr. 6 – 12th Place. Geometry: Thomas Wang, Gr. 7 – 4th place; Alex Fandrianto, Gr. 8 – 7th place; Richard Kwant, Gr. 9 – 14th place. Algebra II: Joseph Pei, Gr. 8 – 4th place; Jay Shah, Gr. 8 – 12th place. Calculus: Daniel Hung, Gr. 11 – 12th Place. Open (Precalculus) – Justin Chin, Gr. 9 – 6th place; Hailey Lam, Gr. 10 – 15th place. Leap Frog Relay Competition: Team of seniors Ozan Demirlioglu and Karthik Kailash – 7th place. Discovery Quest Contest: Yi Sun, Gr. 10 – 4th place. Vandana Kadam, MS math teacher, also accompanied the students on this competition.

Gr. 8; Victor Chen, Gr. 8; along with US student Tatsunori Hashimoto, Gr. 9. Despite their grade level disadvantage, these “mathletes” performed at par with their high school counterparts, and all four contestants from Harker were listed in their Web site. The salient results may be viewed at http:// sumo.stanford.edu/smt/2004.

■ Harker Students Receive JACL Awards On Jan. 17 Harker participated for the first time in the 37th Annual San Jose JACL Tokutomi Mathematics Contest, an annual event sponsored by the San Jose Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the California Mathematics Council Student Activity Trust, the Santa Clara Valley Mathematics Association and the Santa Teresa High School Mathematics Department. There were two divisions in the contest: the junior division open to students currently in grades 7-9, and the senior division for students in grades 10-12. The following students received awards in the competition: Junior Division Overall: Justin Chin, Gr. 9 – 5th place. 7th grade category: Thomas Wang – 2nd place. 8th grade category: Jay Shah – 3rd place. 9th grade category: Arkajit Dey – 2nd place. 10th grade category: Hailey Lam. 11th grade category: Lev Pisarsky – 5th place and Mason Liang – 1st place.

Gr. 12 – Ozan Demirlioglu, Anita Gupta, Karthik Kailash, Aaron Kleinsteiber, Simon Linder, Ravi Mishra, Akash Shah, Manu Srivastava, Sheena Vaswani, Wesley Wu. Gr. 11 – Gennady Erlikhman, Jerry Hong, Daniel Hung, Mason Liang, Kevin Park, Lev Pisarsky, Jeffrey Shih, Joel Wright, Justin Wu. Gr. 10 – Gregory Finkelstein, Michael Hammersley, Hailey Lam, Robert Li, Jacqueline Rousseau, Jasper Shau, Yi Sun, Eric Tzeng, Albert Wang, Victor Wang. Gr. 9 – Neil Chao, Justin Chin, Jay Han, Jessie Li, Tiffany June Lin. Gr. 8 – Rachel Fong. Gr. 7 –Thomas Wang. Final results will be known in April. 2004

■ Middle School students in Stanford Math Tournament for HS On Feb. 28 three different events were held on the same day - the JETS-TEAMS Competition, the Science Bowl and the Stanford Mathematics Tournament (SMT) – so Harker students were divided as to where to participate. Instead of backing out from the math competition, Harker fielded-in mostly MS students to the contest: Thomas Wang, Gr. 7; Rachel Fong,

■ Harker Students in Round 2 of the American Mathematics Competitions On Feb. 10 and Feb. 25 Harker participated in the National Mathematics Contest – the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC-A and AMC-B). The following students performed well on this test and were invited to participate in the next level of the contest, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) to be given March 23:

■ International Math Competitions Two Harker students participated in the second round of the O-level and the A-level of The Russian International Tournament of Towns. It is based mainly in Moscow, Russia, and like other Mathematical Olympiads, it focuses on problem-solving rather than rapid mathematics. Sitting for 4 - 5 hours doing only mathematics may be tough for some, but not for two Harker students, Yi Sun and Justin Wu, who participated in both levels. The results will be known in midMay. Sun participated in another international Olympiad, the Asian Pacific Mathematical Olympiad (APMO) held for four hours at Harker on March 15. Sun is also on a 30-member team from the United States chosen by the American continued on pg. 12

Math Competitions (AMC) committee from among those who reached the last stage of the AMC last school year. Sun took the U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad last school year and further qualified to be in training for possible members of the U.S.A. team to the International Mathematical Olympiad. Results of the APMO will be known within a month. ■ Upcoming Competitions There are still a number of mathematics competitions in the next couple of months for interested students such as the Mathematics Field Day sponsored by Fresno State University, the Bay Area Mathematics Meet (BAMM) sponsored by the University of San Francisco, the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad (CMO) and the Lawrence Livermore High School Math Challenge. Anyone who is interested in participating may contact Misael Fisico.

SPORTS Grades 4-8 The LS and MS were finishing up winter sports at press time and gearing up for spring sports. Watch for news of LS softball and baseball and MS swimming, tennis, soccer and boys’ volleyball in the next newsletter! —Theresa “Smitty” Smith, Gr. 4-8 Athletic Director

Upper School Spring sports are off and running with seven US spring sports for our

—Reported by Misael Fisico, US Math Teacher

Harker Math Event The third annual Harker Math Invitational for grades 6 to 8 held in March was another great success. About 200 contestants from 10 schools (Crocker Middle school, Crystal Springs Uplands School, Hillbrook School, Hyde Middle School, Menlo School, Miller Middle School, Redwood Middle School, Woodside Priory, Waldorf School of the Peninsula) joined Harker to take part in individual and team contests. The results were as follows. Individual Event: Gr. 6 – 1st, Nikhil Bhargava; 2nd, Victor Chen; 3rd, Jeanette Chin; and 5th, Amiti Uttarwar; Gr. 8 – 1st, Rachel Fong. Team Contest (there were 31 teams): Gr. 6 – 1st, Nikhil Bhargava, Vishesh Jain, Haran Sivakumar, Victor Chen, Jeanette Chin, Namrata Anand and Sanjeev Datta; Gr. 7 – 3rd, Aaron Lin, Jonathan Liu, Brian Chao, Andrew Chin, Adela Chang, Dominique Dabija and Tiffany Tseng. Congratulations to all the Harker math students who came out to par ticipate in this event, and many thanks to the parents and students who volunteered at this weekend event.

Eagle athletes - baseball, softball, volleyball, tennis, track and field, golf and swimming. Tennis is off to a good start, currently undefeated in PSAL league play, and sporting a 2-2 record overall. Coach Craig Pasqua is hopeful that his team will compete with the top teams in the league. Swimming hosted their first meet of the year, winning a tri meet with ISHS from San Francisco and Pinewood School. Both the boys’ and girls’ teams finished on top. Both teams began league meets in March, and they hope to finish in

briefs the upper halves, respectively.

Four Harker Teams Earn 2004 Scholastic Championship

Baseball notched some early season wins against St. Thomas More and Anzar HS. The varsity team is very young, with the four infield positions all manned by freshmen. They’ll face some tough teams in the PSAL and gain valuable experience that may not be evident until their upperclassmen years. Jason Martin, Greg Ringold, Mark Ollila and Chris Gudmundson make up the ‘fantastic frosh” class. The team has only two seniors and is led by junior pitcher Ben Shapiro. First year coach Jason Ryback is excited about working with such a young group as they prepare for the future.

Four Harker teams have earned recognition as the Central Coast Section (CCS) 2004 Winter Scholastic Championship Team winners. This award recognizes the CCS team with the highest grade point average (GPA) during the winter sports high school season. Congratulations to our outstanding Harker athletes and scholars: Girls’ Basketball 3.84 GPA; Boys’ Basketball 3.74 GPA; Boys’ Soccer 3.56 GPA; and Wrestling 3.65 GPA.

Softball began the season with a 21-4 thrashing of Mid Pen and barely missed knocking off St. Lawrence, losing a one run lead in the bottom of the 7th inning, a heartbreaking loss for coach Karen Caito’s squad.

Boys’ volleyball is off to an impressive 3-0 start, and coach Jason Reid is very excited about his team’s potential. Coming over from the hardwood, PSAL MVP basketball player and second team all league forward Adhir Ravipati

Golf is currently 2-0 with early season victories. Coach Z is confident that his squad will compete with the top teams in the league. Cooper Sivara and Jon Jenq have turned in their basketball sneakers for golf spikes to help lead the team thus far.

has added depth to the Eagle squad, led by senior setter Michael Leonard and senior outside hitter Vincent “hops” Yen.

Lee Trotter-all sports photos

continued from pg. 11

Track and Field has had one meet so far as they look to compete in the WBAL (girls) and the PSAL (boys). The team is working hard to continually improve their times and marks, and with a strong coaching staff assisting her, head coach Vonda Reid is confident many members will reach personal bests in their events this year. If you have never seen a track meet, come on out and cheer on the Eagles - they are exciting to watch! See you at the ballpark! —Jack Bither, US Athletic Director Harker News — April 04

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Middle School

Middle School/Upper School

■ Students in the Gr. 7 and 8 elective computer course focus on video and animation creation and editing. Teacher Michael Schmidt reported that this quarter students created numerous projects, including a music video and a 30-second commercial in which the student was the star. “Acting skills

■ Science and Technology Fair A number of Harker MS and US students joined over 50 other schools recently to participate in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Fair held at the San Jose Convention Center. Among the student projects on display were the following Harker projects:

2. were not necessary, but each student was required to get in front of the camera and also control all the aspects from behind the camera,” said Schmidt. Using traditional and digital special effects, students appeared to fly, lift heavy objects or drive a car. “They’re also exposed to the real world of video creation and editing when they find that the average 30-second commercial has eighteen cuts,” added Schmidt. 1. Jennifer Scharre and Rachel Yuan are working together with the digital camera. They’re becoming familiar with the various functions and features and getting used to being on camera. 2. Scott Liao is extremely focused on his Adobe Premiere project and only had time to look for a moment before going back to his video editing. 3. Randy Chang is also becoming familiar with the digital camera, but it’s clear that he’s just as skilled in front of the camera as he is behind the camera.

Lee Trotter

MS students recently learned about environmental awareness, animal behavior and achieving personal goals from trainer Lorraine Temple who presented an assembly called “Dog Mushing in Alaska!” Temple brought along two of her dogs that trained for the Iditarod Race and a slide show about her life in Alaska training the dogs.

■ MS Students Go Above and Beyond MS students do good things around campus all the time, and the MS Above and Beyond program gives teachers an opportunity to recognize some of these good works. Teachers can drop the names of students they see going “above and beyond” to help others into a box each week, and then names are drawn and students are acknowledged weekly in the announcements. The following students recently had their names selected for prizes: Robert Oh - helped 7th and 8th graders to study Japanese during extra help; Daniel Nguyen - ran an errand for a teacher; Joseph Pei volunteered to help a teacher after school organize homework for students who had missed class; Steven Tran - helped a teacher find the owner of a cell phone; Spencer Lin - assisted a teacher with campus errands; Taylor Martin - helped the librarians set up a bulletin board. We commend all of our students who take the time to help others in the Harker community!

MS Spring Musical – May 14 and 15 MS students are busy rehearsing for the spring musical, “School House Rock,” with performances on May 14 and 15. Watch the May editions for more information about this show.

Harker News — April 04

MS students, individual projects (Lorna Claerbout’s classes): Anik Debnath – The Effects of a Solar Storm on the Magnetosphere (Earth/Space Sciences); Spencer Lin – A Comparison of the Effect of the Wavelength of Light on the Rate of Photosynthesis in Shade and Sun Plants (Botany); Alexander Underwood –The Effect of Solutes on Boiling Water (Chemistry). US Bio-Research Club, group projects, all in the category of Biochemistry/ Microbiology: Structural Analysis of GFP and BFP – Pranab Barman, Deepa Mathew and Joshua Zloof; Screening and Detection of Genetically Modified Organisms in Food - Anita Gupta and Jessica Liu; Comparing the Mitochondrial DNA Sequences of Different Ethnicities at the Harker School – Jessica Wu and Justin Wu. The following US students also entered individual projects: Effect of Antioxidants on Tumefacien-induced Tumors (Botany) - Andrew Lee; Vortex Turbine (Engineering) - Siddarth Satish; Solving the Mysteries of Solubility (Chemistry) - Anton Sepetov. These US students entered individual projects and a paper: The Inhibition of Cyclooxygenase 1 Through Anti mRNA Sensing (Biochemistry/Microbiology and Biological Research) - Neha Bajwa; A Computer Simulated Study of the Effects of Mate Selection on Population Stability in Genetic Algorithms (Computers/Mathematics and Physical Research) - Aleksandr Segal; Calaveras Fault Trend vs. Radon Concentration Values (Earth/Space Sciences and Physical Research) - Vijay Swamy. Watch the next newsletter for details of this event which was being held at press time.

Upper School

Quiz Bowl Team Buzzes to Championship Harker’s Quiz Bowl team soundly defeated Mountain View High School in a 330 – 170 match on Sat., Mar. 20, and they are now heading into the final championship match for a chance for the team to win an all-expenses paid trip to London. The “Bay Area Quiz Kids” show, which is taped in the studios of Peninsula TV in San Carlos and airs on KRON TV, pits Bay Area schools against each other in Jeopardy-like matches with questions on a variety of topics. This is Harker’s first year to participate. “There were some tense moments early on, but once again, our students really came through,” said Bradley Stoll, US math teacher and the team’s advisor. Congratulations to Yi Sun, Mason Liang and Vivek Bansal for the recent win, and good luck to the entire team, which also includes Lev Pisarsky, as they head into the championship – and final match – on Sat., March 27 at 1:45 p.m. against either Menlo or Half Moon Bay. Pam Dickinson

Michael Schmidt

Stoll said that the quick thinking team members and enthusiastic support of the fans all contribute to the continuing success of the team. Watch for championship results in the next edition!

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San Jose. Students prepared opening statements, closing arguments, witness questions and constitutional arguments intended to exclude evidence. “Over several months the students learned the basics of what attorneys do every day, mastering complicated rules of evidence such as the hearsay rule, successfully withstanding menacing cross examinations, and structuring complicated legal arguments on the spur of the moment,” said Jennifer Field, faculty advisor. “At the competition the attorney judges indicated that our students were more prepared than many real life attorneys they see in court,” added Fields. Our prosecution team included Pranab Barman, Arjun Naskar, Nilay Gandhi, Meghana Dhar, Shruthi Bhuma, Colleen Lee, Sean Turner, Rupan Bose and Urvashe Sameer. The defense team included Payom Pirahesh, Amira Valliani, Amulya Mandava, Mina Lee, Saloni Mathur, Shilpa Vadodaria, Nandini Datta, Stephanie Tung and Swathi Bhuma. ■ Novice Debate Championships: Harker debate coach Matt Brandstetter reported that students braved the cold temperatures of Iowa in mid-March to participate in the 10th Annual Novice Debate Championships at Iowa City West High School. Twenty-nine schools attended the tournament, and Brandstetter said Harker distinguished itself by advancing more teams to the elimination rounds than any other school. He added that Harker achieved 2nd and 3rd place finishes, missing 1st place by only one ballot in a very close decision to the Meadows School from Las Vegas, Nevada. TEAM RESULTS: Novice Champion Runners-Up - Tatsu Hashimoto & Nicholas Tan; Third Place - Jessica Lee & Swapanthi Nagulpally; Octafinalists - Arkajit Dey & Mina Lee. SPEAKER AWARDS: Ninth Place - Nicholas Tan; Tenth Place - Daniel Paik; Eleventh Place - Swapanthi Nagulpally. “This was the best showing ever for Harker at the Iowa City Championships,” said Brandstetter. Congratulations to the students for their hard earned victory. ■ Awards Ceremony: The 6th Annual Harker Speech and Debate Society Awards Ceremony will be held on Mon., April 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the Saratoga Gym to celebrate the society's many achievements this year. Students should dress in tournament attire. R.S.V.P. to Donna Brandstetter at kittyfeet@sbcglobal.net.

Lee Trotter

Donna Brandstetter-all debate photos

■ Mock Trial: On March 18 US students playing the parts of attorneys and witnesses in a credit card fraud case participated in the annual Santa Clara County Mock Trial Competition held at the Superiour Court in

theme, DIS-respect. Students representing the following Harker groups attended the conference: Multicultural - Janine Carpenter, Sumedha Singh, Anshuman Gupta and Andrew Tran; GSA - Genna Erlikhman, Ashley Morishige and Kamilla Khaydarov; Student Council - Danyal Kothari, Adnan Haque and Amit Mukherjee. By the end of the day, Harker participants were ready to lead their schools in taking the DIS out of RESPECT. “I learned that the biggest obstacle to ending disrespect is that people’s kind words don’t necessarily mean they are respectful of others. Respect is a mindset, and respectful words should have respectful thoughts behind them,” said Ashley Morishige, Gr. 9. The students seemed to agree that, in addition to addressing the important issue of respect, they had a great time. “DYF was a blast!” said Amit Mukergee, Gr. 10. “The discussions were enlightening. They broadened my horizons on how to truly respect others, and I made a lot of new friends at schools around my area!” Janine Carpenter, Gr. 11, agreed: “I had so much fun meeting teenagers from around the Bay Area and hearing their opinions about diversity, respect and political correctness. At first I felt a little shy, but as soon as we broke into smaller groups, I felt comfortable voicing my opinions.”

■ Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) Conference Sixteen students represented Harker in various business-related events at the annual Future Business Leaders of America’s (FBLA) Bay Area Leadership Conference in March. Faculty advisor Danae Romrel noted that there were “lots of outstanding performances,” and Harker’s FBLA club president Lekha Challa was particularly impacted by this year’s conference. “As my last section conference, it was very nostalgic. It just reminded me of where I started from and how far along I have come now. I genuinely wanted new members to experience the feel of a real conference complete with workshops, keynote speakers and, of course, competitions. At the end, it was members from Harker who gained valuable insight into business - and

Lekha Challa

■ Annual Diversity Youth Forum Ten US students represented Harker at the 6th annual Diversity Youth Forum, an event whose goal is for each participant to leave with a better appreciation and awareness of the many diverse and unique cultures found here in the Bay Area. Presented by the Chamber of Commerce Mountain View and hosted by Alza Corporation, the event was attended by over 100 students from various Bay Area schools to discuss this year’s

Debate Victories In Many Arenas

winning some awards! - that made my role of leading them a truly fulfilling one.” Congratulations to the following Harker students for their participation and recognition: Future

Lekha Challa

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Business Leader Award: 2nd place Sanby Lee; 3rd place - Lekha Challa. Entrepreneurship, 4th place - Michael Tang, Manu Srivastava and Sridhar Chadalavada; Public Speaking II, 6th place - Linda Mohammadian; Public Speaking 1, 7th place - Mina Lee; Economics, Harker News — April 04

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Makado Onakado

students studying Japanese. Students compete as teams and are asked questions regarding Japanese culture, grammar, writing systems, proverbs and onomatopoeic expressions. “This is the first year for all current Japanese students to participate in this event,” said Masako Onakado, Japanese teacher. Congratulations to all our participants and to the following students earning placements: Level 2: 3rd Place Eric Tzeng, Catherine Ho and Christine Hsueh; Level 3: 2nd place - Rubina Chuang, Tiffany Juliana Lin and Aneesha Nilakantan.

Masako Onakado

■ Hakone Gardens Richard Hartzell, US division head, and Diane Bick, US counselor, joined Japanese 2 students on a

Harker News — April 04

field trip to Hakone Gardens in Saratoga to experience a Japanese tea ceremony. The group ate their Japanese lunchbox at a picnic site and took a walk in the gardens before learning the history of the tea ceremony from the tea master. The group then experienced the ceremony sitting on the tatami floor (traditional Japanese floor with straw mat) in a Japanese tearoom. “I was very impressed that all students sat on the floor in a formal way and most of them kept the sitting position throughout the ceremony which was about 30-40 minutes,” said Masako Onakado, Japanese teacher! ■ St. Bonaventure Programming Competition Four seniors, Ozan Demirlioglu, Matt Jones, Akash Shah and Peter Combs, traveled to St. Bonaventure University (about 75 miles south of Buffalo, New York) in Feb. to compete in the St. Bonaventure Programming Competition, along with 33 teams from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and California. In this event each team has only one computer to work on and has only one chance to submit a correct solution to eight difficult programming problems in just three hours. “Attending this event for the first time, the Harker team did quite well, taking fourth place and missing first place by only an equals sign,” said Robb Cutler, faculty advisor and computer science teacher, adding that without the transcribing error of the equals sign, the Harker team would have tied for first place. He also noted that Harker had the

Lee Trotter

■ Japan Bowl Competition Students currently enrolled in Japanese 2 and 3 participated in the 2004 Northern California Regional Japan Bowl held in San Jose in March, a competition that tests the ability of high school

Human Genome Project Field Trip

Masako Onakado

8th place - Jeffrey Shih; Business Calculations, 9th place - Alfred See. Additionally, Mina Lee was elected to the office of Bay Section Public Relations Officer. Other Harker students participating in the events were Ankoor Shah, Samantha Jagannathan, Audrey Leung, Tiffany Lau, Priya Takiar, Mariam Rangwala and Stephanie Tung.

US students enrolled in the Human Genome Project (HGP) course recently had the rare opportunity to visit UCSC and listen to scientists directly involved in the conception and realization of the HGP. “The students learned the value of being engaged in research, even at an early stage in science education, and the importance of striving to look for answers to questions that are yet to be found in textbooks,” said Maria Diaz, the Harker biology teacher who arranged the trip. She added that the scientists who gave talks were very generous about sharing ideas. “I’m sure the students sensed their enthusiasm over the work, as well.” Some of the students who attended said the microarray robots were the “coolest” part of the tour.

satisfaction of being one of only two teams able to solve the hardest problem in the competition. Congratulations to these students on their achievement! ■ Junior State America Conference Harker’s Junior State America (JSA) members traveled to Sacramento in February for the winter JSA conference, Congress 2004. The keynote and closing speaker theme for this year’s event, which is a student-run model congressional session with about 56 schools represented and over 550 students, was the timely topic of gay marriage. Sophomores Amira Valliani and Tara Chandra both sponsored a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act in the House and Senate respectively and were successful in passing their bill. “The conference was an exciting peek into the world of our nation’s government,” said Valliani. “I only hope that in a few years, I’ll be able to participate in the real thing.” Harker’s JSA attendees were Senator & Vice Committee Chair - Natasha Sarin; Senators Tara Chandra, Sheena Tomar and Shilpa Vadodaria; Representative Student Delegation Leader - Anshu Das; Representatives - Shilpika Lahri, Jaya Pareek, Danyal Kothari,

Sahil Patel, Aalok Patel, Jason Gutstein and Amira Valliani. Faculty advisor Daniel Hudkins, US director of instructional technology, along with Mai Nguyen, US history teacher, chaperoned the student group during this President’s Week event. ■ Harker Students Perform Well at Annual Music Festival Congratulations to the 37 Harker music students who participated in the Area V California Music Educator Association’s (CMEA) Solo and Ensemble Festival held at San Jose State University in March. Harker had 25 different vocal and instrumental entries and earned 16 superior ratings. Nine of the entrants earned the second highest rating of excellent and the following six performances achieved the ultimate distinction of being invited to give command performances in the Recital Hall of the SJSU Music Building: Jessica and Justin Wu (Gr. 11) - Violin and Piano (Meditation from Thais by Jules Massenet); Sonya (Gr. 6) and Patricia Huang (Gr. 3), Vivian Huang (Gr. 6) and Shannon Tan (Gr. 9) - Baroque Trio Sonata (Rondeau by Jean Joseph Mouret); Audrey Kwong (Gr. 9) continued on pg. 16

“As I look back at the wonderful work of these students, I’m particularly struck by the rather young age of the contestants and the sophistication of the repertoire,” said music teacher Richard Frazier. Harker participants were coached by US music teachers Catherine Snider, Susan Nace and Richard Frazier. Congratulations to all student participants and to those who teach, coach and guide these fine performers!

■ US Spring Musical – May 14 to 17 (see date details on pg. 2) Rehearsals are underway for the US per forming arts’ spring show, “Damn Yankees,” which has over 45 students involved in the production. Many thanks to all those who auditioned for the show, and congratulations to the following students selected to perform in the play: Katie Ball, Neil Bhalerao, Naeha Bhambhra, Debanshi Bheda, Casey Blair, Steven Boyle, Kevin Busch, Tara Chandra, Estelle Charlu, Peter Combs, LeAnn Duong, Genna Erlickman, Whitney Graves, Erika Gudmundson, Jason Gutstein, Michael Hammersley, Lauren Harries, Julia Havard, Emma Hawley, Tommy Holford, Daphne Karpel, Jackie Laine, David

Nick Gassman

■ Enterprise Leadership Several US students attended the Rotary Club’s Enterprise Leadership Conference held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove (Reported in the Mar. 04 newsletter). “Enterprise Leadership Conference was one of those experiences that really helped me see that everything in life, from starting a business to being the CEO of a huge corporation, involves relationships, contacts and determination if it’s going to succeed. It was truly one of the most exciting experiences I have ever had, and I’m glad Harker provided me with such an inspirational opportunity to attend,” said Sheena Tomar, Gr. 11. Students were put in groups of 10 with other students from various schools to create, market and sell a product. Greg Perkin’s team was judged the winning team, based on their product concept, development and presentation. Perkins and his teammates reprised their presentation of TravelMate, the first product proposed by their company,

■ US English teacher Marc Hufnagl reported that sophomore Tara Chandra was recently awarded a Gold Key Award in the 2004 Scholastic Writing Awards, and her piece, “Autonomy,” has been advanced to the national level of competition. Chandra’s entry was one of only 271 manuscripts selected from

TravelTek, for the Rotary Club on Mar. 17 where Mayor Ron Gonzales finished his State of the City speech that was interrupted in January when he had a stoke. “Mayor Gonzales even addressed us during his speech, which followed our presentation,” said Perkins “As part of his talk focused on education in San Jose, he gave a nod to our group, telling us he hoped our company would be well established by 2006, since his term would be up then and we might need a government relations specialist. He said his resume is on the way,” Perkins added with a laugh.

Linder, Simon Linder, Anjali Menon, Ravi Mishra, Gail Nakano, Andrew Nasser, Casey Near, Molly Newman, Rachel Newman, Peter Obara, Tommy Polzin, Vani Pyda, Ivo Salemink, Natasha Sarin, Lisa Schwebke, Aseem Shukla, Sasha Stepanenko, Siobhan Stevenson, John Tepperman, Vyvy Trinh, Aditi Uttawar, Sean Weinstock, Roberta Wolfson and Kimmy Wong.

Nick Gassman

Violin Solo (Symphonie Espagnole by Edouard Lalo); Joseph Chen (Gr. 9), Glen Lee (Gr. 9), Tracy Chou (Gr. 9) and Justin Wu (Gr. 11) Baroque Trio Sonata (Sonata No. 4 in A Minor by Arcangelo Corelli); Joseph Chen (Gr. 9), Glen Lee (Gr. 9), Jessica Wu (Gr. 11), Nikhil Raghuram (Gr. 7) and Connie Tung (Gr. 9) - Baroque Three Part Canon with Ground Bass (Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel); Nikhil Deshmukh (Gr. 12) - Double Bass Solo (The Elephant from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens).

more than 5,000 submitted to the judging panel, which consisted of graduate students and professors from the University of Iowa, the University of Alabama and Western Missouri State College, as well as New York City writers, editors and educators. Our congratulations, Tara!

On Mar. 18, 19 and 20 Harker Robotics traveled to Sacramento to compete in the Sacramento Robotics Regional, part of the nationwide FIRST Robotics competition. Despite intense opposition from over 30 other teams, the second-year Harker team and their robot, PHORCE, more than held their own, winning six games, losing three, and tying one. By the end of Saturday, the Robotics team made it all the way to the semifinals, eventually tying for 3rd place - congratulations to all!

Gerry Andeen

continued from pg. 15

saratoga

JETS Varsity and JV Place First in Annual Competition Harker’s varsity and JV Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) teams each took first place among the Bay Area teams in the annual Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition held in February at Stanford.

Judy James - both photos

AROUND

“Our winning varsity team consisted entirely of members who have participated in previous years, winning national awards last year,” explained JETS advisor and math teacher Judy James. “Our winning JV team was an allnew team in training - so we thought - and an all freshman team, and they outscored other teams consisting of freshman through juniors.” James explained that scoring at the local level is based only on the multiple-choice portion of the test. High scores, like Harker’s, qualify the teams for national consideration where their free response answers are evaluated and teams are rated nationally. Those ratings usually are announced in late spring. Congratulations to our Harker teams for their accomplishment! Varsity: Alan Malek (captain), Jerry Hong, Sanby Lee, Pia Pal, Greg Perkins, Alex Segal, Joel Wright and Justin Wu. Junior Varsity: Aline Zorian (captain), Justin Chin, Danyal Kothari, Richard Kwant, Jessie Li, Tiffany June Lin, Daniel Paik and Jaqueline Rousseau.

Harker News — April 04

AROUND

saratoga

US Community Service News —Reported by Jaja Hsuan, US Community Service Advisor ■ In February, US students visited Lytton Gardens Senior Communities to make a Valentine door hanger art project with the residents and help the seniors exercise their visual, verbal and

collected tickets. Nadine Malcolm, president of the orchestra board, was very thankful to have such a wonder ful group of volunteers contributing to the creation of this magical evening. “I want to thank all of you wonderful volunteers who…made things work at our soldout concert - it was an exceptional pleasure to work with all of you!” ■ The Key Club thanks all Harker friends and families for supporting their Dine Out Day at Chevy’s fundraiser last month. The turnout was much larger than expected.

Jaja Hsuan - all Community Service photos

■ Harker students Shruthi Bhuma, Swathi Bhuma, Emily Hsi, Jasper Shau, Shannon Tan, Ashley Yang and Aline Zorian helped create a special evening for couples and families on Valentine’s Day by volunteering at Le Petit Trianon for the Mission Chamber Orchestra’s Latin Romance concert. They welcomed guests, handed out brochures and

being judged. Many of the teams had funny names, like ‘green transportation’ or ‘funky monkeys.’ The kids were so energetic! And you could tell that they really benefited from a positive atmosphere because they had to learn to cooperate as a team.” ■ During the first two weeks of March, US students participated in a “penny war” for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), raising a total of $2,389. In addition, a poster

Harker News — April 04

continued on pg. 18

club club of of the the month month New Harker Red Cross Club —Reported by Catherine Ho, Gr. 10

Lee Trotter

tactile senses. The seniors were also eager to compete for prizes and played several rounds of BINGO. As always, the residents especially enjoyed sharing stories with our students.

■ Many thanks to the following students who assisted at the annual Destination Imagination Regional Tournament: Alice Chi, Kristie Cu, Nilay Gandhi, Jason Han, Teddy Lee, Natasha Sarin, Jayasree Sundaram, Amira Valliani and Jennifer Whang. These students did a terrific job photographing the event, transmitting score sheets and verifying data. Junior Alice Chi enjoyed her experience as a volunteer. “I helped by carrying the scores back and forth from the scoring office to the rooms where the events were

created to honor our friends and family who have been touched by cancer is currently on display in the main hall on the service board. All

proceeds will be donated to the Society for Cancer Research and patient service programs. Congratulations to the Red Cross Club for organizing a successful fundraiser! And thank you to the Student Council for spreading the word. Erin Erickson, school and youth coordinator of LLS said, “The average school donation

The Harker Red Cross Club (HRCC), one of the newest additions to the Harker community, has been steadily expanding its horizons. Initiated at the beginning of the school year, the HRCC strives to respond to the community’s needs through service, education and leadership. For the past six months, this ambitious club has launched a series of activities and fundraisers dedicated to community outreach both in and out of the Harker community. One of the first actions the HRCC took was to invite all club members and officers to get certified for CPR for free at an event called CPR Saturday. Following this event, certified members were encouraged to attend a Safekids Instructor Training session, where they could get certified to teach children about first aid. During this time, the HRCC enlisted in a couple joint fundraisers with volunteers from Red Cross clubs all over Santa Clara. Yearning for a taste of independence, the HRCC embarked on its own fundraisers. Club members dedicated a lot of precious time baking on weeknights and selling after school to make the first fundraiser, the Bake Sale, a successful one. Reviving an old Harker tradition, the HRCC hosted its second and most recent fundraiser: Pennies for Patients. In this activity, classes competed to raise the most amount of money in pennies for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. US teacher Robb Cutler related his personal experience with leukemia at the kickoff of this event; his son Ethan has finished treatment for leukemia and is now a happy first-grader at the Bucknall campus. (Editor’s Note: see related story this page). This year, the HRCC has been primarily focusing on training all its members in Safekids. The club hopes to implement these skills next year by starting up Harker’s own Safekids program at the Bucknall campus where certified members of the club will teach students simple first aid, CPR, and disaster preparation skills.

STUDENT ■ In October, the HEART Club completed a San Jose Beautiful project by planting over 200 daffodil bulbs on the Saratoga campus. Spring is near and the flowers are here! The daffodils have added a beautiful color to the front gate parking lot and the outskirts of the library.

Juniors Explore Careers in Mentor Program —Joey Tyndall, Asst. to Exec. Dir. of Advancement and Mentor Program Coordinator Each year Harker’s US mentoring program provides an opportunity for juniors to learn firsthand from professionals in a wide variety of fields about possible careers and areas of study. This mentoring year

■ Twenty students volunteered for a day at RAFT (Resource Area For Teachers) in March, dedicating their

Gale/Mary Malysz and Suchitra Narayen sat in on an actual courtroom hearing. Arjun Naskar, Gr. 11, had this to say about his group’s outing to Agilent: “I loved our mentoring outing - it was the tour and all the information that made me realize that biotech is my

morning to sorting donated surplus material for educational use. They also had a chance to see how recycled materials are used for building learning kits. Volunteer director Mimi Cavanaugh said she was extremely impressed by how well - and how quickly - the students completed their tasks. ■ US students contributed their time once again to set up and proctor both the team and individual competitions at the annual K-6 Harker Math Invitational. Thank you to the following hardworking volunteers: Robert Cheng, Colleen Lee, Christopher Liang, Jasper Shau, Jayasaree Sundaram, Pamela Williams and Lung-Hao Yu.

Community Service Deadline – April 30 Reminder - all US community service hours must be completed by April 30. A total of 10 hours is required each year for all freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Students interested in learning about upcoming schoolsponsored service trips should visit http://faculty.harker.org/ JajaH/ or sign up with Ms. Hsuan as soon as possible. Space is limited for each trip.

has been an exciting one, and the mentors did an excellent job of not only showing the students their particular career field, but also making it fun! Doug and Linda Emery took their mentor group on visits to the Sharks’ Training Room and the Raiders’ Training Camp. “My mentoring sessions with the Emerys were really interesting and fun,” said Estelle Charlu, Gr. 11. “We were able to see the Sharks’ training room and Bay Sport’s facilities and gained invaluable knowledge about sports medicine in general. Thank you to the Emerys for making it all possible.” Peter and Diane Hurd took their Fashion/ Interior Design group on a unique half-day tour of Nordstrom. Sandy Davis’ group had the opportunity to visit NASA, Charles Perkins took his group to Nokia for the day, Rapson once again took his group of future architects to Berkeley for an all-day tour and the groups of both Peggy

you made for our students: Rajiv Ahuja - physician, Robert Bigler Animatics Corporation, Ajay Chopra Pinnacle Systems, Steve Darrow Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Sandy Davis - NASA Ames, Stan Dutrow - Sun Microsystems, Doug & Linda Emery - Bay Sport, Peggy Gale Law Office of Peggy Gale, Bruce Goeas - Air Force, Eric Gonzales Doll Capital Management, David Heslop - Preston Pipelines, Diane

“I loved our mentoring outing - it was the tour and all the information that made me realize that biotech is my future.”—Arjun Naskar future. Even though I didn’t know the specifics about the industry, Mr. Saunders reassured me that biotech was broad enough so that I can find my passion at any level.”

Hurd - West Valley College, Peter Hurd - Hurd Design, Raj Lad Genencor, James Lau - Network Appliance, Michael Malone FORBES Magazine, Mary Malysz McPharlin, Sprinkles & Thomas, LLP, Suchitra Narayen - Sun Microsystems, Charles Perkins Nokia, Rodney Rapson - City of San Jose, Gordon Ringold - Surromed, Krishna Saraswat - Stanford Univerisity, Barney Saunders Agilent Technologies, Dharshi Sivakumar - Stanford University Healthcare, Alexandra Swafford self-employed.

Peter Hurd, parent (and mentor!)

is $1,000, so the fact that you raised over $2,000 is amazing!”

Lee Trotter - both photos

continued from pg. 17

programs

On behalf of the students and the school, we warmly thank this year’s mentors for all the special arrangements Harker News — April 04

BEHIND

the scenes

Transportation and Security Keep Us Safe and On the Move! —Julia Gitis, ’03 (current freshman at UC Berkeley)

all Harker vehicles are properly licensed and insured and stays in close touch with faculty and staff to answer questions and help with scheduling. In addition to numerous field trips, including a recent second grade trip to Hidden Villa, every afternoon there are MS and US sporting event trips, especially in the spring with softball, baseball and track.

To most of us, Harker is the turf of pens, pencils and notebooks. It’s a

While the wheels of the buses go ‘round, those who stay on campus can feel safe while partaking in the many activities Harker has to offer. We owe this sense of security to you guessed it - the security staff! This group features five splendid security officers: veteran Larry Washington who’s been here since 1996; Eric Chemlis and J.D. Costa who have each been here since 1998; Tim Cantrell, since 2000; and Kevin Terakawa, since 2002.

place for teaching and a place for learning. Yet there is a realm behind the scenes that features traffic control, alarm maintenance and inter-campus shuttles. Who rules this paramount domain? The valiant troops of the Transportation / Security Department!

STAFF

security has been key.” Keefer, whose office is across the Dobbins field next to the weight room, shares one anecdote from his job: “I was working one day in the little gate house at the front of the Saratoga campus. A family van pulled up, the driver held out a hundred dollar bill and told me he wanted four tickets to Great America. I told him he missed it by a few miles,” Keefer chuckled. A big thank-you goes to Keefer and his valuable staff members who keep us safe, sound and mobile all year long!

update

Recent professional workshops, courses, conferences and classroom-related outside activities and achievements of some of our faculty and staff.

Lee Trotter

Photos by Mark Tantrum and Lee Trotter

Leading these valorous efforts is Transportation/Security Manager Bob Keefer, who arrives on the Saratoga campus at 6:30 every morning to deactivate alarms, greet parents and help with traffic. Keefer is in charge of scheduling

This group, under the leadership of Keefer who has been at Harker since 1996, is responsible for chief security affairs and operating alarm systems on both campuses. The security officers also meet the hefty challenge of dealing with traffic during morning drop-offs, afternoon pickups and extracurricular activities, and Keefer said he’s witnessed drastic changes over the years. “With the student population more than doubling and the addition of the upper school, transporting students between campuses and augmenting off-site

■ MS Math teacher Leah Moll was recently named one of only 52 teachers nationwide who received the Edyth May Sliffe Award for Distinguished High School Mathematics Teaching. The award, administered by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), recognizes the excellence of teachers responsible for the success of the highest scoring teams in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC 12) in the United States and Canada. Moll is the fourth Harker teacher to receive this honor. Previous winners have been MS teachers Vandana Kadam (2001) and Cindy Kerr (2000) and US teacher Misael Fisico (2003). This national award, established in 1994, is made possible annually by a bequest from Edyth May Sliffe, a high school mathematics teacher from Emeryville, California. ■ Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement for The Harker School, was recently appointed vice president of programs for the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Federation of Philanthropy (AFP). “We are so pleased to have Joe’s leadership,” said Barbara Larson, local AFP president. “He’ll be a great addition to our volunteer board.” Rosenthal will be responsible for all aspects of the chapter’s monthly membership meetings for philanthropy and fundraising professionals.

all transportation, including shuttles from campus to campus, field trips and sporting events. Steering the transportation area are one part-time driver and three full-time drivers; veteran Heather Perrotta here since 1996; Dan Hughes since 2000; Tony Rendon since 2002 and Jesse Gomez, hired in 2001. Harker has four buses, one of which functions as the campus shuttle and makes rounds every 30 minutes. In addition to serving the usual transit needs, transportation makes sure Harker News — April 04

■ Three Harker teachers were honored in March at San Jose’s Cinequest, one of the world’s top ten film festivals, during two showings of the short film “Springtime Dreams,” a new work produced in the style of Charlie Chaplin’s silent films. It featured Monica MacKinnon, MS performing arts teacher as Edna Purveyance, Chaplin’s bride-tobe; Marcie Gilbert, Gr. 4 Language Arts teacher as an extra; and period costumes all designed by Sarah Lougheed, K-8 performing arts teacher, who also assisted with makeup and appeared as an extra. As an associate producer, Lougheed also helped out with many logistical details for the film shoot last year. Lougheed’s son Robert Lougheed-Lowe, Gr. 9, also played a small part. Lougheed said the post-production editing transformed the film into a look-alike of Chaplin’s early films. “The producers of this film have shown it to Hollywood dealmakers who were astonished to find out that the film was shot with contemporary actors,” said Lougheed. ■ Also, Lougheed and MacKinnon both attended the American Choral Directors’ Association convention recently in Las Vegas, where they attended a variety of sessions including Master Conducting, Changing Boys’ Voices, Warm-up Techniques and reading sessions where they were introduced to a variety of music literature to use with Harker students at all grade levels. ■ Performing arts teacher Michael Pease will be playing one of the lead roles in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta “Patience” with the Stanford University Savoyards, showing weekends between April 23 and May 2. He hopes to see some Harker families there to enjoy this witty show. More information is available on the Savoyard’s Web site at http://www.stanford.edu/group/savoyards.

bulletin

board

Downbeat Fundraiser

May 17 – Salute to Senior Moms!

Purchase a $10 ticket from Downbeat to Macy’s Community Shopping Day, Thurs., April 8, and receive exclusive shopping discounts of 10-20% on most merchandise at Macy’s. One hundred percent of the ticket sale proceeds will help fund Downbeat’s trip to per form at Disneyworld in June. To purchase a ticket, contact tickets@harker.org or e-mail laural@harker.org.

Join the annual Spring Luncheon for a salute to all senior moms on May 17, 11:30 a.m. on the Edge Patio. Senior moms will be treated to a special potluck lunch, with all food prepared by the 9th, 10th and 11th grade parents. Put the date on your calendar now and join in on the fun as we salute our senior moms! Contact Eva Hsu at 408.497.2882 or eva@reeltales.com, or contact Joan Brooks at 408.867.4264 or brooksjkb@aol.com.

Great Gifts Available!

NEW – Harker Tennis for Grownups! New tennis program for Harker teachers, parents and staff! Why do the kids get to have all the fun? Craig Pasqua, Harker head tennis coach and director of the Oakwood / Harker Tennis Program (and a USPTA certified Professional), recently signed the tennis center up to participate in a national tennis outreach program to teach new players the skills they need to get them playing tennis fast. That means you! For only $30 per 4-week session you can finally learn to play! Here are the details: Beginning Adult Tennis Classes: Session I – Tuesdays: 3/30, 4/6, 4/13, 4/20, 6-7 p.m. Session II – Tuesdays: 4/27, 5/4, 5/11, 5/18, 6-7 p.m. Cost for each 4-week session: Only $30, and you can even borrow a racket!

The Speech and Debate Booster moms are still selling cookbooks and their fabulous custom ID tags! Contact the bookstore at bookstore@harker.org to order! They’ll make perfect Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation gifts – order today!

Hey, Parents! Win a Night at the Hotel Valencia! The Prom Committee is having a raffle drawing to help cover Prom costs - and it could mean a night at the Hotel Valencia for some lucky parent! For a $10 raffle ticket, you could win a two-night stay in a Junior Suite at the Hotel Valencia in Santana Row, which also includes dinner for two at their restaurant, Citrus. Total value is over $700! Show your support and buy tickets today! Contact Chris Daren, activities coordinator, at chrisda@harker.org to purchase tickets or get more information.

Harker Summer Programs

Intermediate / Advanced Adult Drop-In Clinics: Tuesdays (beginning 3/23): 7-8:30 p.m. Sundays (beginning 3/38): 10:30 a.m.-Noon Cost for each workout: $20 Players will participate in live ball drills, technical skill development drills and some competitive fun! Participants will also have the opportunity to stay and play after class. Contact Craig Pasqua, USPTA, at pasqua@best.com, 408.590.7347 or 408.983.5888. Go to www.tenniswelcomecenter.com for more information on this new outreach program.

The Harker News is published nine times per year by the Harker Office of Communications. Current and archived issues are also available on the Parent Home Page on the Harker Web site at www.harker.org. Editor: Pam Dickinson Asst. Editor: Terry Walsh Photography: Lee Trotter, Chris Daren, Talon & Winged Post staff, Nick Gassman

Design: Blue Heron Design Printing & Mailing: Communicart Mailing Coordinator: Bran-Dee Torres Contributors: Ashley Sukovez, Laura Vandendries

NEXT MONTH’S ISSUE ■ Speakers and student activities for Engineering Month ■ Photos and recaps of “Damn Yankees,” Cantilena / Guys’ Gig spring concert and full orchestra concert ■ Results and wrap-up from the Quiz Bowl championship being held at press time!

The Harker School is a K-12 independent, co-ed, college-prep school.

Grades K-6: 4600 Bucknall Rd., San Jose CA 95130 Phone 408.871.4600 • Fax 408.871.4320 Grades 7-12: 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose CA 95129 Phone 408.249.2510 • Fax 408.984.2325

The Harker School does not discriminate in the administration of its educational policies, athletics or other school-administered programs, or in the administration of its hiring and employment practices on the basis of age, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or nonjob-related handicap.

Harker News — April 04