Harker Magazine Summer 2017 by The Harker School

A PUBLICATION OF THE HARKER SCHOOL l SPRING/SUMMER 2017

M A G A Z I N E

MACHINE Upper school robotics team has its best-ever season

ART WITH HEART

VEGESNA GRANTS

HISTORY COMES ALIVE

M A G A Z I N E

SPRI NG/SU M M ER 2017 I V O LU ME 8, N U MB E R 2 Pam Dickinson Office of Communication Director William Cracraft Managing Editor Catherine Snider Production Editor

Mark Kocina Photographer Jennifer Maragoni Copy Editor Zach Jones Rebecca McCartney Staff Contributors Blue Heron Design Design Published two times a year, Harker Magazine showcases some of the top news, leading programs, inspiring people and visionary projects of the greater Harker community.

Have an idea? Contact us: news@harker.org 408.345.9273 Or write: Harker Magazine 500 Saratoga Ave. San Jose, CA 95129 Harker is a Bay Area Green Certified Business of Santa Clara County. As part of our many sustainability efforts, Harker Magazine is printed on 100% recycled paper.

On the cover: Upper school robotics team On this page: Max Nguyen, preschool On the back: Lucas Wang â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;17 during Spirit Week All photographs by Mark Kocina

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CONTENTS

Rise of the Machine: Robotics Team Results Reflect Years of Growth The upper school robotics team had its best season ever in 2017. Here’s a look at how the program developed.

Art With Heart From preschool through upper school, Harker’s visual arts program emphasizes the creative process, not just the final product.

Vegesna Grants Elevate Teaching Teachers use grants to bring new methods and technologies to their classrooms.

Making History Come Alive

8 50

Harker teachers use colorful and engaging methods to teach history.

Innovations with Technology, Part 1 Technology is woven into student lives in traditional computer science classes and many other ways.

20 32 38 50

Headlines: Head of School Chris Nikoloff tells graduates to “Sing in the Lifeboats.”

Top Stories: A summary of the most-read articles from Harker

News.

Gallery: Photo highlights from the past semester – athletic center, graduation, sports and performing arts.

18, 30, 46, 56

Face Time: Up close and personal with teachers and staff.

28,29,55

Impact: Alumni and students making a difference in the world.

16, 36

Passion: Two stories about alumni following their dreams.

48, 58

Staff Kudos: What’s happening in the professional lives of our

faculty and staff.

Class Notes: Alumni news.

Our History: Harker’s 125th anniversary approaches.

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headlines

WORDS BY CHRISTOPHER NIKOLOFF PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

Don’t Forget to Sing in the Lifeboats

2 0 1 7 G R A D UAT I O N A D D R E S S

about moving to Switzerland, I answer that its flag is a real big plus. Even though we are leaving Harker together, its values of lifelong learning, commitment to excellence, and service to others will not leave us. I know, however, that you will be upholding these values with a touch more spring in your step and no gray hair. Which brings me to the advice I want to share with you today. I have chosen one of my all-time favorite quotes as the cornerstone of my advice – a quote, I believe, that encapsulates everything you need to know about life. I hope I am not overselling it. If I am, you cannot have your money back – or maybe you can, since I am leaving. No, you cannot.

ood evening. I would like to welcome members of the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty, staff, parents, friends and family, alumni, and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2017. I have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell to our graduates each year. Like most graduation speeches, my talk takes the form of advice, like “Dare to Singletask” or “Love like a Labrador.” Because my talk is the only formality remaining between you and your diplomas, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-space, size-12 font. But, as always, I will make no promises about the size of my margins. I can tell you that they are indeed marginal. Today is a special graduation for me because we are in fact graduating together, although I am sure you are graduating with a higher GPA. After 18 years at Harker I will assume the role of headmaster of The American School in Switzerland this summer. When I am asked to name one positive thing 2

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The quote comes from the great 18th century Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. I will break it into two parts, the first half and the second half. The first half is as follows: “Life is a shipwreck …” I know, very inspiring. The original reads as follows: “La vie est un naufrage …” Please excuse my French. “Naufrage” literally means “ship breaking”; think “navigation” and “fracture” joined in one word. I prefer the English “shipwreck” – you know what you are facing with “shipwreck.” A “naufrage” sounds rather nice, like “massage.”“How much is the naufrage and does it involve warm stones?” When Voltaire says, “Life is a shipwreck,” despite his reputation for satire, I don’t believe he is being completely pessimistic. Think about it – life and shipwrecks have much in common. In both life and shipwrecks, you wind up in places you had not anticipated. For instance, how many of you knew you would be born? Both shipwrecks and life require us to improvise. By saying “Life is a shipwreck,” Voltaire is pointing out that all of us, to a large degree, find ourselves bobbing around on the ocean of life, governed by gale forces that are at best indifferent to our preferences and very much out of our control. Even though the first half of the quote is about what is out of our control, the second half is about what is within our control. Here is the full quote: “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” There you have it – my advice for you today: “Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

... instead of waiting for success from the outside, you can carry success on the inside. Singing in the lifeboats contributes to resilience ... I expected that to be more dramatic than it was. If the first half of the quote is not pure pessimism, the second half is not mindless pap either. I always wanted to use the word “pap” in a graduation speech. “Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats” means to find joy no matter where you are; to pay attention to those in the lifeboat next to you, even if their presence, like today, is alphabetically determined; to see that circumstances do not necessarily dictate your attitude about those circumstances. As you may be aware, Mr. Keller, our upper school head, places inspirational quotes at the end of his emails. I often look to see what quote he has placed there. In an uncanny coincidence, as if the universe were conspiring to send the Class of 2017 a common, powerful message, Mr. Keller’s latest quote on his email, after no coordination with me, is the following: “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” The parallelisms are uncanny – spooky even. Shipwrecks – singing; storms – dancing. “Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats” is also practical advice. We are not saying that success or any specific outcome is certain when you come from a place of joy and appreciation. We are saying that instead of waiting for success from the outside, you can carry success on the inside. Singing in the lifeboats contributes to resilience, an ability to turn lemons into lemonade, something Harker food service does every day. Remember, Voltaire doesn’t say “Sing in the lifeboats”; that would be too direct. He does not command us to sing, but instead he commands us not to forget to sing. His commanding us not to forget is important. Why? I believe that singing in the lifeboat is our natural state, like the joy children express, a joy we too easily forget. We all forget to sing in the lifeboats. You will forget from time to time. You may have already forgotten today. Given my talk, I would understand. To close, Marianne Williamson has famously written, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” To continue to mix metaphors, now is the time to remember your light, to remember to sing in the lifeboats. Like Troy and Gabriella sang in our own 2017 production of “High School Musical”: “We’re soarin’, flyin’/There’s not a star in heaven/That we can’t reach.” If you “Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats,” you will not only be a light unto yourself but a light unto the universe as well. Thank you and congratulations to you all.

The Harker School salutes Chris Nikoloff, who is leaving after 11 years as head of school to become headmaster at The American School in Switzerland. The community has said goodbye and good luck to Mr. Nikoloff in several ways the past few weeks, including Diana Nichols, board chair, presenting him with his own “graduation” diploma (see photo to left).

Additional photos by Mark Tantrum and Kyle Cavallaro. H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

Top Stories

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Recent stories reprinted from Harker News online. Harker News publishes stories online about our students and faculty, highlighting accomplishments and celebrating successes. This Top Stories feature reprints the most widely read Harker News stories since the last issue of Harker Magazine (December 2016). Visit news.harker.org to see full stories and hundreds more articles noting the truly remarkable efforts of our Harker students and faculty.

Junior researcher to present at medical informatics symposium in November

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Nov. 4, 2016 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-7VA Congratulations to Anooshree Sengupta, grade 11, who will present her research at the American Medical Informatics Association’s 40th annual symposium, to be held Nov. 12-16 in Chicago. Each year, AMIA selects just five individually researched high school student projects to present at the symposium. Sengupta, who conducted her research this past summer at the University of California, San Francisco, will attend the event with upper school computer science chair Eric Nelson.

............................................................... Nine Harker students named to All-State Honor Choir Dec. 1, 2016 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-7YI Nine Harker students were recently named members of the All-State High School Honor Choir by the California chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). Seniors Ashwin Rao and Tiffany Zhu, juniors Krishna Bheda and Millie Lin, sophomores Karli Sharp and Catherine Wang and freshmen Emily Chen, Joel Morel and Kalyan Narayanan will perform with the choir at San Jose’s Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph on Feb. 18.

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Update: Manan Shah earns second in individuals in 2016 Siemens Competition Dec. 6, 2016 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-7SX Manan Shah, grade 12, was awarded second place in the individual category at the national Siemens Competition award ceremony in Washington, D.C., this morning! His win brings a $50,000 scholarship. The ceremony was live-streamed from Washington. Anita Chetty, science department chair, noted, “We have not achieved this level in the individual category before. I join our entire K-12 team in celebrating this outstanding achievement for our school!”

............................................................... Harker places fifth nationwide in National Assessment & Testing math contest Jan. 3, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-82x Several Harker math students had strong scores in National

Assessment & Testing’s 2016 Fall Startup Event. Coached by upper school math teacher Anuradha Aiyer, the students worked to make Harker the fifth-highest placing school in the country. Freshmen Jeffrey Kwan and Rohan Cherukuri placed 13th and 20th, respectively, in the grade 9 division. In the grade 10 division, Katherine Tian placed 17th. Swapnil Garg took third placed in the grade 11 division, where Jimmy Lin placed 17th. Finally, in the grade 12 division, Misha Ivkov placed 14th.

............................................................... Amick drafted by pro soccer club Jan 17, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-83J Congratulations to Michael Amick ’13, who was selected in the second round (32nd overall) of the Major League Soccer draft by the Portland Timbers. Amick played college soccer at UCLA, where he was a three-time team captain, first team All-Pac 12 selection in his sophomore year, honorable mention All-Pac 12 selection in his junior and senior years, Pac 12 AllAcademic first team selection in his junior and senior years, and Pac 12 men’s soccer Scholar Athlete of the Year in his senior year.

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Bears at UC Berkeley and Mitchell will travel to the Midwest to play for the Nebraska Wesleyan University Prairie Wolves.

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Six Harker students named to All-State ensembles Jan. 23, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-846 Six Harker students were recently invited to perform with the California Band Directors Association’s 2017 All-State ensembles. Alexa Gross, grade 12, joined the High School Symphonic Band as a bassoonist. Kai-Ming Ang and Katie Chang, both grade 9, will perform with the High School Concert Band on French horn and percussion, respectively. Junior Amy Jin will play violin for the High School Full Orchestra.

country, and are among three of five finalists hailing from the Bay Area. This number also ties the Harker record of three finalists set in 2015. The students will be headed to Washington, D.C., in March for the final competition, where $1.8 million in prizes will be up for contention. During their visit, they will have the opportunity to meet with national leadership and present their work to the National Geographic Society.

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Eighth graders Anika Fuloria and Leland Rossi also successfully auditioned for junior high school ensembles. Fuloria, a string bassist, earned a spot on Junior High School Symphonic Band, while Rossi will play trumpet with the Junior High School Jazz Band.

............................................................... Three Harker students named STS finalists, most from any school in the country Jan. 25, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-82A Seniors Evani Radiya-Dixit, Arjun Subramaniam and Manan Shah were selected as three of the 40 national finalists in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly the Intel Science Talent Search), the Society for Science & the Public announced this morning. These three finalists represent the most from any school in the

Three seniors commit to play college soccer during National Signing Day Feb. 1, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-86i The first Wednesday of February is a day that many elite high school athletes look forward to their entire careers – and for three Harker seniors, that day has arrived! Today, on National Signing Day, Joelle Anderson, Kailee Gifford and Lyndsey Mitchell inked commitments to play college soccer. Anderson will play for the Pepperdine University Waves, Gifford will play for the Golden

Photo provided by Gary Blickenstaff

Science Bowl team headed to nationals after winning regional competition Feb. 14, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-88k On Feb. 11, Harker’s Science Bowl team won the regional competition held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator’s National Accelerator Laboratory. Senior Venkat Sankar and juniors Rajiv Movva, Shaya Zarkesh, Swapnil Garg and Derek Yen now move on to the national competition, to be held in Washington, D.C., April 27-May 1. Yen filled in for Arjun Subramaniam, grade 12, who could not compete due to a family obligation. Per the rules of the National Science Bowl, Yen will be part of the team that competes at nationals.

............................................................... Harker DECA dominates State Career Development Conference with record number of top 10 winners March 16, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8bd In early March more than 100 students from Harker’s DECA chapter traveled to the Santa Clara Marriott to compete in the 2017 State Career Development Conference (SCDC). This four-day H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

top stories head, Chris Nikoloff, who accepted a position as headmaster of The American School in Switzerland. Yager will start July 1.

Photo provided by Shania Wang, grade 10

Photo by Nash Melisso, grade 9

business conference featured competitions with tough opponents, skill-building workshops and unforgettable experiences. Harker proved its competitive excellence with 49 teams in the top 10 and 21 groups in the top four across various categories, qualifying for the International Career Development Conference.

regionals in which it competes. The team has had a banner year, notes advisor Eric Nelson. “Our last two games were too close to call until the final official tally. It has been a great season!” he said.

............................................................... Harker comes up big in 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards March 21, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-878 Two students have been recognized as national medalists in the 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Soham Khan, grade 12, won a gold medal for his critical essay, “Understanding the Bolshevik and Stalinist Revolutions through the Music of Shostakovich: A MusicHistorical Analysis,” and sophomore Katrina Liou’s painting “Sardines” won her a silver medal. As a gold medalist, Khan is now eligible to attend the national ceremony, held in New York City this June.

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Earlier in the month, Harker robotics made school history when, for the first time, it finished in the top eight of the seeding rounds of the Central Valley Robotics Regional Competition. The robotics team ranked seventh out of 47 entries at the end of the event. During the quarterfinals, Harker’s alliance had the highest score for the entire tournament, moving it on to the semifinals. “Alas,” said Nelson, “we lost our two semifinal games. It was an excellent competition where the students really lived up to their abilities.” Harker’s upper school robotics program, nearly 60 strong and including 11 girls, is run like a startup, with each year’s team starting with a budget, the equipment already on hand and a timetable set by the competition rules. Here is an ABC News report on the competition. http://abc30.com/education/ hundreds-of-students-compete-inmadera-robot-battle/1242462/

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Important first for robotics team

Board names Nikoloff’s successor

March 27, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8dj

March 31, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8fi

Harker’s robotics team took its game to Sacramento over the past weekend and again made the finals. This year, for the first time, the team made the semifinals in both

Diana Nichols, chair of Harker’s Board of Trustees, announced Wednesday that Brian Yager was elected as the new head of the school, filling the vacancy of current

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Nikoloff has served as Harker’s head of school for 11 years, after six years as middle school head and assistant head. “I have been deeply honored to steward this truly one-of-a-kind institution at a critical time in its impressive history,” said Nikoloff. “While I know that this is the right move for my family at this time, and I am excited by the new challenges and opportunities ahead of me, I remain a steadfast champion of Harker’s mission.”

Photo by Kyle Cavallero/Photo provided by Brian Yager

Of Nikoloff, Nichols stated, “He has been a well-respected leader and a personal friend, and he has worked hard to guide the school over the last 11 years. The school is flourishing, and we wish him the very best.” Harker’s search for a new head began last year and, with the help of a national search firm, included surveys to parents and alumni, and on-campus interviews with all potential candidates. The board was pleased to find such a well-suited and highly qualified candidate in Yager, and unanimously elected him to the position of permanent head.

............................................................... Five Harker athletes to continue their sports in college April 12, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8gp Wednesday was a big day for a group of Harker athletes as they committed to playing their sports

Two Harker seniors named semifinalists in 2017 Presidential Scholars Program

in college. Seniors Ryan Vaughan, Rachel Cheng, Taylor Iantosca, Marti Sutton and Niki Iyer gleamed with excitement as their peers, teachers and families joined them in the quad for the ceremony celebrating their athletic futures. Vaughan will play golf at the University of California, San Diego; Cheng will play volleyball for Washington University in St. Louis; Iantosca, who was a standout volleyball and lacrosse player at Harker, will join the crew team at the University of California, San Diego; Sutton will travel to Iowa to play softball at Dordt College; and Iyer will run cross country and track for the Golden Bears at the University of California, Berkeley.

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artificial intelligence expert Fei-Fei Li, who spoke about advancements in developing visual intelligence for computers.

Earlier this week, seniors Manan Shah and Meilan Steimle were named semifinalists in the 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholars Program out of the 19 Harker candidates. Their applications will be reviewed by the Commission on Presidential Scholars to determine this year’s Presidential Scholars.

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............................................................... Alumna’s Harker paper published by Yale Review of International Studies

Photo provided by Sam Lepler

April 13, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8gh

Update: Econ team headed for nationals in NYC

Elisabeth Siegel ’16, a Mitra grant recipient during her senior year at Harker, has had her Mitra paper, titled “Ideology through Subliminal Propaganda: A Critique of Portrayals of Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli and Western Online News Media during Operation Protective Edge,” published by Yale Review of International Studies! http://yris.yira. org/essays/2005.

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............................................................... 2017 Research Symposium explores the minds of machines April 15, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8gE Harker’s large community of science enthusiasts gathered at the upper school campus on April 15 for the 2017 Harker Research Symposium. Early arrivals packed the Nichols Hall auditorium for a talk by leading

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

Alumnus ’13 wins prestigious New American Fellowship from Soros April 21, 2017 http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8hQ Ashvin Swaminathan ‘13 was just awarded a Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans honors the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. Swaminathan, a senior at Harvard, is graduating in May with degrees in mathematics and physics. In the fall, he will start his graduate studies in mathematics at Princeton. The photo is from the 2013 NearMitra Endowment reception.

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Harker’s National Economics Challenge team received word on Friday that it had qualified for the 2017 national finals, set to take place in New York City May 20-22. The team – made up of Arindam Ghosh, Sumer Kohli, Adriano Hernandez and Praveen Batra, all grade 11 – previously won the state-level competition, placing it among the top four teams in the country. More than 10,500 students participate in the competition each year. The final competition will consist of three multiple-choice exam rounds, a case study presentation and a quiz bowl round.

Visit news.harker.org H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

feature

MACHINE:

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WORDS BY WILLIAM CRACRAFT PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

hen Harker’s competitive robotics program was just starting in 2003, it needed help.

“From an engineering standpoint, the team was highly unpredictable and unreliable,” said Eric Nelson, robotics advisor. “Their creations tended not to function most of the time. Breaking down, losing parts and catching fire were the norm. The outcome was not surprising given that they resisted working as a unit.” But since then, thanks to strong mentors and program changes, the team has steadily matured, and 2016-17 was its best competitive season yet. The Robotics Club was founded by a student in the 2001-02 school year. Nelson, also a physics teacher and chair of the upper school’s computer science department, joined Harker and became club advisor in 2003-04, and has overseen the steady growth of the program. In fall 2004, team captain Alex Segal ’05 both pulled the group together and had a clear design goal, said Nelson. While the robot that year had reliability issues, it had a competitive design and the team won the Sacramento regional competition and went on to Atlanta for the national event. The team held its own until mid-afternoon on the first day of the event, then slid behind for the remainder of the competition. “The team culture was the biggest obstacle I had to overcome,” said Nelson. “That type of rebellious ‘me-first’ behavior is now the exception rather than the norm, and it has made a big difference in the team performance.”

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RISE OF THE MACHINE

Jacqueline Rousseau ’07 was there early in the program’s development, too. She was on the robotics team for four years, starting in 2003-04. After college, she spent several years as a trader in foreign exchange options at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, but left recently to get a master’s in education from Harvard’s Teacher Education Program and plans to become a high school physics teacher after graduating next year. She remembers her time on the robotics team with great fondness. “My freshman year was the team’s second year,” Rousseau said. “The first couple of years, we were just a group of students trying to figure out what we were doing, but by the time I left we had some semblance of organization. We definitely reinvented the wheel multiple times before we started learning how to pass on knowledge through the years.”

“Their creations tended not to function most of the time. Breaking down, losing parts and catching fire were the norm.” – Eric Nelson, robotics advisor

As a junior, Rousseau was programming subteam lead; her senior year she was vice president of the club. “What I actually did was a bit of everything!” she said. “My focus for the first three years was on electronics (wiring the robot) and programming (writing code and testing), and then, in senior year, managing all of the separate processes and organizing the timing of the project so we could ship on time.”

Out of Chaos, Order For the first five years, Nelson built up the program, recruiting parents for supervision, mentoring and some technical oversight. “I also hooked a few faculty into watching the students so I could have a day off once in awhile. I am still very appreciative of [lower school science teacher] Giresh Ghooray for his help,” he said. “The one consistent aspect that I maintained was that the students had to do the design and engineering,” said Nelson. “This restriction meant that the students became very knowledgeable about the systems they developed and the tools they used, but those systems tended to look, and work, like they were made by students. They lost a lot of games.” But the path to success began to open up in 2008. “The move into Nichols Hall [from a regular-sized classroom] was a huge game changer,” said Nelson. “We now had the space for real tools, not just hand drills and hacksaws, as well as room for ongoing projects. The new facilities and persistent structure helped a great deal in providing consistent oversight and continuity.” By 2012, Nelson’s nine years of hard work had begun to pay off, but refinements were necessary to bring the program into the winner’s circle with consistency. “While the team’s internal performance did improve, in the sense that things stopped catching fire and losing parts,” said Nelson, “their

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competition performance did not. Their robots were still designed and constructed by students who only had part-time guidance for the design and engineering.” Five years later, in 2017, the team lit up the scoreboard, making school history in March when, for the first time, it finished in the top eight of the seeding rounds of the Central Valley Regional FIRST Robotics Competition. The team ranked seventh out of 47 entries at the end of the first round, giving Harker the choice of alliance partners for the quarterfinals. During the quarterfinals, Harker’s alliance had the highest score for the entire tournament, moving it on to the semifinals. “Alas,” said Nelson, “we lost our two semifinal games. It was an excellent competition where the students really lived up to their abilities.” Later that month the team made the semifinals in the Sacramento Regional FIRST Robotics

Competition thus, for the first time, making the semifinals in both regionals in which it competes. “Our last two games were too close to call until the final official tally,” noted Nelson. A number of factors helped move the team into position for that winning season. “Over the past five years we have formalized the team structure, created a handbook so we can remember what we do that works and created a purchase tracking and approval system to keep costs under control,” Nelson said. Meanwhile, the club was converted to an official program, an important change to make it eligible for school funding. In the past – and this season – the team had consistent help about every other week from Brian Oldziewski, Harker’s network administrator, and parent mentors – but that wasn’t quite enough. “We needed someone in the trenches who could work side by side with the students to keep them from diverting from good design ideas and from making bad last-minute decisions,” said Nelson. Enter Martin Baynes, who has worked at Harker for a few years as a computer science teacher at the upper school and robotics teacher at the middle school. Before taking up teaching, Baynes was a senior manager in electronics and software companies in Silicon Valley for many years. “I am used to trying to be a catalyst for creativity, and a facilitator, priority and milestone clarifier,” he said. Baynes teaches the robotics course and, Nelson noted, “works with the students in the engineering trenches on a daily – or perhaps hourly is a better word – basis during the build and competition season.” These changes, along with a new officer selection process, on top of the years of refining the program, all contributed to this year’s stellar results. Baynes is insistent the students made the difference. “The leadership by the students in all cases was excellent and the most crucial factor,” he said.

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RISE OF THE MACHINE

But one of his own contributions was key: During build season Baynes brought a voice of reason to proposed changes in plans, “to stop the over-creative enthusiasm,” he said. This focusing saved enough resources that the team was able to build a second robot for software development, tuning and practice. Baynes brought his expertise to the competition floor, too, “so I could help with debrief and stop them changing the robot prematurely,” he said. “They became a well-oiled operation team in both the pit and on the competition floor; it was most impressive at UC Davis.” The transition has gone well. “Martin has taken over all the engineering oversight and lab management tasks,” Nelson said. “This is the first year that I did not know what the design was until I watched the robot in action. It was the first year that I did not put in 60- to 80-hour weeks during build, and it was the best year in terms of both internal and external overall performance.” Along with supervising the build, Baynes’ two new robotics classes will add a fresh dimension to the robotics program as students who pass through them join the program in increasing numbers. Existing classes were already helping the software subteam, said Nelson. “Our computer science courses give those students a strong foundation, which makes a big difference in their coding efforts. The electronics course in the physics subdepartment helps the more electrical engineering-minded students.” The new courses are robotics hardware and robotics software classes, one taught each semester. Both classes train students from a general principles perspective, not specifically on the competition hardware and software. However, the hardware course does train students in 3-D CAD, which the design team uses to build the robot; and the software course supports the software aspects of the club work. In both courses this year, about 30 percent of the students are in the competitive program.

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Andrew Tierno, grade 12, executive president of the 2016-17 robotics team, has been on the team four years. “Ever since I went to the Harker open house as a rising freshman, I knew I wanted to join robotics,” he said. “A lot of what we do here at Harker is theoretical and intellectual, so it’s nice to have a program where we’re actually building things with our own two hands and learning, sometimes painfully, that not everything that should work in theory does work in practice.” As a freshman, Tierno liked what he saw. “I admired the leadership of thenexecutive president Sarika Bajaj ’14,” he said. “She had a way of maintaining

“They became a well-oiled operation team in both the pit and on the competition floor.” – Martin Baynes, robotics teacher

order and championing the opinion of the underdog, all while keeping the environment fun and exciting to return to day after day. It’s that kind of energy that inspired the style of leadership I tried to bring to my presidency. I’m strongly of the opinion that it is the absolutely amazing bunch of students this year that afforded us our successes.” Tierno agreed the changes noted above had a serious impact on results. One game changer was building that second robot thanks to Baynes’ efficiencies, “which gave us the practice crucial to our successes this year.” Tierno, who will attend Stanford in the fall, motivated some changes of his own, included moving discussions onto the messaging platform Slack, cleaning out the robotics lab, reworking the robotics handbook and implementing a new scouting system. All the changes added up to a landmark season. “We’ve found this special blend of strong mentors, effective organization and dedicated students that is critical for success,” said Tierno. Tierno noted everyone on the roster made an exceptional effort this year. “Albert Xu [grade 12] deserves a special shoutout for taking on the task of designing our robot and managing its construction essentially by himself,” he said. “Christopher Leafstrand [grade 10] was our robot driver. He makes driving seem so easy, whizzing both forwards and in reverse at top speeds yet somehow dodging every single obstacle that comes in his way. On top of all that, he’s also a significant contributor to design and has already come up with a model for a robot to build over the summer. “Nina Levy [grade 12] acted as our drive coach. Her quick thinking and ability to make snap decisions H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

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led us to victory more than once when we thought everything was lost. She has the incredible ability to make everyone stop and listen to her, which is critical in a game where teamwork is key (finals matches are played with two other teams against another three-team alliance),” finished Tierno. Levy was the team’s 2017 director of public-facing operations, so she managed the drive team of five students but also helped with the build. She, too, has been on the team for four years. She organized drive team meetings and during the match, acted as the driver’s brain, coaching him on what to do, to get a gear (an item to be collected and re-deposited by the robot), to climb or defend, and alerting him on how much time is left and how many gears were in the goal.

have learned a multitude of engineering-related skills that have prepared me for college,” noted “Robotics teaches “ILevy, who will attend University of California, Davis in the fall. “I think over the years the biggest everyone how to be changes were in communication. When our team communicated with each other and worked confident in their together for one common goal, we succeeded both as a team and at competition.” skills and how to Levy revels in the community that develops with the team. “Within the team, everyone, each year, talks about the close friends they have made and the people that they can trust and count communicate their always on,” she said. ideas to the rest “I think that robotics is a really great opportunity for any high school student interested in STEM of the team, which fields,” Levy added. “Whether you have previous knowledge about different aspects of robotics or can be particularly know nothing but are willing to give it a try, the experience is completely worthwhile. I would say Robotics is not just about a club that builds robots but also a community that fosters learning, beneficial to women Harker growth, communication and respect between all the team members and mentors.” going into Take-Aways for All male-dominated Great Baynes, like all good teachers, enjoys watching the students grow, seeing what they are capable of, STEM fields.” and seeing them rewarded for their dedication and hard work in the competition achievements. “I – Jacqueline Rousseau ’07

believe if we had gone for a third competition, they could have won,” he said. The next few years should be interesting. “I expect a high level of recruiting next year because of this year’s success,” said Baynes. “I hope for improved productivity from lab changes and robotics courses reinforcement. We cannot guarantee a group of students like this year’s every year, but hopefully

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we will attract similar personalities because of the competition and because its robot is student led, student designed, student built, student driven – unlike many other FIRST Robotics Competition teams where coaches and mentors are hands-on the robot design and build.” Rousseau noted long-term benefits she gained from being on the team. “Learning to cooperate with a team is invaluable,” she said. “Trying to build a robot gets very messy at times, and I learned how to persevere and try new approaches to problem-solving if the first few ideas don’t work.” She learned how to tackle an open-ended project. “Robotics was so much more like the real world than any class I took; there was no right answer, no instruction manual, and there was a hard

deadline. Learning how to manage the six weeks of build and end with a functional robot taught a lot of skills that homework problems couldn’t.” But the best thing Rousseau got out of the program were her many good memories. “During the build period, I would spend on average 40 hours a week, after school and weekends, on robotics. That, plus traveling to competitions, meant that most of my extracurricular life revolved around the team.” Rousseau absolutely encourages girls to join the team; this season, 11 of the 40 members are female. “The more diverse perspectives the team has, the better the outcome will be,” she said. “Robotics teaches everyone how to be confident in their skills and how to communicate their ideas to the rest of the team, which can be particularly beneficial to women going into maledominated STEM fields.” Rousseau noted that her decision to become a high school physics teacher had everything to do with her time at Harker. “I was fortunate enough to have two amazing physics teachers at Harker, Ms. [Lisa] Radice and Dr. Nelson, who inspired me to major in physics at Caltech. They are definitely in my mind as examples of the type of teacher I hope I’ll be able to be.” Following a stellar season, Tierno reflected on his time in the robotics program. “I screamed so loud at our competitions that my voice went hoarse,” he said. “We had the right students, the right mentors, and the right organizational structure to create this perfect storm that led us to our successes. I’ve just been filled with an overwhelming pride for this team.”

For more on innovative use of technology in the classroom, see story on page 50.

Additional photographs by Nash Melisso, grade 9

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udge John Byron Owens MS ’85 earned his first paycheck, for $180, from Harker in 1985. He rode his bike from Cupertino to campus every day that summer to work as a camp counselor. It was the beginning of a journey distinguished by hard work, intellect and honor. “No one at Harker is surprised by John’s success,” said Pat Walsh, Owens’ fifth grade teacher. “It’s not just that he’s brilliant, which he is, but that he’s filled with integrity.” Owens, who attended Harker from grades 3-8, has remained in touch with Walsh. In 2014, Owens even invited Walsh to his swearing-in ceremony as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Before being nominated by President Barack Obama, Owens had a successful career as an attorney, served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and graduated first in his class at Stanford Law School.

No substitute for hard work

From the basketball court to the courtroom, John Owens MS ’85 believes in giving your all WORDS BY VIKKI BOWES-MOK PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

All these successes came with a lot of hard work, one of Owens’ core values, along with honesty and kindness. “There is no substitute for hard work, especially when you are in high school and college. Hard work now makes the rest of your life much easier,” is advice he has shared with Harker students in the past and regularly shares with his two daughters. And Owens definitely walks the talk. Last season he coached his eldest daughter’s club basketball team, which made the playoffs. He stressed to the team to work WORDS BYpractice JARED SCOTT hard at but alsoTESLER at home on shooting and dribbling. He PHOTOGRAPH BY 16 HA R K E R MAGA Z I NE l S PRI N G/S UM M E R 2017 XXX

realized that a coach cannot ask his players to work hard if he also isn’t willing to put in the time, so he spent hours reviewing game films and statistics, and designed a new offense for the team. They won both playoff games by nearly 20 points. “So it may seem crazy – a federal judge is spending hours watching youth basketball games – but it was an important lesson for our players and especially my oldest daughter to understand that success only happens through hard work,” said Owens. “It is not fair to have hard-working players led by an unprepared coach.”

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

2014-PRESENT: Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit 2012-14 Partner, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP 2004-12 Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of California 2010-11 Chief, criminal division 2008-10 Deputy Chief, major frauds section 2001-04 Assistant U.S. Attorney, Central District of California 2000-01 Litigation associate, O’Melveny & Myers LLP 1998-99 Trial attorney, U.S. Department of Justice 1997-98 Law clerk, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court 1996-97 Law clerk, Judge J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit

Owens has always loved sports and even worked as a marketing assistant for the Golden State Warriors when he was an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. But his love of the law prevailed. His law career includes serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for both the central and southern districts of California, as well as a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

“He is well-respected regardless of his role on campus,” said Sarah Leonard, Owens’ third grade teacher and now primary division head. “He has a wonderful way with the third grade students, really driving home his message about hard work, determination, setting goals and perseverance, but he does so in a manner that captures the children’s attention and holds them almost spellbound.“

Owens, a big science fiction fan, was lauded by “Above the Law” for “nerding out.” The legal website referenced Lone Star Security & Video v. City of Los Angeles, where he incorporated “a Monopoly analogy and a reference to ‘The Twilight Zone’ to urge the Supreme Court to reconsider its holdings.” Other opinions have referenced “Game of Thrones,” “Star Trek” and the horror movie “The Thing.”

Owens and his wife and their two daughters live in San Diego. In their free time, they enjoy going to the boxing gym on Saturday mornings, where they hit the bags while the youngest takes karate. A perfect day would include a 5-mile run for Owens, followed by a relaxing afternoon and watching the Warriors play in the evening (he’s still a big fan).

His lighter, nerdier side often peeks through when he returns to Harker, from sharing his experience as a judge with third graders to discussing honors and ethics with upper school students. He earned the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007 and serves on Harker’s Board of Trustees.

Owens values time with his family and, when asked what his proudest accomplishment was, he replied, “That’s easy – my two girls. They both learned at an early age from my wife and me that success in life – academics, sports, the arts – requires hard work.” Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.

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athletic center

SAVE THE DATE! FRIDAY, AUG. 18 After years of planning and months of construction, the new athletic center is just about up and running. The opening celebration will be on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, when student athletes will show the community their beautiful new facility. On Aug. 25 the first full volleyball game will be played in the space, against Branham High School. We will, of course, keep the community posted as all celebratory events are finalized. We look forward to alumni and current families, faculty and staff joining us as we mark this exciting milestone in the life of our upper school campus!

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WORDS BY JARED SCOTT TESLER PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

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ART WITH HEART

From preschool through upper school, Harker’s visual arts program emphasizes the creative process, not just the final product

arly 20th century French painter Henri Matisse, who left an indelible mark on modern art, once said, “It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision – a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.” These sentiments are seamlessly woven into the fabric of Harker’s progressive visual arts curricula. “A student’s effort is paramount in grading their progress in whatever course they take with me,” explained Pilar Agüero-Esparza, upper school visual arts teacher, who received the William Hyde and Susan Benteen Irwin Scholarship for proven excellence in the arts during her undergraduate days at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She went on to earn her master’s degree in spatial art from San Jose State University. “I do not believe that only students who already have an aptitude for the visual arts – either through innate characteristics or due to prior experience with classes – can do well and get A’s,” Agüero-Esparza said. “I believe that anyone can learn to draw by studying the mechanics, learning techniques and, inevitably, practicing. This is where effort and an open attitude to learn is what becoming a great artist is all about.” At Harker, the visual arts take the form of yearlong required courses, single-semester electives, Advanced Placement and honors classes, after-school activities and summer programs – all of which are designed to foster creativity, self-expression, imagination, critical thinking, problem-solving, confidence, open-mindedness, curiosity, risk-taking and time management.

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“[Children] come to imagine the world as it can be through open-ended art experiences that allow them to express their feelings and ideas in an environment with no wrong answers.” —Alexandria Kerekez, preschool art specialist

Through art, students of all ages learn how to view and interpret the world around them – and find out more about themselves along the way. As with academic and extracurricular offerings in acting, dance and choreography, directing, instrumental music, musical theater, technical theater and vocal music, instruction covers not only artmaking but also art history, theory, criticism and appreciation. Led by K-12 visual arts department chair Jaap Bongers and K-5 assistant chair Gerry-louise Robinson, faculty members on all four campuses include both postgraduate educators and professional artists, specializing in architecture, ceramics, collage, design, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, stone carving and textiles.

Starting With a Blank Canvas At Harker Preschool, whether inside cozy cottage classrooms or their very own art studio, Harker’s littlest learners precociously begin their individual journey toward self-expression, experimenting with a wide range of media and materials that put their critical thinking and fine motor skills to the test. As they engage in intentional play through a series of handson, developmentally appropriate projects in ceramics, collage, drawing, painting, weaving and wire working, they exhibit curiosity, intrinsic motivation, creative problem-solving, aesthetic valuing, sorting, counting, sequencing and much more. 22

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“The arts foster a deeper understanding of our uniquely human existence,” said preschool visual arts specialist Alexandria Kerekez. “We can process our experiences, reinforce our knowledge, and come to know ourselves by creating and enjoying art. Children learn about the world as it is by making observations, thinking representationally and developing new skills with multiple tools. Most notably, they can come to imagine the world as it can be through open-ended art experiences that allow them to express their feelings and ideas in an environment with no wrong answers.” At just 3, 4 and 5 years of age, when it comes to their own creations, these tiny artists are given free rein – from ideation to evaluation. Kerekez, who holds a bachelor’s degree in creative arts and a master’s degree in education and social justice, refers to her role as “the guide on the side.” “It is important to me that the children’s ideas inspire the topics of their research and that they choose the materials for its execution. It is my role to facilitate the activities and suggest helpful techniques and proper usage of their chosen tools. They are the leaders of their own creative destinies,” said Kerekez, who is currently working on a personal project of threedimensional mixed-media sculptures soon to be installed in common areas in and around San Jose. “All student artwork is assessed by the artist who created it. During every visit to the art studio, a reflection time is

“The arts foster a deeper understanding of our uniquely human existence.” —Alexandria Kerekez, preschool art specialist

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carved into the schedule. This is a time for the young artists to express their ideas, explain their processes, make aesthetic evaluations and plan for future works,” Kerekez noted.

Exploring the Elements Kindergartners and first graders, encouragingly guided by Peggy Lao, lower school visual arts teacher, are introduced gradually to the elements of art, including color, form, line, shape, space, texture and value. Before they begin to dabble in ceramics, collage, drawing and printmaking, students watch closely and listen carefully as Lao offers step-by-step demonstrations. “I like to use a follow-the-leader type of guided teaching with the younger students,” said Lao. “I demonstrate a step, then the students do the step on their own papers. This method is good for time management, and it allows students to process and execute a step at a time, rather than having to accomplish too much in a short time,” she said. “Once they begin to work, students must learn to be flexible as they change their ideas, take the initiative to seek help and guidance, and, above all, strive to be confident with their own personal creativity by not comparing to others.” Robinson, who leads Harker’s second through fifth grade art classes and previously taught in Australia, her native Ireland and the United Kingdom, adheres to a variety of engaging teaching styles intended for 24

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different ages and abilities, including one-on-one instruction and teacher-led direct instruction. She even creates instructional videos that students can view at home, which means more time making art at school. “I also incorporate music, books, magazines, visual aids and, of course, lots of demonstrations,” she added. Students in Robinson’s classes are exposed to the principles of design – balance, emphasis, harmony, hierarchy, proportion, and similarity and contrast – as they study art movements and periods throughout history, conduct independent research, enjoy gradelevel field trips to local art museums and build 3-D works of art. After-school activities include workshops and open studio time, and Robinson teaches arts and crafts as part of Harker’s summer programming. Since art is open to aesthetic interpretation, “evaluation is based not on product but on process,” Robinson said. “While we do have a guideline, observing how a student handles each step of a project from beginning to end is where the assessment will derive from.” For middle schoolers to succeed in Elizabeth Saltos’ visual art classes, where visual learning and bigpicture, right-brain thinking is all the rage. Students must “participate in every lesson and immerse themselves in the experience, take chances, make mistakes, go beyond the predictable visual solutions, and come up with something completely unique from their previous pieces, personally empowering, expressive and connected to themselves,” Saltos said.

“Art creates space for students to not only expand their notions about the world but to expand their understanding of how they might share these ideas with others.” —Joshua Martinez, upper school media arts instructor

She is also the middle school’s Art Club faculty advisor. Saltos’ students practice and develop their conceptual, technical and visual perceptual skills as they create two- and three-dimensional works of art, including drawings, paintings, ceramics and sculpture. They continue to cultivate their own aesthetic and personal imagery, interpret style and theme, and study various artists, art movements, cultures and historical periods. After school, they can let their imaginations run wild with workshops, Art Club and open studio time. “Visual learners use art directly to analyze, deconstruct and synthesize elements of a problem to reassemble parts of the whole into a new form,” said Saltos, who came to Harker following a quarter-century-long career focused primarily on private and public sculpture commissions, with a master’s degree in industrial arts and education from San Francisco State University. “This research model applies to all areas of life.” To impart a genuine sense of community and connectedness in her classroom, and to temporarily silence the stress of the day, Saltos leads a simple exercise in mindfulness and centering wherein her sixth, seventh and eighth grade students take turns striking a Tibetan singing bowl with a padded mallet. “I teach by doing, by listening, by making the classroom more of an art studio and getting out of

the institutional setting, by helping the students to relax and sink into ideas and process and not race to conclusions and answers,” Saltos said. “The process is more important than the product. Often, I model making mistakes and then using the mistake as a springboard to create a new visual statement.”

Applying the Principles In addition to compulsory courses in English, mathematics, science, history and social science, modern and classical languages, computer science and physical education, ninth grade students must fulfill a performing or visual arts requirement via a survey course in visual arts, music, dance or theater arts. “These courses study contemporary thought and process around each discipline while linking it to historical movements,” explained Joshua Martinez, upper school media arts instructor, who holds a master’s degree in spatial art from California College of the Arts. “There is also an Advanced Placement Art History course that provides an in-depth study of 19th and 20th century art,” he said. “The mechanics of art are taught in each discipline-specific elective H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

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their understanding of how they might share these ideas with others.” course. The idea that art tells the narrative of its maker, that all marks carry symbolic properties, and that humans organize information in context with their own experiences, emotions and perceptions are essential understandings for any medium and are constant themes across media.” By the time they reach the upper school, many students have uncovered their personal creative expression and are busy honing their individual art skills and talents for both college and career. Course offerings include an array of beginner- and advancedlevel electives as well as portfolio-building courses such as Honors Directed Portfolio and Advanced Placement Studio Art, with concentrations in drawing, two-dimensional design and three-dimensional design. Both Martinez and Agüero-Esparza provide their students with ample opportunities to get their hands dirty before they must demonstrate proper technique. As in lower and middle school, effort, engagement and risk-taking are stressed throughout the making process. “Once you have been given the tools to externalize complex thoughts and emotions in a way that not only fulfills your base needs for expression but creates meaning in others’ minds, the world unlocks,” said Martinez. “Art creates space for students to not only expand their notions about the world but to expand 26

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Martinez, whose own photography has been displayed in several solo, collaborative and group exhibitions throughout the nation, further noted, “From day one, I let [students] know that this is all about them. Art is a means of showing others your way of seeing. Every demo, conversation, etc., is always with that in mind. We focus on trying something and then reflecting on the product’s ability to give voice to their feelings and philosophies. “There is no profession that doesn’t benefit from an understanding of one’s own way of seeing,” Martinez added. “Being able to express yourself, understand how meaning is made and control, rather than consume, media is essential for all careers. More importantly, the truly vital aspects of art – a dialogue with the unknown, making visible the unseen, imagining undefined notions – are part of living a full life. This is something that most children do better than we do, but they often need it to be reflected back to them in order to create a practice around it.”

Unveiling a Masterpiece Harker’s pièce de résistance, of course, is the continued overwhelming success of its alumni. There are those who, while at Harker, won one or more Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ Scholastic Art & Writing Awards – an award shared with artists including designer-to-the-stars Zac Posen and pop

art icon Andy Warhol. There are those who have gone on to attend some of the country’s finest art and design schools. And there are those who have turned their passion into their profession. Some have even followed in the footsteps of their favorite Harker teachers, resulting in an arts education that has truly come full circle. “I’ve wanted to pursue a career in the arts for quite a while. I would say I probably developed a firm grasp of my aspirations in high school,” says freelance graphic designer Vladimir Sepetov ’11, who snagged a grand total of six Scholastic Art & Writing Awards during his senior year. Sepetov majored in visual communication design at the University of Washington, scored an artists and repertoire internship with Interscope Records, and has been designing hip-hop album covers ever since – most notably, Grammy Award-winning rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly.” The best part of his job, he said, is “making my parents proud and seeing a vision come to life.” Shelby Drabman ’09, who studied textile and fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, serves as artist-in-residence at The Hamlin School in San Francisco, where she directs an after-school art program for girls in kindergarten through fourth grade. A life-size sculpture of Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch – a four-month-long project completed at Harker – is a friendly fixture in her classroom. Kevin Saxon ’10, attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Architecture Career Discovery Program, scholarly seminars at Spéos Photographic Institute in Paris and the Danish Institute for Study Abroad in Copenhagen, interned at Robert Edson Swain Architecture + Design, and graduated from Rhode Island School of Design’s furniture design program. After that preparation, he landed a job as a design and manufacturing engineer at Northwood Design Partners in Union City. The firm handles big-name clients including Facebook, Google, Netflix, Pinterest, Samsung, Twitter and YouTube. Named Best in Show at Harker’s 2010 Advanced Placement Studio Art Exhibition, one of Saxon’s pieces, the “+1 Chair,” was featured at the 2015 International Contemporary Furniture Fair at New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Previously Harker’s full-time advancement associate, Kelsey Chung ’10 got her start as an art instructor at Harker Summer Camp Plus, where she taught a course on Warhol and his contemporaries as well as another on Paul Cézanne and Jackson Pollock. Chung took Advanced Placement Studio

Art with Agüero-Esparza and Advanced Placement Art History with history and social science department chair Donna Gilbert. She is an alumna of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she majored in art and design, with a concentration in studio art. Chung is currently working toward a higher degree in the history of art and design at Pratt Institute; its motto, “Be true to your work, and your work will be true to you,” fits for an artist like her. “Since I was 5, I was always interested in art. It began with the dream of working – animating – for Disney,” said Chung. “Later, in sixth grade, I began painting, which I continued and pursued in college. Art history was a subject I never really thought about but enjoyed immensely and ultimately inspired me to go to graduate school,” she added. New York City-based fashion designer Anna Huang ’07 is grateful for the eventual growth in the diversity of art courses at the upper school. “The visual arts program was relatively small when I was a freshman/sophomore at Harker, and there were not a lot of students interested in pursuing careers in art and design,” recalls Huang, who began stitching and sewing clothing for her dolls as a young girl. Significant plans were in the works to expand the department while Huang was a student. “Especially on a campus dominated by excellence in STEM fields, it was significant that we had the space and resources to showcase our achievements in a different way,” she said. That stick-to-itiveness paid off in a big way. After graduating, with distinction, from California College of the Arts, Huang would find herself designing for not one, not two, but three household names – Ralph Lauren, Cole Haan and Levi Strauss. Just as her fashions continue to grace the streets of New York City, she remains indebted to her Harker teachers for their encouragement, support, guidance, acceptance and feedback. “They patiently worked with us to hash out artistic solutions to our creative blocks and create pieces that were relevant to our personal identities. Additionally, they always urged us to observe the world from alternative angles and draw inspiration from unexpected places,” Huang says. “Being open-minded is integral to being a good artist and designer, and I think Harker’s visual arts faculty did an outstanding job of imparting this to us.”

“I would say I probably developed a firm grasp of my aspirations in high school.” —Vladimir Sepetov ’11

Contributor Jared Scott Tesler is based in Rochester, N.Y.

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panish teacher Abel Olivas is one of the few remaining teachers who started at Harker with the opening of the upper school. He serves as chair of the modern and classical languages department, is the faculty advisor for the Gender and Sexuality Alliance and the Spanish National Honor Society, and assists the Diversity Committee in various ways. A native of Texas whose life got off to a “really rough start,” his diverse interests and talents show a life well-lived and appreciated.

What one piece of advice would you offer anyone who asks? Don’t live your life for anyone else.

What are you most proud of yourself for? I got an MFA in writing and completed the manuscript for my memoir! My book details how grateful I am that my life turned out so nicely.

What would constitute a perfect day for you? After a solid eight hours of sleep, doing a couple of hours of fruitful writing, lunch at Books Inc. in Mountain View, another couple of hours of productive writing there, back home to listen to music and do some singing or dancing, a call with my mother or sister in Texas, and a nice, long dinner with my husband, Robert, at one of our favorite restaurants. My needs are simple!

What is the greatest accomplishment of your life? Getting my book published. Oh wait, it hasn’t happened yet. If/when it happens, it will be the greatest accomplishment of my life.

What work of art has inspired you and why? I’m inspired in my writing by writers and composers who have turned the stories of minority communities into art. “In the Heights,” my favorite musical of all time, resonates with me so much, I sing to the cast recording in my car all the time.

What is your most treasured memory? Exchanging wedding vows with Robert as my mother witnessed it lovingly from her seat in the front row.

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atricia Burrows teaches middle school English, but her enthusiasm for her job is evident by all the other things she loves to do at Harker: she is the grade 7 advisory dean, facilitates the Discovery X mentor program, oversees the writing mentor program, and is on the Diversity and Challenge Success committees. It was clear as she spoke with Harker Magazine that her passions are her students and her family; she and her husband, Kit, have a daughter at Harker, and her parents and brother are in Ontario, Canada, where Burrows grew up.

What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand? I would give everyone empathy.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? “Comparison is the thief of joy.” My colleague Ann Smitherman shared this quote (generally attributed to Theodore Roosevelt) when I needed to hear it, and it is something that I carry with me every day. When we spend so much time wishing we were like someone else, we steal the opportunity to celebrate our own individual achievements and impacts.

What is your best strength? Helping others. Anything I first deem as a weakness eventually helps me understand and develop my strength.

What are you doing when you feel most alive? I’m in a classroom with my students, laughing, sharing and learning.

What do you most apologize for? Putting my foot in my mouth. I love to joke with people, and occasionally the joke is funnier in my head than in reality.

What is your most treasured object and why? A ceramic heart that my husband used to propose to me. Yes, I’m cheesy.

What are you obsessed with? “Anne of Green Gables.” I could watch the television series featuring Megan Follows over and over again.

Patricia Burrows H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SUMME R/SPRIN SPR ING/SUM M ERG 2017

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class of 2017

The Class of 2017 experienced a whirlwind of activity during graduation week, starting with the alumni induction lunch. Several seniors had bricks engraved with their names laid into the walkway at Graduatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Grove. At baccalaureate, seniors gathered with juniors to wish each other well. Those who started Harker in kindergarten enjoyed the annual Lifers Dinner. And then, graduation! The class heard inspiring words from valedictorian Kai Ang, Nvidia co-founder Chris Malachowsky, and Chris Nikoloff, who gave his final senior address as head of school. Congratulations and best of luck to the Class of 2017!

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Vegesna Grant Awardees Taking Instruction to the

WORDS BY ZACH JONES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

he words, scrawled neatly in reddish-brown, rest solemnly on a rectangular piece of construction paper: “How dreadful is the dawn.” “I walk burdened and irritated,” reads the line on the next piece. Two additional pieces complete the grim stanza: “My heart beats as though with hammers/Everything around me begins to weep.” They are not the words of students in a creative writing course, but the echoes of long silenced voices, pieced together from the discovered writings of Holocaust victims. Many of the sources were not old enough to attend high school at the time they composed these writings. It’s an example of a “found poetry” exercise conducted by upper school teacher Roxana Pianko’s world history students. The exercise is based on one she participated in during a weeklong conference held by Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit educational organization based in Los Angeles. Pianko attended the conference as part of her work in the Raju and Bala Vegesna Foundation’s Teacher Excellence Program, a grant program that funds professional development opportunities for Harker teachers. “[The Vegesnas] so value the importance of a good teacher,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “They know the difference a good teacher can make.” Raju Vegesna said the program was started largely due to the continuously evolving nature of education and the increasing integration of technology into teaching methods.

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Photo provided by Roxana Pianko

I wanted to gain the “necessary knowledge in order to create something that could potentially be transformative. – Roxana Pianko, upper school history teacher

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Photo provided by Susan Nace

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VEGESNA GRANT AWARDEES

“In my mind, education is a continuous thing,” he said. “Technology is evolving and the tools are changing. The ways and methods of teaching have to be different.” Pianko was among the first round of Harker teachers to be selected for the grants in 2015. “I knew coming into this community that I wanted to figure out a way to bring in the things that I was very passionate about, and I was already getting to kind of scratch the surface with the Holocaust and genocide just because I teach World History 2,” Pianko said. “I had this hope that at some point it would eventually be a little bit more than just two days in my classes.” In addition to the LA conference, the grant also enabled Pianko to travel to Europe to expand her expertise, visiting the sites of several concentration camps, as well as museums and institutions located in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. The many people she met at various institutions were very accommodating, she recalled: “They were just throwing resources at me. They were giving me things that were not yet published, but that they wanted to share with me to build my understanding of the work that was being done.” Pianko’s research fed into other areas of teaching as well. In her World History 2 Honors class, students are given assignments that combine biographical writing and research with visual media. They are tasked with selecting a figure from the Holocaust based on their role (survivor, victim, resister or collaborator) and writing a profile of the person, as well as creating a photo collage spanning the person’s life. One of Pianko’s hopes is that students will absorb the lessons of the Holocaust and develop a keener sense of the warning signs that led up to it. “There is a social justice component to it, and I want them to have these experiences inside my classroom, to get to learn about genocide, to get to learn about the Holocaust,” she said. “I wanted to do [this project] because I wanted to gain the necessary knowledge in order to create something that could potentially be transformative.” Her research also led to the formation of an elective class focused on the Holocaust and other examples of genocide throughout history, which is set to start in the fall. The class will culminate in a collaborative project to be presented as a historical lesson to the greater Harker community. “These 17-year-old kids are no longer seeing themselves as voiceless or powerless or incapable of changing things,” Pianko said. 34

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Elsewhere in Europe that same summer, upper school music teacher Susan Nace was honing her skills as a conductor. Nace traveled to Oxford, England, to study at the Choral Conducting Institute at St. Stephen’s College, under the direction of Grammy-nominated conductor James Jordan and James Whitbourn, formerly of the BBC and co-director of the Choral Institute at Oxford. The intensive course consisted of master classes, lectures and private tutoring intended to help conductors master their craft. In the process, Nace was introduced to the work of Rudolf von Laban, a German dance artist notable for the dance notation system he published in 1928. This notation developed further over time, and incorporated what are known as “efforts,” or actions that change the dynamics of movement. Words such as “glide,”“slash,”“punch” and “dab” (not to be confused with the popular dance move) “are descriptions of a movement that is in dance, and it has to do with the time, the space and the weight,” said Nace. “So, for example, dab is a very specific time, it has a light weight, and the space is very small,” she explained. “Something like a glide has an indeterminate time, and it’s sort of an indeterminate space too, and it has a little more weight.” Using efforts based on the Laban method has opened up a range of conducting techniques that allow Nace and her students to interpret and perform music in unique and interesting ways. “When I’m talking to my students and we’re working on a choral piece, I will say, ‘OK, what kind of gesture does this need?’ and they’ll say, ‘This feels like a dab to me, we’re just tapping. This one feels like we need to punch it, it needs some more weight.’” Talking through interpretations in this way also opens up more possibilities for analyzing the music itself, as it may provide clues to the kinds of efforts that may enhance the performance of the material. “Notation is not the music. It’s only a representation of what music can be, but it’s not the actual music. And there are so many things that cannot be placed into a score,” Nace said. Laban efforts, she added, are another way to “take what is represented on that page to make it come alive.” It has also provided another way for Nace to connect with her students, which she considers crucial. “The more you incorporate students’ input, the more you ask them to draw out of themselves, I think then you have more buy-in in what goes on in performing a piece.” Back in California, Scott Kley Contini , middle school

learning, innovation and design director, initially planned to use his grant to attend a design thinking workshop held by Stanford University’s d.school. Unfortunately, the course was in such high demand that Kley Contini likely would have been waitlisted several times before he was able to take the course. He met with Jennifer Gargano to discuss how to move forward with the project, and they agreed to use the funds to bring a d.school instructor to Harker to hold a design thinking workshop for Harker teachers. “Every single person who came would be expected to implement and report on how they’re using design thinking, and that went off so well,” Kley Contini said. Design thinking, Kley Contini explained, is “a user-centered design process” for creating products that incorporate knowledge of users’ needs as the main guideline. “If you are going to make this product, who is the end user? Who is the person who’s actually going to experience this product? Design thinking says you need to spend some significant time upfront getting to know who that user is, just as a person,” said Kley Contini. “Product,” he added, can also be loosely defined. “This could be a physical product that you’re trying to sell. Or from a school standpoint, this could be products like a project or an essay or some kind of end assessment.” In the workshop, teachers from all four campuses learned principles of design thinking that they could apply to their classroom instruction. Andy Gersh, middle school math teacher, began asking his students how they best learn the concepts he was teaching in class. He then had them create posters and infographics to explain to their classmates how they absorbed the lessons. Middle school science teacher Kathy Peng ’05 used design thinking to create lab exercises that were tailored to different student needs. “It kind of opens students’ minds to the big [question] of, why are we learning this? What does it apply to? Do I need this outside of the four walls of this classroom? What’s the real application?” Kley Contini said. “I think that gets answered when you make kids think about who the end users are and their wants and needs.” Although Harker offers many professional development

“ It kind of opens students’ minds to the big

[question] of, why are we learning this? What does it apply to? Do I need this outside of the four walls of this classroom? What’s the opporreal application? tunities, the – Scott Kley Contini, middle school Vegesna Teacher learning, innovation & Excellence Program is design director unique in that it requires grant applicants to delineate how their proposed project will benefit students as well as the wider Harker community. To this end, grant awardees are frequently asked to speak at events such as all-faculty meetings. “We’ll create time for them to talk to other teachers and do other things so that it can have an effect beyond them,” Gargano said. Teachers also are required to prepare presentations for the Vegesnas to show the results of their work. So far, they have been quite pleased with the work coming out of the program. “I see great progress made,” said Raju Vegesna. “I see the best results are coming out. I think we still have a long way to go, since we just started, but I’m very pleased with the progress Harker made with respect to this.” For a complete list of Vegesna grant recipients, visit www.harker.org/teacher-professional-development

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impact

Medicine Alumna sets out to change the world while pursuing a career as a doctor

WORDS BY VIKKI BOWES-MOK PHOTOGRAPHS PROVIDED BY VYVY TRINH ’07

hile in high school, Elyse VyVy Trinh ’07 attended a Vietnamese Catholic youth group where she heard a priest talk about human trafficking. It lit a fire in Trinh, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and fueled her desire to make a difference in the world. “It really hit me that day,” remembered Trinh in a thoughtful, upbeat tone. “I had heard these stories before, but I felt like I was waking up.” Trinh later attended a leadership event that was packed with young people who wanted to change the world. After the event, Trinh sent an email to two Harker administrators, saying that the school needed a revolution. She and a group of friends dedicated themselves to raising funds – ultimately, nearly $14,000 – to support displaced people in Darfur, Sudan. “It was like Dumbledore’s Army,” she said with a smile. “This was my earliest experience organizing a group of people and it felt so empowering. I

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realized this is what I want to do – this is what matters.” While Trinh was becoming an activist, she also considered herself a writer and an artist. Although her family thought she would go into medicine, Trinh wasn’t convinced. But then two things happened that ultimately led her down that path. First, she read “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder, which gave her a new perspective on the role of a physician. The book is about Dr. Paul Farmer, whose passion, dedication and tireless efforts resulted in improved health care for the desperately poor in Haiti and beyond. She realized that following one’s calling can lead to a meaningful life. Then John Near, a beloved Harker history teacher, got sick and Trinh watched helplessly, wishing there was something she could do. She began to see herself practicing medicine. After a four-year

battle with cancer, Near died in 2009. A family friend told her about a medical program at Brown University in Providence, R.I., that allowed students to explore their passions as undergraduates so that they would develop into well-rounded, humanistic doctors. She took a leap of faith that she could forge a connection between health, community and education. “Brown’s true education to us will have been this lesson above all: that it is never foolish to feel love; that compassion is the enduring and most important connection among of all fields of study,” she said in a commencement speech at Brown in May 2011. Trinh fell in love with education at Brown – and even took a year off between her third and fourth years of medical school to earn a master’s degree in education at Harvard University. For this she received a Zuckerman Fellowship, which enables students who have or are pursuing a professional degree to spend a year earning a public service degree. Meanwhile, she nurtured her passions for social justice, community and education by volunteering with BRYTE (Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment), which works one-onone with refugee youth in K-12.

brownrefugeetutoring.weebly.com). Known as “BRYTE Grandma,” she co-directed the summer camp for years and still works as a tutor and advisor. “VyVy is [nicknamed] BRYTE Grandma because she loves our program and all the people in it! Whenever we are trying to contact a camper’s family, we call VyVy because she memorized all of the addresses and she always knows it,” said Mechack Ira, assistant director at BRYTE and former tutee and camper. “I will forever be grateful to VyVy for believing in me.” As Trinh wraps up her time in Rhode Island and heads to California for her residency, she hasn’t slowed down a bit. In addition to working with BRYTE, she’s trying to connect Haitian peanut farms to global markets and working with young Vietnamese Americans to organize and stand with today’s refugees. Her LinkedIn profile ends with “Come dream and scheme with me!” capturing her mission to make a difference in the world.

“VyVy is a force,

a magnetic personality whom others are drawn to. She’s a person you want to know forever;

she’s my idol.

”

—Brigid Miller, upper school teacher

Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.

“I’d like to think I played some role in her success but, of course, I know she achieved all she has without my help,” said Brigid Miller, a Harker English teacher and Trinh’s high school advisor. “VyVy is a force, a magnetic personality whom others are drawn to. She’s a person you want to know forever; she’s my idol.” She’s also an idol to the young refugees she has tutored and mentored through BRYTE (www.

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Making

History Come Alive HA R K E R MAGA Z I NE l S P RI N G/S UM M E R 2017

WORDS BY JARED SCOTT TESLER AND WILLIAM CRACRAFT PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

hen it comes to their day jobs, Harker’s history and social science teachers breathe new life into teaching and learning about the past. “I reject the premise that history is ‘dead’ and I also reject the premise that we need to link every idea back to the ‘now’ to engage students,” said upper school history and social science department chair Donna Gilbert, who teaches three Advanced Placement courses: World History, European History and Art History. “History is fraught with intriguing moments, interesting people and fascinating events. History is human and, therefore, it already is inexorably linked to us.”

Lower School History Third grade students studying California History with Heidi Gough cognize the three branches of the federal government while participating in a How a Bill Becomes a Law simulation. Each student plays the role of a congressperson who reviews a series of proposed bills – examples include weekly pizza lunches and swim parties – and decides whether to vote for or against them. On the lighter side, every January, Gough’s students get to show their history knowledge by dressing up as their favorite historical figures on Dress for History Day. Another favorite activity is a trip to Mission San Juan Bautista. “Traditional history classes that I experienced as a student were notoriously dull,” admitted Gough. “My goal is to spark students’ interest and show them the

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MAKING HISTORY COME ALIVE

fascinating aspects of learning history. “I see myself as a facilitator of learning,” Gough added. “I think a critical part of my job is to help students learn appropriate social skills, particularly in the areas of communication and real compromise. The events of history are filled with illustrations of bad events in humanity, many stemming from poor communication skills and an unwillingness to learn about others – both still true today. If I am going to make a difference in students’ lives and, hopefully, the future, it is going to be in this area.” For Tobias Wade, grade 4 World Geography and grade 5 U.S. History teacher, food is the glue that binds families together, so he uses food to illustrate history. Known for in-class screenings of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” Wade leads an annual Cultural Cookbook lesson involving students’ parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. As the children research and prepare a unique dish that represents their cultural background and heritage, they learn more about who they are and where they come from. The recipes are compiled into a cookbook students take home. For the last 20 years, fourth graders have been climbing on buses for a three-day, two-night trip to Coloma, where they explore the Outdoor Discovery School’s California Gold Rush educational program. A naturalist talks about area flora and fauna, meals are eaten outdoors, and a Native American docent lectures on indigenous culture. Parents even send handwritten letters that are handed out on the trip asking about their child’s westward travels and what life is like in the Gold Country, to stimulate thought. “By focusing on the learning process and not deadlines and due dates as much, students are able to learn in a relatively stress-free environment,” said Jared Ramsey, lower school history and social science department chair. “This promotes the love of learning, instead of completing work solely to get a desired grade.” 40

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A fifth grade U.S. history teacher, Ramsey uses Google Maps to geographically orient the major campaigns, theaters and expeditions of the Revolutionary War for his students, who plot these battles via the Web mapping service.

Middle School History The fun continues in middle school. “All history classes through middle school are survey courses that introduce students to a broad range of areas that include geography, religion, art, politics, economics and social organization for each civilization we cover in class,” explained Keith Hirota, middle school history and social science department chair and sixth grade Ancient History teacher. His students analyze topographic maps of Greece and use modeling clay to assemble raised-relief maps of the Balkans and the Peloponnese peninsulas. “Engaging students in hands-on activities, simulations and roleplaying helps them to learn better through personal involvement,” he said. In seventh grade World History with Chris

Photo by Monica Colvin

Caruso, classroom discussions take on a whole new meaning. Each month, students focus their attention on a different personal virtue or societal value such as compassion, fairness, gratitude or tolerance. Parent and student feedback, he noted, has been overwhelmingly positive.

– freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition – before a mock Supreme Court. Following the worldwide success of the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” they pen and perform original Bill of Rights-themed songs and raps to demonstrate their understanding of the otherwise heady material.

“Parents most certainly appreciate that their children are learning to become more grateful, more helpful around the house, more kind to their siblings. Students appreciate the opportunity to learn something that will help them in ‘real life,’ a skill that will need to be used even if they don’t enter into a heavily academic field,” said Caruso, whose students present their research findings on religious sites using cutting-edge technologies and tools like Piktochart for infographic design and NoodleBib for bibliographic formatting.

Those in Allen Lyle’s grade 8 U.S. History classes employ an old-school navigation method to roughly, often frustratingly, calculate the speed at which they walk, run, crawl and perform cartwheels. The log and line method, where a seafarer would toss the log (a piece of wood tied to a line) overboard and then time how many knots passed through his hands, was used by seafarers during the Age of Exploration to measure nautical knots – not an easy thing to do while walking!

Other teachers use a variety of activities to wedge information into busy middle school brains. As they study the Constitution, students in Ramsay Westgate’s eighth grade U.S. History classes try First Amendment cases

“This helps them empathize with explorers from centuries ago,” said Lyle, who also teaches sixth grade Ancient History. “It’s also a great way to combine multiple disciplines and make history a bit more real and active for students.”

“My

most important role is to help them lead good lives, to learn lessons from history.” —Chris Caruso , grade 7 history teacher

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“I

reject the premise that history is d‘ ead’and I also reject the premise that we need to link every idea back to the ‘now’ to engage students.” —Donna Gilbert, upper school history department chair

MAKING HISTORY COME ALIVE

Meanwhile eighth graders take a deep dive into the culture of the late 20th century. As part of a year-end capstonestyle project originally developed by Cyrus Merrill (who is on paternity leave this semester; Karan Lodha ’04 is his sub), students conduct extensive independent research, put together lesson plans and educate their fellow classmates on one of four decades – the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000s – in American history. These 45-minute presentations, made complete with period clothing and accessories, are a fun way for students to absorb a decade of cultural landmarks. Last year, Sofie Kassaras, now grade 9, and six other students represented the ’70s. “We made a skit describing the fashion, art, music and entertainment as well as a timeline depicting the important political events. I wore bell-bottoms and a baggy shirt,” recalls Kassaras. Throughout the years, in countless ways, Merrill has helped to make history come alive for his eighth graders. He held a 1920s speakeasy soirée at downtown San Jose’s Orchestria Palm Court. Students have written to legislators, lobbied the bureaucracy, Skyped and otherwise connected with former students now employed by the White House and the Department of State and participated in a number of other hands-on activities.

“My goal is not to teach the past but to teach and inspire students to engage in the present,” said Merrill, a former Fulbright Scholar, James Madison Memorial Fellow and Lyndon Baines Johnson Fellow. “As our values change in the present, so does our way of assessing or determining what to value in the past. I like to think of my subject as applied critical thinking – dead people just happen to be the topic.” Lodha, who studied government at Harvard University, recreated the classic board game Monopoly to help illustrate the Industrial Revolution. It features steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, and financier and railroad developer Jay Gould, and includes Chance and Community Chest cards swapped out for Industrial Revolutionspecific good and bad event cards. When he stepped in for Merrill, Lodha said, “Cyrus told me that it’s always wise to be the ‘guide on the side’ rather than the ‘sage on the stage,’ spending as little time as possible transmitting ‘knowledge’ from teacher to student and instead allowing students to guide their own acquisition and interpretation of information.” Like lower school students who travel to Coloma each year, eighth graders travel to Washington, D.C., where they tour as many of the national monuments and visit as many museums and other landmarks as possible in the whirlwind week. Arlington National Cemetery, the Capitol, Colonial Williamsburg, Ford’s Theatre, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the war memorials are just a few of the sites students become acquainted with.

Upper School History An educator for nearly 25 years and a National Endowment for the Humanities

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“The speakeasy activity helped me understand what it was really like to be in one.” —Nirban Bhatia, grade 11

grant recipient, Mark Janda has his ninth grade World History Honors students reenact Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” prior to reading it. That way, the students discover later on that they made the same choices as a group of prisoners chained to the wall of a cave. “I have a few students sit in front of a bright light and watch the shadows cast on a wall. I give them the freedom to move and see something else, but there’s always one who is content to watch the shadows, one who will explore a little and one who, if allowed, will explore well beyond the confines of the classroom – or the cave,” Janda said. “Obviously, we are interacting with the philosophy, but we are also discussing what it means to be a leader and then looking at what we look for in leaders. We may also consider what we do to people who appear outside the norm of accepted behavior or thought,” he added. Carol Green, who teaches 11th grade U.S. History and Advanced Placement United States Government and Politics, has students select a current member of Congress as their player, earning points from every media mention and sponsored legislation and losing points based on any negative publicity. “When they recognize patterns in human behavior and decisions that were made, and recognize that history isn’t just pages in a textbook but a complex web of individual stories coming together to create our past, they are better able to understand how we are where we are and how we can determine where we are going,” Green said.

Green also runs a “speakeasy” every year to immerse her students in that lively and pivotal period. The activity includes a door guard, period dress and delicious but chaste drinks and hors d’oeuvres. “The speakeasy allows students a chance to explore the 1920s, from learning the dance steps to listening to music from the decade,” said Green. “As they complete their 1920s ‘passport,’ they get a chance to learn about organized crime, culture, women’s rights and the economy. They are moving around the room and socializing using 1920s slang … thus being exposed through a variety of senses to U.S. history.” “The speakeasy activity helped me

understand what it was really like to be in one,” said Nirban Bhatia, grade 11. “These activities put an interactive spin on learning which is definitely necessary in all curricula, especially history. Generally, lectures or document analysis on certain topics don’t allow us to put ourselves back in time and have a true experience of what it was like back in the 20th century. This kind of activity allows students to participate and truly experience an event or culture that otherwise would’ve remained vague.” History teacher Katy Rees has her students participate in historical figure “speed dating”: students research a known

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MAKING HISTORY COME ALIVE

and the Progressive Era – times when there is a lot going on within a broader movement and more individual actors than we could otherwise talk about. “At the end of the exercise, students identify their ideological ‘soul mates’ and their ‘frenemies’ within the class. They gain a more nuanced understanding of the past and an appreciation for the role of individual efforts and experiences in bringing about change,” Rees said.

figure from a designated time period in just a day or two, then exchange data on the “date.” Students face each other across a table and exchange biographical information, the ideology or philosophy driving their subject’s work and the significance of their contribution to the period. They jot down notes about their date and, after four minutes, rotate to new dates. “On the day of the activity, they dress up as their subjects,” said Rees. “I find it helps them get into the role and thinking specifically about who their person was. I usually decorate with electronic candles, heart-shaped doilies, and a fireplace video at the front, as well as heartshaped treats on the table and music for ambiance. “I like the activity because it forces students to personalize the past and develop a connection with a specific individual. I’ve done this for the European Renaissance, Civil Rights movement

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The speed dating activity was a fun alternative to learning through lecture or reading, said Lauren Napier, grade 11. “Instead of memorizing each individual, their background and their ideals, divvying up the work amongst all of us and obtaining information through ‘speed dating’ was much more efficient and engaging. When it came time to be assessed on each person, I associated them with the different classmates who were assigned them, which made the information more memorable. It was great.” Learning went beyond the verbal exchange of data, though. “The activity actually made me feel like history was more ‘real,’” said Napier. “For example, within the women’s movement, there was a wide range of activists, some being extremely radical and others, not so much. The activity really helped to cover all of the aspects.” Classmate Elizabeth Schick, grade 11, agreed. “The activity changed my view on history and made me think about it differently because we kind of had a sense of maybe what people actually went through when trying to pass certain laws or even just have their ideas heard. We had to introduce our ideas to each other, and sometimes we had the same beliefs, but many other times we also had conflicting viewpoints that we

“Thanks to the Near grant, I had the opportunity to travel to the site of the actual battle and interview scholars at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, an unreal experience for a 17-year-old.” —Tyler Kotesky ’11 were able to discuss,” she said. “History is messy, and when we try to make it into a clear-cut, rote subject with concrete fill-in-the-blank responses, we rob it of its humanity,” Rees said. “My colleagues do a great job getting students out of their seats, into discussions, and thinking deeply about the issues of the past and present. We all learn from and share with each other.” Each teacher has a number of activities of this sort to enhance knowledge. Green recently introduced a new project where students curated their own museum exhibits about an individual and event, and “placed” their museum via a pin drop in Google Maps. The locations were displayed on a multilayer map. Rees, too, has other activities. “There have been so many activities in Ms. Rees’ class that I am starting to lose count,” said Napier, “but the one that sticks out most in my mind right now is the newspaper activity we had to do on the 1920s. It was fun because we

were able to research in any category that we wanted to, on any subject, but educational because we dove so deep into the ’20s. My favorite part was bringing in an apple pandowdy one of my classmates and I made that we baked using a rationing recipe. It might not have tasted the best because of the lack of sugar, eggs and butter, but, again, it took the project to a whole new level.”

Near/Mitra Endowments Finally, one of the unique ways Harker lets students learn about history is one of the most challenging. Each year more than 30 students apply for one of two endowments set up to encourage deep historical and cultural research; eight or nine students are chosen to participate. Overseen by Donna Gilbert and library director Sue Smith, The John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund and the Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities allow grantees to research a historical or social

topic, with the funding to be used for travel to relevant sites, libraries or other needed research sources. Tyler Koteskey ’11, one of the inaugural Near Endowment scholars, is an enthusiastic supporter of the program. His paper, “High Water Mark: Discussing the Impacts of National Power on Confederate Military Strategy through the Lens of the Gettysburg Campaign,” allowed him to delve into a subject deeply fascinating for him. “Thanks to the Near grant, I had the opportunity to travel to the site of the actual battle and interview scholars at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, an unreal experience for a 17-year-old,” Koteskey said. “Apart from inspiring me to continue studying the Civil War at UCLA, the grant made research papers a familiar task in my history and political science courses instead of the intimidating challenge they were to some of my peers. “The research skills I learned gave me a leg-up both in securing and working in internships early in my undergraduate years. These opportunities paved the way for my current job at the Reason Foundation where, every day, I apply the same techniques I first put to full use as a Near grantee seven years ago.” Contributor Jared Scott Tesler is based in Rochester, N.Y.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

sports

The winter and spring seasons covered 12 sports in three divisions on 53 teams. The result was an impressive 29 league champs, 11 upper school top five CCS academic champions and three top five state finalists. It was also a season for records, like the middle school boys winning the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first WBAL league track championship; or the upper school boys tennis team setting a school record for wins; or junior Vivian Wang swimming in the state championships for the second year in a row. Congratulations to all the talented student athletes. Go Eagles! Lower school track photos by Ed Hunter, parent.

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passion

Adventures in

Adolescence: Alumnus Writes for Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Teens

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WORDS BY JARED SCOTT TESLER PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK KOCINA

reativity and storytelling run through the veins of Andrew Shvarts ’03. Much of his childhood was spent dreaming up, jotting down and narrating elaborate stories. At Harker, Shvarts performed in countless plays and musicals – highlights include sinking his fangs into a fake rat during the production of “Dracula” as well as sliding off of the stage and into the orchestra pit during opening night of the upper school’s first musical revue – and produced an outlandish martial arts film as part of a video and motion graphics class. “I think on some fundamental level, I view the world through the lens of fiction and narrative,” said Shvarts, who is quick to credit three former Harker English teachers – Stephen Wells, Sylvia Harp and Sharron Mittelstet – with furthering his love of language, literature and composition. “It’s just hard-coded into how I think and who I am.” An English and Russian double major at Vassar College, he frequently videotaped student films – from comedies to crimes – and workshopped his own creative writing. Following college, where he had enjoyed lazy weekends playing video games with his friends, a job ad for a video game writer practically called his name. The position would entail creating weekly episodic content for Electronic Arts’ “Surviving High School,” thus beginning Shvarts’ foray into the world of young adult (YA) fiction. He would go on to serve as a producer for the video game company before assuming his current post at another, Pixelberry Studios, where he has been working as a designer for the past five years. While he sees merit in both, the writing of fiction, Shvarts acknowledged, remains quite different from the writing of video games. In his case, most of the games he has written, produced and designed fall under the category of interactive narrative. He essentially develops ways for players to create their own storylines. “If being a fiction writer is being an artist, being a game writer is being an architect,” he said. “You’re creating a space for someone to move into and make their own.” Shvarts is celebrating the springtime release of his debut YA novel, “Royal Bastards,” which he describes as “‘Game of Thrones’ meets ‘The Breakfast Club,’” comprising key elements that are characteristically associated with both the Primetime Emmy Award-winning fantasy television series and the quintessential 1980s coming-of-age film. “I think the book is about that precise moment in adolescence when you discover that your parents aren’t the idols you believed them to be, when you’re caught between a loyalty to the values you were raised with and the new perspectives that come with being exposed to the larger world,” Shvarts said. The first draft took him roughly seven months to write and two months to edit, with plenty of pacing and pots of coffee along the way. Contributor Jared Scott Tesler is based in Rochester, N.Y.

“I think on some fundamental level, I view the world through the lens of fiction and narrative.” —Andrew Shvarts ’03

For those who have not yet preordered their copy of “Royal Bastards” through Amazon, the author shares the following spoiler-free summary: “My main character is Tilla, the bastard daughter of a lord of a remote province, who desperately wants her father’s approval. At a feast, she’s seated at a table with a bunch of other bastards, like nerdy scholar Miles and brooding warrior Zell. They sneak out at night to take a secret trip to the beach, only to stumble upon their parents committing a horrific act of treason. Framed for the murder, the bastards have to go on the run, pursued by brutal mercenaries. Their only hope of clearing their names is to get to the capital and warn the king – but that means learning to work together to survive the journey.”

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Harker Innovates with

for the Classroom and Beyond 50

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WORDS BY JOÃO-PIERRE S. RUTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA

echnology is bred in the bone at Harker. Classrooms have enhanced learning hardware and software, students use a variety of technology tools in class and at home, and kindergartners through grade 12 students take challenging computer science classes. Teachers at Harker introduce students to high-tech tools they can use in a host of settings. STEM classes and hands-on experience are part and parcel of the school’s education that extends beyond computer science labs. Starting a decade ago, Daniel Hudkins, director of information technology service and support, helped pioneer the integration of various technologies throughout Harker’s campuses. Harker has always had the attitude that the process and the product were more important than the tool, so the school avoids relying on any one hardware or software product when competitive Editor’s Note: This is the first of three articles on the depth of technology use at Harker. Watch for parts two and three in subsequent issues.

alternatives are available, he noted.

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TECHNOLOGY

of direct supervision and appropriate education for self-monitoring. “We do not ‘embed’ any monitoring programs in the devices themselves, although some parents choose to add this on their own,” he added.

Early Days Harker, founded in 1893 as Manzanita Hall, opened its upper school in 1998. Long known for its science-heavy curriculum, the opening of a high school allowed Harker to continue its tradition of excellence while developing best practices as the high school grew. Both the middle and upper schools had the usual array of desktop computers for student use, but to ensure students had access to adequate tools, the school instituted a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy for the upper school in its third year, 2000-01, Hudkins said. The math department began using Mathematica for certain classes, requiring students in those classes to bring their own laptops, which laid the groundwork for more widespread BYOD plans. “By 2002-03, it was decided to require Mathematica, and therefore laptops, for all students taking pre-calculus or above, which extended the program to many other students,” Hudkins said. About the same time, computers were being introduced in the lower and middle schools. That use has now hardened into routine. “Apple iPads are frequently used in K-grade 2,” Hudkins said. “K-5 also have access to two Mac labs and a full class set of Mac desktops in the library.” Grades 3-5 students are provided with Chromebooks, with a 1:1 ratio of devices to students beginning in grade 4. Grade 5 students bring the devices home with them. 52

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One of the greatest advantages of having students bring their own devices to school, Hudkins said, is the ability to move “As tool sets continuously the classroom focus to the evolve, students might students’ work and the collaborate in a Google students’ control instead of In middle Hangout while preparing a spending time making sure school, presentation in Microsoft students are able to log students PowerPoint. Some students on, reach needed software, are issued might be participating etc. Furthermore, having schoolon an iPad.” students concurrently owned —Dan Hudkins, director of information use a variety of tools to technology service and support computers, collaborate means they with the and their teachers spend less time on choice of a Mac or PC. Students receive “click here” techniques and more time on administrative rights during grade 7. learning new skills. Students are responsible for bringing the device home for homework and back to “As tool sets continuously evolve, students class charged up. At the end of grade 8, might collaborate in a Google Hangout families can purchase the computer at a while preparing a presentation in Microsoft discounted rate. PowerPoint,” Hudkins said. “Some students might be participating on an iPad.” The The early requirements for Mathematica ultimate goal, he said, is to cultivate students to have laptops opened the door technology fluency – how best to find the to all students being permitted to register right tool for the task or problem, how to their own laptops for use at school. By learn how to use it and how to apply what the 2004-05 school year, Hudkins said, the it can do in effective, and sometimes even BYOD laptop program was required for all novel, ways. upper school students. With that change, all of the student-use desktops, except for journalism and graphic design, disappeared from Harker upper and middle school classrooms, though the lower school still supplies computers and one desktop resides in the middle school library. With so much access to technology, Harker aims to ensure that all devices are used safely and appropriately by students. The school uses graduated filtering of the internet on campus to control access to the Web, with the restrictions diminishing as students get older, Hudkins said. Most of the monitoring is done by a combination

The Other Half of the Equation: Software The use of software has intertwined with the adoption of hardware in the classroom. Supported apps and software include Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite and Apple’s software collection, to name just a few. A variety of operating systems, especially MacOS and Windows, are supported; at one time, a significant number of students used Linux variants. Students at Harker can use Google Apps

for Education, for example, to access Docs, Sheets, Forms, Drawings, Slides and Hangouts. “Google Docs has largely replaced Word in the [middle school] English classroom,” said Scott Kley Contini, learning, innovation and design (LID) director for grades 6-8. “The ability to collaborate live within a document has revolutionized English writing. Teachers can interact in real time with students and peer editing can happen in the moment.” Hudkins noted that in the upper school, research writing requires more complex formatting and Microsoft Word is more frequently used. The inclusion of technology in classrooms enhances Harker students’ education in myriad ways, Hudkins said. Via these apps and programs, students learn the rhetoric of presentation in a digital age, along with clarity of thought, synthesis of material and analytic thinking, he added. “Each software and platform has its strengths,” Hudkins said. “iPads offer focused simplicity. Chromebooks offer easy access that is not device dependent. Laptops offer local computation and storage not relying on the availability of the cloud.” Other software in use at Harker includes Logger Pro for digital data collection, Membean for vocabulary building, Wolfram Mathematica and Fathom for furthering math and statistics skills, and Minecraft for construction and synthesis, he said. “There is also a burgeoning list of tools used in the new Innovation Lab at the middle school,” he added.

For higher math levels, the Mathematica program is used selectively to allow students to manipulate mathematical equations as well as begin to explore mathematical logic in a similar way to computer programming, Kley Contini said. This software is used across professional engineering, science and computer disciplines, which can include 3-D image processing and data mining. Students also can use Desmos, which lets them manipulate mathematical variables and see instant output changes. By using these tools, Kley Contini said, math becomes more real for students and helps make connections to concepts that might otherwise get lost in a series or in word problems on paper.

Nelson, upper school computer science department chair. Computer science soon became a graduation requirement. Technology use began to spread in the lower and middle schools as administrators adapted curricula to build a foundation of computer classes to support the upper school requirements. “In the lower school, students were learning how to work with technology using AlphaSmart word processors and a computer lab,” Nelson said. “The middle school also had computer labs where the students began to learn some of the fundamentals of programming.”

The momentum driving Harker’s use of hardware and software built up incrementally, driven, to a degree, by upper school computer science class development.

Since those early computer science initiatives, Harker has developed a full K-12 program. “The major changes occurred when I became department chair in 2008,” Nelson said. “I saw the need for a two-track program in the upper school to address the wide range of abilities and interests in our students. I worked with the department faculty to create two paths through our developing program.”

Back in 2003, computer science classes were only available in the upper school in the form of AP Computer Science A, AP Computer Science AB and an introductory programming course, said Eric

The fast track was Advanced Programming, Nelson said, which fed into AP Computer Science A with Data Structures. The slower track was Programming to AP Computer Science A to Honors Data Structures. “The

Computer Science in the Classroom

All these apps and programs have real value, offering new approaches to understanding coursework. The Geometer’s Sketchpad software, for instance, is used heavily in geometry classes, Kley Contini said, letting students construct geometrical shapes, but the software can be used a variety of ways to understand math, “allowing students to play with mathematical equations and see visual representations of mathematical outputs.” H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

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content is the same, but the latter is done in four semesters rather than three,” he said. Students who complete those courses can then take Advanced Topics offerings: AI Expert Systems, AI Neural Networks, Programming Languages and Numerical Methods, which are taught by Nelson on a four-year rotation. Computer Architecture, and Compilers and Interpreters, are taught by two other faculty members on a two-year rotation. Courses are created and taught by faculty specializing in those fields, Nelson said. Harker also offers an introductory course called Digital World for students who really do not want to take computer science, but need to meet the graduation requirement. “The course is enriching enough where some students have moved on to programming after taking it,” he said. The formal computer science structure in the upper school brought new requirements to the middle school, which then resulted in a reworking of their entire program, Nelson explained. The middle school introduced computer science entry requirements for their students, which, in turn, influenced changes to curriculum at the lower school. As a result of this evolutionary process, Nelson said, Harker now offers computer science starting in the elementary school grades. “In kindergarten, the students learn the basics of algorithmic thinking using little robot bugs that get their instructions with cards that are placed on the floor,” he said. 54

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Lisa Diffenderfer, computer science department chair and LID director for K-grade 5, said the lower school computer science department has added a plethora of opportunities for programming with robots in recent years. Grade 1 students, for example, take computer science classes three times per week in their third trimester. “Students have the opportunity to learn programming fundamentals by programming a mini robot called a Bee-Bot,” Diffenderfer said. With its colorful, kid-friendly design, BeeBot is a tool for teaching young children problem-solving skills and estimation. Diffenderfer said students work as a team to move their Bee-Bot to specific areas on a game board, and use the related iPad app to practice using directional language and algorithmic thinking.

said. One is to support the robotics program by giving non-AP level students a stronger background. The other is to catch those students whose enthusiasm has gotten ahead of their abilities. “In other words, if they get a C in Programming, they can still continue in computer science [via the robotics courses], even though they could not move directly into an AP course at that point,” Nelson said. The AP computer science courses teach the students the foundations of objectoriented programming using Java with an emphasis on algorithmic thinking and good coding practices. Students learn to design and document first and then code second, which is an uphill battle even with professional programmers. “As my former colleague Richard Page was fond of saying, ‘four hours of coding can save you 10 minutes of design,’” Nelson said with a smile.

Students in grade 2 can work with another robot, called Dash, to learn programming fundamentals – but with visual programming to command Dash to perform specific tasks. The robot works with an app called Blockly that uses visual blocks rather than text to create code for Dash to follow.

Because of Harker’s rich computer science offerings in the upper school, and the structure that goes with them, the middle and lower schools had to adapt to meet the newer entry requirements, he said. That subsequently drove new entry requirements between grades and across divisions. As a result, Harker students get early introductions to algorithmic thinking, robotics and programming.

Robots are finding their way into other curriculum areas, Diffenderfer said. For example, there are plans to have fifth grade students in an English class program a robot to retrace Bilbo’s hero’s journey after they read “The Hobbit.”

“When combined with the science and mathematics offerings, as well as the research opportunities we have here, our students can discover early on if they have a passion for STEM and have opportunities to follow it,” Nelson said.

The robotics program is still growing, with changes made yearly at all levels, Nelson said. In the upper school the most recent additions are two robotics courses – one software- and one hardware-based – that sit between the programming and the AP courses (see Rise of the Machines, page 8, the story of Harker’s competitive robotics program).

Contributor João-Pierre S. Ruth is based in the New York City area.

These new courses serve two purposes, he

COMING UP In the fall/winter issue, read about the exciting things our younger students are learning about apps, bots and bytes in the classroom.

face time

at Walsh is a legend at Harker. The lower school math teacher has been at Harker since 1976, first as a summer camp coach, then dorm houseparent, and is retiring this year. He’s done it all, including driving a bus, coaching sports and organizing Harker’s Thanksgiving food drive for most of his career here. Students who went through his classroom remember him forever, and it’s clear from his interview that the passion he has for teaching, for his family, for volunteer work (and, oh yes, his obsession for the San Francisco Giants) is why his students love him so dearly. Walsh’s wife, Terry, whom he calls “the rock of our family,” worked at Harker for 35 years, and their three sons, Matt, Danny and Kevin, all attended Harker through grade 8.

What is something one of your parents said that you will never forget? My mother was a teacher, and she told me a teacher’s No. 1 job is to be an advocate for all of their students. And in order to be an advocate, one has to focus on a kid’s good qualities … and every kid has plenty of good qualities.

What was one of your funniest classroom moments? It’s embarrassing. Years ago while teaching third grade, I let my room mom, Melody Moyer, talk me into wearing a cupid outfit for the Halloween party. The kids were absolutely howling when they saw me. Now on Valentine’s Day, we play “Pin the Diaper on the Cupid.” It gets pretty silly, and they love it.

What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand? Childhood poverty and lack of opportunity. It breaks my heart. This is something I emphasize with my kids, too. I believe that those of us who have been blessed with abundance have a duty to give back to those who are less fortunate.

Where in the world are you the happiest? Family gatherings. I love to lay low and watch my sons talking with my friends and their other relatives. I learn a lot about them just by watching. All three of them are good men and interesting people.

What’s one of the favorite things you do in the classroom? One of the things all of my students comment on when I see them years later is the “letter.” Each year I have taught, I have my kids write a letter to themselves. The first part of the letter is a summary of their year in grade 5. For the second part of the letter, I ask them to look into the future and predict how they think their lives will change over the course of the next three years. I mail these out the week they are wrapping up eighth grade.

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performing arts

Spring was a busy time for the performing arts department. Instrumentalists and vocalists dazzled audiences at jazz and classical concerts. Dancers gave us “Circus” at the upper school, Dance Jamz at the middle school and the Bucknall Dance Concert. Kindergartners took a trip under the sea in “Go Fish,” grade 5 went to “Summer Camp,” middle school actors presented “Guys and Dolls” and audiences went wild over the Conservatory’s “High School Musical.” Senior theater students made their directorial debuts at Student Directed Showcase, and gave their final performances at Senior Showcase. Bravo!

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passion WORDS BY VIKKI BOWES-MOK PHOTOGRAPHS PROVIDED BY TIFFANY LIOU ’08

Alumna left tech job to move across country and pursue her dreams

hen Tiffany Liou ’08 arrived at Harker in seventh grade, she had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up. What she did know was that she was interested in a lot of different things, so she jumped in and got involved. “I remember her start to announcements at school meetings with her energetic ‘Hey, guysssss’ – drawing out the second word and giving her classic huge Tiffany smile,” said Evan Barth, upper school academic dean. “Her energy was contagious, and her peers loved to follow her lead as much as Tiffany enjoyed leading.”

While in college, she did a marketing internship at KGO-TV, an ABC-owned television station in San Francisco. As Liou crunched numbers for Nielsen ratings, she watched the newscasters and realized she wanted to be in front of the camera, not behind it. Although she was intrigued with broadcast journalism, she wasn’t sure about her next step. She took a job with Salesforce.com out of college but decided to take a TV broadcasting class at Ohlone College, which she absolutely loved. This led to an internship at KTVU, a Fox-owned station, and then she was hired as the overnight assignment editor.

From being president of the Spirit Club and serving on student council to playing varsity basketball and golf and participating in Junior State of America, Liou’s enthusiasm for life and learning led her down many different paths.

Liou juggled two jobs for more than a year, working at Salesforce.com by day and KTVU at night. She took catnaps in her car and learned the power of 5-Hour Energy shots, while working 70-80 hours a week.

“High school was one of the best times of my life,” she said with a smile. “Harker gave me opportunities to test the waters wherever I wanted to and taught me to always try new things.”

“Everything I’ve accomplished, I’ve earned through hard work,” she said. “I don’t think everyone can say they love their job, but I do!”

She attended Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, where she studied marketing and communications. 58

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Once she realized her dream, there was no stopping this driven young woman. Her first broadcast job offer came from West Monroe, La.

“This was one of hardest decisions I’ve ever made – to quit a great job at Salesforce in the Bay Area near all my family and friends for a producer job in Louisiana, a state I had never even visited!” she recalled.

“Her energy was contagious, and her peers loved to follow her lead as much as Tiffany enjoyed leading.”

stuck together and landed uninjured thanks to the leadership of our flight crew,” she reported. “I sent one viral tweet, and ended up on NBC Dallas, Today and CNN before I even started my first day of work. What an entrance!”

After some tears and soul searching, she knew she had to go for it. So she packed Her arrival in Oklahoma wasn’t as actionup and trekked across the country. This was packed, but she is now enjoying a full life her first stop on her broadcasting journey, there with her fiancé, Allen, and their two which has taken her from Louisiana to Iowa dogs, Suki and Bacon. —Evan Barth, to Oklahoma, where she is now a reporter upper school academic dean They are planning a wedding in March 2018 at KWTV News 9. She covers everything in the Bay Area – where Liou also hopes to from hard crime to tornados but always works to find a human fulfill her career dreams. She may not have known her passion element in her stories. when she started as a middle schooler at Harker, but she “There’s always a reason to tell a story because there’s always a group of people it impacts,” she reflected. Liou learned this firsthand on her way to a new job in Iowa, when her airplane had to make an emergency landing in Greenville, Texas. “Smoke filled the cockpit, panic was everywhere, but we all

definitely does now. As Liou said, “Reporting is my passion and I will go anywhere at any time to cover a story.” Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.

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Professional accomplishments of our faculty and staff.

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK KOCINA UNLESS

Upper School Art Teacher’s Work Appears in Two Exhibits In April, Pilar Agüero-Esparza’s work was featured in the ICONIC: Black Panther exhibit in Los Angeles, which showcased art inspired by the Black Panther Party. Later that same month, she was a featured artist in the stARTup Art Fair in San Francisco.

Preschool STEM Specialist Named Consulting Editor In January Robyn Stone was named a consulting editor for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which specializes in promoting the learning of children 8 years old and younger. In this role, Stone will help ensure the quality of NAEYC publications, which include books and the “Young Children” magazine.

Upper School English Teacher Published in Anthology In February, upper school teacher Jennifer Siraganian was among 50 poets to be published in the annual “Best New Poets” anthology. Siraganian’s poem, “Monroe, Washington,” was selected from 2,000 nominations for publication in the book, which is available through Amazon.

Spanish Teacher Presents at Language Conference In early March, upper school teacher Isabel Garcia presented on the classroom use of short films at the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching, held in Oklahoma. The workshop explained how short films can help students understand orally transmitted messages as well as use variations of a language’s structure both inside and outside the classroom. “ It was a great opportunity to present and share with fellow foreign language teachers my understanding of task-based learning,” Garcia said.

Photo provided by Isabel Garcia

Science Teacher Featured on Website Upper school teacher Chris Spenner was recognized as the featured teacher in May by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The AAAS website published a brief Q&A with Spenner, who shared his reasons for becoming a teacher, the accomplishments he’s most proud of and his love for astrophotography.

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class notes

Keep up to date on the lives of your classmates. Alumni from all classes through 1997 are listed under the years they would have completed grade 8 at The Harker School,

Harker Academy, Harker Day School or Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA). For all classes after the Class of 1997, alumni are listed under the class years they would have graduated from high school, regardless of whether they completed high school studies at Harker. For unlisted classes, we invite you to email alumni@harker.org if you are interested in becoming a class agent or would like to nominate a classmate. All photos submitted by the subject unless noted.

1985 Judge John Owens visited Harker’s lower school to speak to third graders about his career and take questions from the students. See our profile of John on page 16.

1992

and made significant contributions toward, advancing the programs of The Harker School. Toku gave a warm speech that included memories of Mr. Rosenthal during the dorm days. He also highlighted Mr. Rosenthal’s work benefiting young people, education and fundraising over his 30-plus year investment at Harker Academy and The Harker School.

1994 Leyna Cotran was the keynote speaker at an alumni networking luncheon held during the Harker Research Symposium last month. She focused on the important collaboration between academia and industry.

And here’s an interesting opinion piece by Wajahat in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/ opinion/sunday/do-muslims-have-to-bedemocrats-now.html

1996 Several members of the Class of ‘96 met at Campo di Bocce and celebrated 20 years since graduating from eighth grade! Class agent Andrea (Nott) Miles submitted a few photos of the event.

Pictured left to right are Patrick Fellowes, Elizabeth (Keezer) Isaak, Andrea, Wendy (Okimura) Diaz, Sheila Collins, Ann (Chu) Blomquist, Marlen Alcaraz and Steven Blomquist.

Toku Chen attended the March 18 Asia alumni reunion and presented Joe Rosenthal with the Carley Service Award at the alumni dinner on the Bund in Shanghai. The Carley Service Award recognizes alumni or friends who have unselfishly devoted their time and energy,

2003 Alumnus-in-the-media alert! Wajahat Ali has been busy. Here he is in a CNN point-counterpoint discussion on the U.S. Attorney General nominee. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=440KPaYH-kI

Andrew Shvarts published his first book! “Royal Bastards,” for teens and young adults, is the story of a castle lord’s disenfranchised “natural” children who are drawn into castle intrigue. Check out our profile on Andrew on page 48.

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class notes 2004

2008

www.facebook.com/sfsymphony/videos/ vl.554392084714335/1015457066852829 2/ ?type=1

The Washington Post made a wonderful video featuring employee Emily Chow. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=EqAHf3gMhUo

2009

Jessica Liu was married over the Memorial Day weekend to Tyler Chang Seaman, who was the boy next door all through their childhoods! Pictured (all ‘04 unless noted) are Vickie Duong, Jessica, Jen Lin and Jacinda Mein (front row); Nickisa Hodgson, Karla Bracken, Laena Keyashian and Christiana Rattazzi ’03 (middle row); and Tanya Schmidt ’08, Casey Near ’06 and Courtney Johnson (top row).

2005

Chetan Vakkalagadda graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in May. After eight years in St. Louis, he is moving to Chicago in June to start his internal medicine residency at Northwestern. The Class of 2006 met for a 10-year reunion in San Francisco just before Christmas. Alumni gathered to enjoy refreshments, appetizers and plenty of festive alumni company at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company. There were more than 50 people at the event, including faculty members Brian Larsen and Lisa Radice. It was a nice, long evening – folks stayed quite late catching up and enjoying a (only slightly embarrassing) slideshow of archive photos!

Adhir Ravipati received Positive Coaching Alliance’s National Double-Goal Coach Award. He was also one of four coaches selected out of more than 2,000 nominations to be featured on stage at PCA’s National Youth Sports Awards. Adhir is a football coach at Menlo-Atherton High School.

2007

D.J. Blickenstaff’s acting career continues to heat up. He will appear as “Arman” in three episodes of Netflix’s new series, “Dear White People,” which premiered April 28. Check him out in the trailer:

http://bayareane.ws/2qbbpBy

2006 Gail Nakano is a chemist, but has been a volunteer in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for seven seasons. The symphony did a great video featuring Gail: https:// 62

Stephanie Guo and Steven Tran met up in Copenhagen, Denmark, while he was on a business trip. Stephanie said Steven saw her Instagram post and reached out.

Jacqueline Rousseau recently married Tommy Morphet. They met as undergrads at Caltech. Natalie Torban was one of Jacqueline’s bridesmaids.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/BRi7bRfh6tx/ The show can be streamed on Netflix at https://www.netflix.com/title/80095698

Evan Maynard was the alumni speaker at this year’s Harker Research Symposium. Evan works at Blue Origin as a propulsion development engineer. His talk focused on making spaceflight more affordable, as well as the development of reusable rockets. Check him out on the video playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhDFHJVp47gbeo20rN2UwLgErCLQz0mkB

2009

Neha Sabharwal, attending Harvard Law School, is an avid runner and ran this year’s Boston Marathon as part of the Girls on the Run team. Neha became involved with the nonprofit organization seven years ago while an undergraduate student at Duke University in North Carolina, where the organization is based. Here’s a nice article about her: https:// www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/ community/177-features/54955-

2010

Several Harker classmates helped Kevin Zhang celebrate his birthday. Pictured left to right are Albert Wu ’12, Stefan Eckhard ’10, Jackie Ho ’10, Kevin, James Feng ’10, Karthik Dhore ’11, Sean Morgan ’10 and Kyu Bok Lee ’08.

Priya Sathaye got engaged! After graduating from Cornell, Priya started grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her fiancé, John, met while running out of their graduate student housing apartments when the fire alarm went off. They ran down 11 floors to the courtyard, and ended up cooking dinner together that evening. John is a Ph.D. student in the mechanical engineering department.

States. Ashvin was valedictorian and won a number of prizes while at Harker, including being named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search; he was also a John Near Endowment scholar. Michael Amick was drafted by Major League Soccer team the Portland Timbers! Read all about it at http://wp.me/pOeLQ-83J.

2011 James Seifert found himself on the stage once again with Cecilia Lang-Ree ’13 in Stanford University’s spring mainstage production, “The Wild Party.” James and Cecilia were in “Les Misérables” and “Pippin” together at Harker, and both were in Downbeat. Both will graduate from Stanford this year. Cecilia plans to continue at Stanford, working on her master’s in community health and prevention research.

2013 Pranav Sharma is the editor-in-chief of the Brown Journal of World Affairs (a journal similar to Foreign Affairs), which recently released an issue featuring scholarly work on global populism, India’s developing national identity, and art, identity and conflict (available for purchase at some Barnes & Noble locations). Maverick McNealy is currently ranked No. 1 on the World Amateur Golf Rankings and is tied with Tiger Woods on the Stanford alltime wins list. He was named one of three finalists for The Ben Hogan Award, given annually to the top male college golfer. It’s the third year Maverick has been nominated; the winner will be named after our press time. He also recently received the 2017 Byron Nelson Award. Read all about it in Harker News: http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8hh Ashvin Swaminathan was awarded a Soros Fellowship for New Americans, honoring the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United

Izzy Connell and Ryan Mui got engaged to each other this spring! Huge congrats to both of them. The news emerged at the annual Keller Tour, so the whole group celebrated! Read more about it in the Keller Tour story on the next page.

2015 Sarah Bean will be interning this summer at the studio of Alexander Wang ’98. She will be working in the merchandising department at the Broadway office in Manhattan. Ayush Midha is still winning debate awards – now as a Harvard student! He and his debate partner won the Rex Copeland Award, which is presented to the top college debate team in the nation. The duo won several invitational tournaments, giving them the best overall record of the year. The award was announced at the National Debate Tournament, held in March at the University of Kansas. Harker debate coaches Greg Achten and Jenny (Alme) Achten (yes, they recently married!) attended the tournament and were very proud to see Ayush receive the Copeland and make H AR KE R MAG A Z INE l SPR ING/SUM M ER 2017

class notes it to the quarterfinals of the tournament. “It is a ton of fun to watch our alums debate so successfully at the collegiate level,” said Jenny Achten. Greg Achten added that Ayush’s debate achievements are especially laudable alongside his rigorous pre-med course of study.

2016 Elisabeth Siegel has had her Harker Mitra grant paper, titled “Ideology through Subliminal Propaganda: A Critique of Portrayals of Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli and Western Online News Media during Operation Protective Edge,” published by Yale Review of International Studies! Read more at Harker news: http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8gh

Keller Alumni Tour

About Harker From its early beginnings in 1893 — when Stanford University leaders assisted in its establishment — to its reputation today as a leading preparatory school with graduates attending prestigious universities worldwide, Harker’s mission has remained constant: to create an environment that promotes academic excellence, inspires intellectual curiosity, expects personal accountability and forever instills a genuine passion for learning. Whether striving for academic achievement, raising funds for global concerns, performing on stage or scoring a goal, Harker students encourage and support one another and celebrate each other’s efforts and successes, at Harker and beyond. Harker is a dynamic, supportive, fun and nurturing community where kids and their families make friends for life.

HARKER MAGAZINE This is the second issue of the semiannual Harker Magazine, the offspring of Harker Quarterly, winner of CASE silver and bronze awards, and two Marcom platinum awards. Look for more in-depth features, fun profiles and great photos in our new magazine!

The annual alumni tour of Butch Keller, upper school division head, and his wife, Jane, upper school math teacher, began in March with a trip to Southern California to watch Izzy Connell ’13 in her final track meet as a Pepperdine student and have dinner with the rest of the Harker alumni at Pepperdine. Josh Tien ’13 and Alisa Wakita ’16 joined the Kellers and Connell for dinner the next evening where the group celebrated Connell’s engagement to Ryan Mui ’13, who had proposed that day. Mui is currently at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. “It’s a great opportunity to get to know Mr. and Mrs. Keller on a more personal level,” said Connell. The East Coast leg of the Keller Tour started with several fun-filled days in New York City. At their next stop, New Haven, Conn., the Kellers met up with Alyssa Amick ’15 for lunch and a tour of the Yale campus. They then had dinner with other Yale students at Elm City Social. In Ann Arbor, Mich., the Kellers toured the University of Michigan campus with Sheridan Tobin ’15, followed by lunch with Tobin and Arjun Ashok ’15 at the famous Zingerman’s Delicatessen. Dinner that night with other Harker alumni attending Michigan brought many smiles and plenty of laughter. “The sense of community at Harker has always been so special,” said Tobin, “and the Keller Tour was the perfect reminder of that.” The final stop brought the Kellers to the University of Washington. Sean Pan ’14 met the Kellers for lunch and a tour of the UW campus. “I was very glad to have gotten dinner on the Keller Tour at least once during my four years in college!” said Pan. Though it was a rainy trip, noted Jane Keller, “the weather could not dampen the joy in seeing our alums fulfilling their dreams in the next phase of their education.” Search for “Keller Tour” in Harker News for more details on this annual journey! 64

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PREFER TO READ ONLINE? You can opt out of receiving Harker Magazine by mail and just read it online at https://issuu.com/ theharkerschool. To be removed from the mailing list, email us at communications@harker.org. The Harker School is an independent, coed, collegeprep school serving preschool through grade 12. Preschool: 4525 Union Ave., San Jose, CA 95124 K-Grade 5: 4300 Bucknall Rd., San Jose, CA 95130 Grades 6-8: 3800 Blackford Ave., San Jose, CA 95117 Grades 9-12: 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, CA 95129 Produced by the Harker Office of Communication 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, CA 95129 communications@harker.org · 408.345.9273 NEXT EDITION: FALL/WINTER 2017

Harker’s Turning The 2018-19 school year will mark the completion of our historic 125th year (that’s the quasquicentennial, if you were wondering)! The 2017-18 school year will include some kickoff events as we ramp up the festivities. Harker was founded in 1893, and the journey from Manzanita Hall to The Harker School has been a momentous one. The 125th anniversary’s theme is “Reflect | Inspire | Achieve,” a triptych designed to honor the school’s past, present and future. Major celebrations include a soft kickoff at the opening of the new performing arts center next spring, and then, in the 2018-19 school year, a themed Family & Alumni Picnic and Alumni Home for the Holidays, and a gala to celebrate our past, present and future.

Call for Memories! We want to hear your favorite memories and anecdotes from your Harker days. Whether you are an alumni, alumni parent or former employee, we’d love to hear from you! Visit this page to share memories and learn details: www.harker.org/ about/history/harkers-125th. Do you have photos or video of Harker’s early days? We are searching for photos and videos we can incorporate into our anniversary celebrations. Email your photos to photos@harker.org. Or, you may deliver thumb drives or actual photos/videos to The Harker School, Office of Communication, 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, CA 95129. Please be sure all photos and photo files are clearly labeled with your name and class year.

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