The Harker Quarterly, Fall 2012

Orientations Get School Year Off to a Great Start

Harker Summer Learning Always Includes Scads of Fun! Paws, Jaws and Claws: the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic is Coming Up! Parents and Cisco Team Up to Enhance Campus with E-Signs, More FA L L 2 012 V o l u m e 3 路 N u m b e r 5

CoverPhoto Each year, Harker orientations are an opportu-

Harker QUARTERLY

nity for students to meet their teachers, class-

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rooms and classmates before the official start of

Pam Dickinson Director

school. Eric Bollar, grade 3, “jumped right in,” said Hillaray Carroll, his homeroom teacher. “We played an ice breaker to help build our classroom community. I asked the students to stand up and introduce themselves by stating their names and an event or trip they enjoyed this past summer. Eric eagerly volunteered to go first!” And Kyle Cavallaro, Harker photographer, got the magic shot.

AboutHarker

William Cracraft Editor Catherine Snider Copy Editor Kyle Cavallaro Photo Editor

Debbie Cohen Zach Jones Sara Kendall Mariah Bush ‘06 Mark Brada Diana Moss Jonathan Peele Stephanie Woolsey Devin Nguyen ‘12 Brianna Tran ‘11 Jennie Xu ‘12 Contributors Liat Noten ‘05 Distribution Blue Heron Design Group Rebecca McCartney Triple J Design Design Diamond Quality Printing Printing

From its early beginnings in 1893 — when Stanford University leaders assisted in its establishment — to its reputation today as a leading preparatory school with students 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’s library director and resident history buff Sue Smith had a very pleasant surprise over the summer: a visit from the grandson of Frank Cramer, the founder of Manzanita Hall, the school that eventually became The Harker School. Tom Lasley and his wife, Jayne, live in

Harker News Online (HNO) was launched in April 2009 and reports timely news on the activities, programs and accomplishments of The Harker School and its students, faculty and alumni. You can subscribe to HNO via RSS feeds or a daily digest email alert. Visit http://news.harker.org/.

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Southern California, but made a trip up to the Bay Area to show their own grandchildren some of their family’s

Printed on 100% recycled paper

old haunts.

Smith and Office of Communication staffer Catherine Snider showed the Lasley family around the campus on a peaceful Saturday afternoon, being sure to stop at the history wall in the main building and the current Manzanita Hall, named, of course, in homage to Cramer’s original institution. It was Manzanita Hall that became Palo Alto Military Academy, which in turn merged with Miss Harker’s School for Girls to become Harker Academy and later The Harker School.

Details of Cramer’s life have been hard to come by, so Smith and Lasley had a very pleasant hour catching each other up on photos, old documents and stories. “I feel like we’ve filled in some big gaps in our knowledge of our school’s founder,” said Smith, “and we’ve made plans to continue to share documents and information. It was such a

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

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 Published four times a year, Harker Quarterly showcases some of the top news, leading programs, inspiring people and visionary plans of the greater Harker community.

Produced by the Harker Office of Communication 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, CA 95129 communications@harker.org · 408.345.9273

wonderful surprise to meet Frank Cramer’s descendant!”

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Harker Summer Learning Always 10 Includes Scads of Fun!

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Advancement

Greater Good

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Milestones

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By Christopher Nikoloff Head of School

2012 Matriculation Addre ss

Head of School Urges Students

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ood morning. I’d like to welcome the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty, staff, and the classes of 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013 to today’s matriculation ceremony. Matriculation is a tradition at the Harker upper school during which all freshmen and new students commit themselves, by signature and oath, to the values of honesty and fellowship, among others. You can walk the halls of the campus knowing that all

of your classmates have committed themselves to these values.

Mr. Keller and I have the privilege of offering a few words today. Most of the time these brief addresses take the form of an aspiration we have for the student body, something we hope you will keep in mind during the year.

You will be relieved to hear that I am continuing the tradition of confining my aspiration for you to one page of single-space, size 12 font.

Today I want to talk about jam sessions and my hope that you will have many of them this year.

What do I mean by jam sessions? They have nothing to do with jelly. On good days, when I have the fortitude, I begin my day with a short run in my neighborhood and a brief meditation on my front balcony. Meditation, it has been said, is an activity done for its own sake. If you are meditating to become a better person or some other purpose then you are not meditating. The philosopher Alan Watts describes meditation as a sort of digging the present moment.

Getting with the universe. Perhaps Will Smith would call meditation, “Getting jiggy with it.”

When I meditate I face east, where I am from, and often my thoughts drift to my past. Recently while I was meditating, thoughts of my friends from junior high and high school floated up. I recalled how we used to have what we called “jam sessions,” by which we meant two distinct activities. First, and most obvious, we held musical jam sessions, during which we improvised, or jammed, and played rock songs popular at Ph oto

the time. I played the drums and a little bass guitar while

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my friends played other instruments. They were all more

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skillful musicians than I was but none of that mattered at the time. We played music just to play music, to swing with it, to get with the universe.

The second activity, less obvious, was getting together and talking all night, just to talk. We talked about everything: music, authors, teachers,

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to Jam and Find the Flow parents, friends, the future, girls and more girls. We talked just to talk, and this, too, was a form of improvisation, a digging the moment.

This is what I hope for you in your high school career, many jam sessions, and not necessarily in the form of music or discussion although those are perfectly fine ways to jam. What I want for you is the spirit of jam sessions, getting lost in an activity for its own sake.

This is the point of most religions, though an often forgotten point. It is also the meaning of music and dance. Alan Watts points out that music and dance are activities done for their own sakes, that music and dance are significant of themselves, not something else. We don’t dance to

“

What I want for you is the spirit of jam sessions, getting lost in an activity for its own sake.

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get to a specific place in the room, nor do we play music to reach the end of the song. The original spirit of religious activity is to put you in touch with the powers of the life so that you understand that those powers are you. That is why people sing in church, to “get with it,” “it” meaning everything.

That is a jam session.

I remember chaperoning a sick student on a bus in Washington, D.C. He was sleeping in the back and

two local bus drivers were in the front bantering about who was the best prophet in the Bible. One bus driver said that Ezekiel was the best prophet there ever was. The two started working themselves up in a religious frenzy, right there.

One said he was having a moment. The two didn’t need a church or a preacher. The bus was their church, the spirit of the moment their preacher.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this “flow,” when the doer and the deed, the actor and the activity are one. My friends and I called them jam sessions. Whatever you call them, I wish for you today that you get lost in some activity for its own sake, without regard to grades, popularity, college admissions or outcomes of any kind. It is hard to do and probably unrealistic to want to be this way all the time. But if you taste it once or more, as many of you have, you will at least get a glimpse of what it is like to not exist, to be one with an activity, a cause, something greater than yourself. If you have a jam session you may find something bigger than yourself to love, or you may find that you yourself Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

are more, way more, than you ever imagined. Thank you.

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r e h t a e ic!

F n c i P y l A i m a f eF h o t o t s d ing k r c i o l B are F …

The whole school is “buzzing” with excitement about Harker’s 62nd annual Family & Alumni Picnic! With the Paws, Jaws & Claws theme promising “feathers, fur and fun” for the entire family, there is definitely anticipation in the air. From the magnificent student show in Central “Pawk” to the specialty games along the brand new avenue in “Tooth Town,” packs of picnic-goers are looking forward to the promise of this year’s theme.

Walking down the “Wild & Wooly Walkway” will be just the start of a day filled with amazing animal entertainment, all new carnival games, specialty themed activities, delicious festival food and more. Picnic day brings the Harker community together to relax, have fun and enjoy a fabulous family day.

Every Dog has Its Day

Everyone needs an admission pass to enter the picnic. All adults and school-age students pay admission to this oneof-a-kind “fun-raising” event. Young children and adults over 75 are admitted free!

Buy passes in advance for $10 each at www.harker. org/picnic until Oct. 5.

Sun., Oct. 14 , 20 10 a.m.-4 p.m 12 .

Blackford Campus

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Admission is $15 at the gate on picnic day.

Come Out of Your Shell and Sell!

Our students are “happy as clams” because they’ve been selling grand drawing tickets (in record numbers) to support our school. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, co-workers and neighbors are “digging” into their pockets and purchasing tickets to support the students’ efforts. Tickets are just a dollar each and the more students sell the more they help us raise money for Harker’s endowment fund.

Incentive prizes are keeping the students excited, as they earn free dress passes, stuffed lobsters, themed bandanas, special trips and more. Tickets may be purchased in advance from a student (or faculty

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member) or at the raffle ticket booth on picnic day.

Five lucky grand prize winners will take home a new Google tablet, a Trek mountain bike, an iPad2, a trip to Las Vegas or $10,000 cash! The grand drawing takes place on the stage in Central “Pawk” at 4 p.m. on picnic day.

Stay and Play

This year picnic committee members will transform Harker’s annual silent auction into a glamorous and glitzy “Claws” Vegas venue complete with a “snappy” roulette wheel and Elvis impersonator. As usual the auction will be filled with wonderful trips, perfectly planned packages, gourmet experiences and one-of-a-kind items, all beautifully displayed and ready for bidding.

“Claws” Vegas is sure to have something for everyone, with plenty of specialty items that appeal to adults and Harker teacher packages for students, who look forward to “rolling the dice” on outings and adventures with their favorite teachers. No gambling necessary with our special signup boards. All are winners when they add their names to the list for some of the most popular activities including sleepovers, game nights, a baseball trip and paintball.

Auction proceeds help raise funds for the school, so what happens in “Claws” Vegas will certainly make staying and playing an absolute must.

Silent auction donations are still needed and much appreciated.

Contact us at 1-800VisitClawsVegas (just kidding). Check the picnic website for a donation form or give us a call with your donation ideas!

By Kyle

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Top Dog Sponsors are Best in Show!

Thanks to the generosity of our loyal Harker families, alumni, friends and local businesses, the family picnic festivities get more and more fabulous every year. Sponsorships are essential to the overall success of the event and each year our big-hearted sponsors show their unique “pedigrees” and add their names to the list of those who help make the event extra special.

All new this year, we are offering premier sponsor packages designed to enhance the family experience on picnic day.

Premiere sponsors will enjoy unlimited play wristbands that allow children to play carnival games and activities without the worry of long strings of tickets (along with many other great perks). It’s a “dawggone” good idea that will certainly be a hit with carnival goers young and old.

There’s still time to join a growing list of generous sponsors. Visit the picnic website for more information about sponsorship opportunities and benefits. As always, volunteer participation is deeply appreciated … talk about “man’s best friend!”

Photo by Pam

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Welcome to Tooth Town

Each year the Blackford gym transforms into to a bustling picnic village filled with games, prizes, yummy treats and full-on fun. This year, visitors will be delighted by the changes as “Tooth Town” takes on a whole new look.

The T-Town city planners have redesigned “Mane St.” to allow our traditional venues like child, adult and teen wheels to shine, while highlighting the newest attractions like the all new “Mammal Mania” and delicious expanded food selections. Plan to stop by and take a “big bite” out of the action!

Groups of “Wild” Alumni Expected

Clearly, among the favorite “sightings” at the family picnic are loyal and fun loving alumni. With a 62-year history, this event attracts a variety of alumni “species”… from middle school graduates from the ‘80s to recently “released” college students.

What a treat it is to see so many return and what a pleasure for them to “roam around” reconnecting with fellow classmates and reminiscing about days of picnics past.

The alumni relations office is once again hosting a barbecue luncheon from noon to 1 p.m. in the shady alumni grove (immediately following 8

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the grand student stage performance) for alumni young and old. Legendary sausage sandwiches (and more) with a variety of delicious treats for all ages will be served.

The alumni picnic barbecue hit record numbers last year, and this year’s picnic planning committee is hoping for more attendees to celebrate Paws, Jaws and Claws!

More information on admission, special presentations and activities for alumni is available on the picnic website.

“Lion” Around on Campus

Lower and middle school students won’t want to miss the opportunity to sign up in the “Claws” Vegas silent auction room for our much-loved picnic sleepovers. These overnight events are as traditional as the picnic itself as hundreds of excited students pack their pajamas, sleeping bags and toothbrushes to spend the night in the gyms at Saratoga and Bucknall. Supervised by some of Harker’s most favorite teachers, BEST staff and summer counselors, sleepover nights are jammed packed with games, special treats, and classic activities such as midnight dodge ball, glow stick tag and scavenger hunts. Each campus has a limited number of spots available, so stop by the silent auction as soon as you hit the “Wild & Wooly Walkway” to sign up.

FAMILY PICNIC

Sun., Oct. 14, 2012 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Blackford Campus

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Photos By Kyle Cavallaro

L to R: Becky Cox, Kelly Delepine, Kim Pellissier, Fred Carr, Patricia Soraire, Tiffany Hurst

L to R: Cindi Gonsalves, Robyn Peetz, Janet Rohrer, Shalini Jain, Ingrid Semenza

L to R: Janet Savage, Lalitha Kumar, Heekyung Cho, Shankari Sundar, Mei-Chen Yu, Sandhya Jagadeesh

Our Perfect Pack Once again Harker’s devoted volunteer picnic committee has given their all to make this event a tremendous reflection of the entire community. Through their efforts comes loyalty, dedication, creativity, hard work, team spirit and so much more. Harker staff can’t thank this talented

For more info visit us at www.Harker.or g/picnic

“pack” enough.

Brother and Sister Duo Have Fun Baking with Chocolate at Picnic Package Event Photo by Stephanie Woolsey

By Stephanie Woolsey Editor’s note: Stephanie Woolsey, lower school math teacher, hosted a picnic package last year and was kind enough to give us an update on how it went!

This past spring, Andy Lee, now grade 4, and his sister, Ally, grade 2, joined me at my home for a chocolate baking party. The Lees chose three chocolate baked goods from a list of Woolsey family favorites to prepare together as part of my picnic package item. With guidance, the siblings measured, poured and stirred, creating molten chocolate lava cakes, chocolate chip cookies and double chocolate brownies. I was impressed with how considerate Andy was, as the older brother, in making sure that Ally had an equal turn in the creation of the baked goods. The appetites of these two were also impressive – they baked and ate a lot of sweets in one afternoon! In keeping with their consideration for others, the siblings brought home the extra treats to share with mom and dad.

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Photo by Brianna Tran, ‘11

Summer Stories by Debbie Cohen

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arker’s campuses were a hubbub of summertime activity as the school opened its doors to the public, extending its huge variety of programs to local students, both Harker and non-Harker, and to students from around the globe.

Photo by Devin Nguyen ‘12

This year saw a potpourri of summer programming options: from Camp+ for younger children, to the Summer Institute for middle and high school students, to a bevy of sports offerings, and the world renowned English Language Institute program.

Much thought went into the new sports camps, which integrated lower school and middle school athletics with upper school instructors to create a seamless path for athletes within their chosen sports.

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At Harker, known for its academic excellence, athletic camps were just one of the summer options. For K-6 students, Camp+ offered a full day of morning academics and afternoon activities. Located on Harker’s lower school campus, parents chose sessions by their preferred format, with full-day, partial-day and morningonly options. Students had the choice of enrolling in either Core Focus or LOL (Learning Opportunities in Literature). Both programs concluded at 11:30 a.m. to make room for the afternoon activity program, which lasted until 3:30. Core Focus is a three- or four-week math and language arts-focused program.

LOL is a two-week integrated curriculum centered on a literary theme. After-care was provided until 5:30, which included pool time, archery and a climbing wall, among other activities.

Meanwhile, The Harker School’s Summer Institute (SI) gave students from grades 6-12 the chance to earn credits, learn new skills and follow their passions. This year’s institute attracted 722 students, with many taking multiple courses. New offerings were art classes, including portfolio preparation in 2-D and 3-D drawing. The for-credit courses included a variety of classes in math, history and technology. Upper school enrichment courses spanned math, writing, art, history and driver’s education. Middle school enrichment

was also offered, and included several core subjects as well as classes such as So You Think You Can Cook? and Champion Chess. All SI participants had access to the libraries, pools and a prepared lunch.

In addition to sports offerings, Camp+ and SI, each year more than 100 international students – from elementary through high school – participate in Harker’s renowned English Language Institute (ELI) program.

They come with the goal of improving their English speaking and writing skills but leave with a breathtaking exposure to cultural adventures as well.

It may be an old cliché, but when it comes to educating these foreign students, the world really is their classroom. Weekly field trips provide international students exposure to local points of interest such as the Golden Gate Bridge, beautiful California beaches, Northern California redwood forests and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The trips are incorporated into the curriculum and students use their travel experiences to create written and oral projects for presentation.

Photo by Brianna Tran ‘11

In fact, for the last 50 years Harker has served as a recognized resource for a wide breadth of summer happenings. New this season was expanded programming for the sports camps. According to Kelly Espinosa, director of summer programs, Harker has always had tennis, soccer, swimming and sports performance camps. But added this year were football, basketball, volleyball and water polo camps.

a morning sports program had the option to enroll separately in another camp’s afternoon activity as well.

HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

“Harker has been offering outstanding summer programs, held on the school’s safe, secure and centrally-located campuses, for more than 50 years. We have everything a camp consumer could want,” said Espinosa, noting that whether just out of preschool or about to enter

their last year of high school, students of all ages and backgrounds can find their perfect summer program at Harker.

For more information on Harker’s summer offerings visit www.summer.harker.org.

Book Learning in the Morning, Sunshine in the Afternoon

Defines Camp+

This year, a spirited four-way game of “color clash” kicked off the beginning of Summer Camp+. The traditional event, held in the Bucknall gymnasium, saw team groups yellow, red, green and blue competing in an array of activities coached by enthusiastic camp counselors.

Standing near a door leading out to the gym’s lobby, the camp’s art specialist Arwen Lange explained, “This was an easy way to bring all the campers together in one spot, to unite them as a group and raise the camp spirit.” Lange, who also works as assistant director of the lower school’s BEST program, said this is her second year working at the summer camp, an endeavor she plans to continue.

music workshops open to instrumental students entering grades 2-6 with at least one year of experience playing violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, trombone, guitar, piano or percussion.

These two-week workshops offered exposure to music theory and composition, improvisation, ear training, singing, ensembles and full orchestral playing. A concert was performed at the end of each session and a recording and printed score given to each student.

Photo by Devin Nguyen ‘12

Students have the choice of enrolling in either Core Focus or LOL (Learning Opportunities in Literature). Both programs conclude at 11:30 a.m. to make room for an afternoon activity program.

Core Focus is a three- or four-week math and language arts-focused program. LOL is a two-week integrated curriculum centered around a literary theme.

Wearing hula skirts, capes and silly hats, counselors kept the huge room filled with enraptured campers. It was all part of an effort to unite and welcome Harker’s youngest summer camp participants as a group.

Photo by Jennie Xu ‘12

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ocated on Harker’s lower school campus, Summer Camp+, where K-6 students have a full morning of academics followed by fun, actionpacked afternoon activities, offers full, partial-day and morning-only options.

“Making music can be isolating,” said Louis Hoffman,

Officiating at the event was Joe Chung, director of Summer Camp+, who took center stage, flanked by colorful balloons and banners celebrating the teams. Decked out in yellow and sporting a bright hat adorned with a huge slice of cheese, he held timed contests for the enthusiastic campers. During one event, the pass the hula hoop activity, there was a four-way tie … a first time in camp history!

New this year, under the rubric of morning academics, were expanded n ‘11

Photo by Brianna Tra

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Harker’s K-5 instrumental coordinator, who started the program with the goal of keeping his students playing over the summer. “Often what happens with learning an instrument is that kids work hard all year, then stop during

the summer, and have to start over or even worse, get frustrated and quit.

My goal is to keep students engaged.”

no matter what camp option they ultimately select, is the overriding goal of Summer Camp+.

Indeed, noted Chung, keeping young students engaged over the summer,

Drum-Making and Field Hockey Share Time with Robotics and Algebra at Summer Institute

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or middle and high school students, summer at Harker is an opportunity to both get a leg up academically and relax and have fun – the best of both worlds!

In the afternoon, middle schoolers participated in a range of group activities, while high school students had drop-in access to the library, pool, art room, Ping-Pong table, basketball courts and study spaces. For all grades, an on-site prepared lunch was included as part of the overall program.

the institute, he said he especially looks forward to all the fun afternoon activities.

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

According to Chris Florio, director of the SI program, the wide range of choices and flexibility allows each student to Photo by Brianna Tran ‘11 design a schedule around his or her own academic needs and personal interests, giving everyone Middle school activities just the right mix of summer activity, included sidewalk art and tiki learning and fun. masks, having water wars and boogie board relays in the pool, Sophia Angus, a second-year Harker playing Hawaiian handball in student who will be entering grade 6 the gym, and going on field this fall, said it was her initial experience trips to the beach. going to camp at the lower school that prompted the switch to becoming a On one particularly gorgeous year-round Harker student. She said the sunny day, a group of SI participants best thing about SI, and Harker, are “the were immersed in an exciting game of incredibly supportive people,” including street hockey out on the front blacktop. her coaches, teachers and friends.

Meanwhile, another group was equally engaged in a drum-making activity on Although it was her first time at a the adjacent field.

Harker summer program, Jenna Sadhu, grade 7, has been attending Taking a break on a bench on the school since kindergarten. the sidelines, participant “Yeah, I’m a Harker K-lifer,” she Daniel Liu Miller, 11, said enthused, noting how much she he learned about has enjoyed meeting new summer the program from friends. “It’s more laid back than a friend who during the regular school year … with attends Harker. more activities and freedom. I’m really Now back for glad Harker made the Summer Institute his second and highly recommend it!” year at

By combining a morning academic program with afternoon activities, Harker’s Summer Institute (SI) gives students in grades 6-12 the chance to earn credits, learn new skills, follow their passions and have a whole lot of summer fun.

Open to all students in those grades, a total of 722 students enrolled in the program this summer, more than half of whom were non-Harker students. The institute’s learning program, held in the morning, offered rigorous for-credit courses such as algebra, economics and programming, as well as non-credit opportunities for enrichment and growth like creative writing, drawing and robotics.

Photo by Brianna Tran ‘11

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HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

The globally recognized program attracts international students ages 6-16 who are bound for either American boarding schools, universities or internationallybased, primarily English-speaking schools. They come to ELI to prepare for and increase their chances of admission to their next educational institution.

“ELI is a smart thing, and a good idea.

It’s a unique opportunity,” said Joe Rosenthal, Harker’s executive director of advancement. Rosenthal noted, “In our culture we place great emphasis on finding meaningful work and helping to make the world a better place.” He noted former ELI participant Alexander Wang MS ’98, now a major figure in the fashion world, quickly worked his

way into regular Harker classes after spending time in the ELI program when young.

The most advanced ELI students, usually middle and high school-aged, stay at the Saratoga campus and work on special projects tailored to their needs, including SAT preparation.

They are assisted by mentors (called buddies or conversation partners) who are Harker juniors, seniors or recent graduates.

Photo by Brianna Tran ‘11

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arker’s 2012 English Language Institute (ELI) program kicked off with a welcome reception for ELI participants and their guardians on June 24 and ran until mid-August.

Photo by Devin Nguyen ‘12

Language and Culture are Wrapped in Fun at English Language Institute

For the younger ELI students, instruction takes place at Harker’s lower school campus. At the conclusion of formal instruction each day, learning for these students continues with enrichment programs, such as swimming and playing games. Often they are able to join in activities with children attending the regular onsite summer camp, allowing them to have fun while improving language skills. They also enjoy outings to such kid-friendly locations as “Pump it Up!”

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On field trip days ELI students of all ages can be seen sporting green program T-shirts

as they head out for cultural adventures to such diverse attractions as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Exploratorium, Academy of Science, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Santa Cruz Natural Bridges State Park and the Tech Museum.

Often times these children are so busy having fun, the learning doesn’t even feel like hard work. “I like reading and playing with my friends,” enthused ELI first-timer Lily Yang, 8, who came to the program knowing little English.

At the end of their time at Harker, ELI students, upon full completion of either a three- or sevenweek course, are eligible to receive a certificate (handed out during an official closing ceremony) and recommendation from their teachers. They will also have likely gained new friendships and increased confidence in their ability to travel, speak and learn in the U.S.

“I like reading and playing with my friends.”

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—first-time ELI student, 8-year-old Lily Yang

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HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

Student Summer Updates

By Zach Jones

Read the full stories about student activities in Harker News Online!

By Jonathan Peele

Harker’s growing accomplishments at NJFL Nationals have occurred under the leadership of Karina Momary, the director of middle school forensics. This year the school also welcomed new assistant coach Marjorie Hazeltine, who has ably coached the fledgling group of speech competitors.

The returning middle school students look forward

June 18, earning one of only three allaround school of excellence awards at the National Junior Forensic League (NJFL) National Championships in Indianapolis.

This honor recognizes the combined accomplishment of the 26 students who competed. The team also extended their streak as one of the five recipients of the school of excellence in debate award to three consecutive years.

Aditya Dhar, now grade 8, earned an individual national championship Harker’s third straight. He was joined in the final round of congress by teammate Alexander Lam, grade 8, who earned second place.

Harker also enjoyed its best performance to date at nationals in policy debate by advancing all three teams it entered.

Numerous public forum debate teams advanced to elimination competition as well.

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Photos provided by Karina Momary and Jonathan Peele

Harker’s middle school speech and debate team capped another strong season on

Photo by Carol Green

The all-around school of excellence award was made possible by a breakthrough for Harker’s forensics program, as the school entered a significant number of students in the speech events for the first time.

Though the middle school speech program is new, several students excelled at the tournament.

Middle School Forensics Team Named AllAround National School of Excellence

Harker Team Captures National Championship in Public Forum Debate at National Tournament Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona, now seniors, were crowned national champions in public forum debate at the National Forensic League’s national tournament on June 15. Recent graduates Akshay Jagadeesh ‘12 and Aakash Jagadeesh ‘12 (no relation) reached the top 30. The tournament featured more than 260 teams, and thousands of students across the country competed just to qualify for the tournament.

Harker also won a school of excellence award in the debate category. These awards are given to schools with multiple successful teams.

to continuing their tradition of success next season in preparation for the 2013 NJFL Nationals in Birmingham, Ala. Photo by Carol Green

Journalism Students Went to Hawaii to Prepare for 2012-13 Year Upper school journalism students, accompanied by journalism teacher Chris Daren, history teacher Julie Wheeler and Evan Barth, dean of studies, spent two weeks at the end of June on Maui for this year’s annual trip, preparing for the challenges of the upcoming school year.

Staff members for the yearbook, the Winged Post student newspaper and the Harker journalism news website TalonWP.com gathered to plan for coverage, learn how to use the tools of the trade and, most importantly, hone their real-world journalism skills taking photos, interviewing locals and writing and publishing stories about their experiences on the island.

The students spent the first few days of the trip discussing the incoming school year and prospecting for stories. Students discovered a local artist carrying on the traditional South Pacific artistry taught to him by his grandfather and told his story, in addition to publishing a detailed review of the nearby Makena Beach.

The second week started with an interview at the Maui Academy of Performing Arts (MAPA), whose staff discussed their latest production, “Narnia.”

Later, the journalists got a firsthand look at the process of harvesting, preparing and skinning pineapples.

A highlight of the trip was the trek up the face of the enormous Haleakala, the shield volcano that makes up more than three quarters of the island of Maui.

As the students reached the crater, the swirling expanse of clouds made for a breathtaking visual. The group later took a trip along the road to Hana, famous for its gorgeous scenery.

The final few days of the trip were packed with activity, starting with a double dose of live theater and finishing up with, of course, surfing lessons.

Photo provided by Anthony Silk

HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

Harker InvenTeam Visits MIT for EurekaFest Harker’s InvenTeam visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June for this year’s EurekaFest, an annual event held by Lemelson-MIT for young inventors. 2012 graduates Prag Batra, Sachin Jain and Arihant Jain, along with grade 12 students Shantanu Joshi, Wilbur Yang and Ramakrishnan Menon and grade 11 student Nikhil Dilip, were at the event to showcase the invention that won them funding in this year’s InvenTeam contest. Their project, an aquatic thermoelectric generator that can produce solar energy without the need for expensive panels, won them

a $9,110 grant in the fall of last year to build a prototype.

During their time at the event, the team toured MIT’s wind tunnels and fusion lab, and participated in a 20-minute design challenge in which they were randomly placed into teams which were then instructed to build a free-standing structure made with balloons. They also attended presentations that showed them how to market their inventions, and saw presentations by the collegiate and industrial winners of the InvenTeam competition.

Harker Students Inspired at Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Conference Current juniors Andrew Wang and Namrata Vakkalagadda attended the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Northern California Seminar in mid-June, held at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga. Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY for short) is a national organization that seeks to build principles of service and leadership in high school students. Students are selected by their schools to participate in HOBY events, where they participate in leadershipbuilding activities, hear from important figures in a variety of fields and more.

“There were many activities that essentially made us ask ourselves how we would behave in certain circumstances that questioned our decision-making skills or our opinions,” said Wang.

Students also learned about different types of leadership, such as personal leadership, group leadership and society leadership.

“One of my favorite activities was where we answered a set of questions and found out which ‘color’ we are. Each color represented certain qualities that person possesses,” Vakkalagadda said.

People of the same color were then put into groups and told to build a tower with the materials provided. “Each group had a very different experience, but all the towers failed. The activity showed us how all four types of leadership are needed to keep any type of organization or group running.”

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Students Improve Athletic Acumen at Summer Sports Camps

By Zach Jones

Photos by Jennie Xu ‘12

HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

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arker’s wide variety of firstrate sports programs kept student athletes busy over the summer. The camps offered students the opportunity to learn a new sport or improve their skills in a sport they had already taken up.

The one-week water polo camp, directed

by Ted Ujifusa, primarily stressed fundamental skills such as movement and passing. After gaining some experience with these skills, the students were later organized into groups to play games.

Over at the Oakwood Tennis Center, tennis coach Craig Pasqua ran Harker’s comprehensive summer tennis programs for grades 2-11, the Harker Summer Tennis Camp (HSTC) and the HarkerOakwood Tennis Training System (HOTTS). HSTC taught fundamental skills for new and developing players while also introducing the rotational approach favored by most of today’s professional players. For competitive players interested in the more advanced aspects of the sport, HOTTS prepared students for in-game situations and had them play interclub matches.

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

Meanwhile, Harker’s summer soccer program

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for students in grades 5-12 proved popular with both beginners and experienced players. Students worked on various skills at a number of stations devoted to each skill, including juggling, dribbling and one-on-one matchups.

“We make it fun, but we make sure that it’s not just day care, that this is a soccer camp where kids are leaving knowing that they learned something,” said Harker soccer coach and program head Shaun Tsakiris.

Butch Keller, upper school head, ran

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the summer basketball camp, which sought to equip grade 4-8 boys with the skills necessary to take the next step. “It’s all about things that they can do to improve their game at their age,” Keller said. As at other camps, stations were set up to help students work on individual skills.

Students also learned things they could work on at home during TV commercial breaks.

For those not focusing on any particular sport, head football coach Ron Forbes’ sports performance camp for grades 6-12 helped students improve as overall athletes. Concepts such as resistive sprinting, overspeed sprinting and core strength were taught at the camp, which Forbes said had many students in grades 6-8 due to its focus on developing athletes instead of preparing for an upcoming season. “Most of these kids now, we’re not getting them ready for the season,” he said. “We’re helping develop them into athletes at a younger age.”

HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

Costa Rica Presents Amazing Opportunities for Field Research

By Mark Brada Editor’s note: Mark Brada teaches upper school physics. He submitted this article after chaperoning Harker’s Costa Rican adventure. We have edited for length and the full article can be found in Harker News Online.

Upon landing in the Alajuela airport we were met by our guide, Jimmy Trejos, who took us to breakfast at a hotel overlooking the central valley of Costa Rica before boarding a small 20-seat airplane bound for the Nicoya peninsula. From there we took a bus to the Absolute Reserve at Cabo Blanco National Park, one of the most remote sections of the country.

We were also welcomed by professors Milton and Diana Lieberman, who proceeded to give the students a crash course in doing field research in the tropics. This involved lectures, brainstorming sessions, guided hiking and snorkeling sessions, as well as many hours of collecting and analyzing

samples. The students undertook a variety of research projects, including a project to identify and characterize body wall oscines in two species of sea cucumbers and a project that examined the shell selection criteria of marine hermit crabs. After three-and-a-half days of this, it was time to move to a new venue: Caramonal Beach to observe marine turtles and to perform some community service.

We all went with our guides, Nelson and Jimmy, at around 8 p.m. to the beach and were greeted by an olive ridley turtle that had just came up from the water to lay her eggs. Once she finished making her nest and had moved back to the water, Nelson, who is the director of the Caramonal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, dug up the nest and moved the eggs to a location that is safe from egg poachers as well as other predators. The entire experience was both amazing and humbling.

The next morning we headed to the University of Georgia research station in the San Luis Valley below the Monteverde cloud forest. Here the students continued to work on their research projects. Their projects culminated in an evening colloquium where they presented their preliminary research findings to a public audience.

Their presentations were incredibly detailed and showed a great deal of insight into the problems that they had investigated while in the country.

I was particularly impressed with the

questions that the students asked after each presentation, which showed that they not only grasped the other students’ presentations, but had been able to glean the key information and provide helpful feedback to them as well. Overall the night was a resounding success.

Photos provided by Mark Brada

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n July 27, 14 Harker students and two teachers left their homes and set out for an adventure in the wilds of Costa Rica.

Upper school chemistry teacher Mala Raghavan and I accompanied grade 11 students Adarsh Battu, Allen Cheng, Albert Chu, Tiffany Chu, Nathan Dhablania, Darian Edvalson, Chris Fu, Dennis Moon, Daniel Pak, Shreyas Parthasarathy and Renu Singh and grade 12 students Jonathan Cho, Zoya Khan and Alice Tsui.

The students also enjoyed a great time in the country, including some white water rafting, zip-lining through the forests near Monteverde and taking a chocolate tour in the Sarapiqui region, where we saw a great deal of wildlife.

We saw dozens of different species including keel-billed toucans, whitefaced monkeys, a caiman and blue jeans poison dart frogs to name just a few. Everyone had a great time on this remarkable trip.

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HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

Students and Teachers Experience Galapagos

By Diana Moss

Photos provided by Diana Moss

Editor’s note: Diana Moss teaches upper school Spanish. She chaperoned this trip and gave us this report.

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ight Harker travelers had the adventure of a lifetime in the Galapagos Islands this summer.

Jeremy Binkley, grade 10, Divya Kalidindi, Avi Agarwal, Damon Aitken, Kenny Zhang, all grade 11 and Taiwanese ELI student Winnie Lin, along with chaperones Eric Nelson, upper school physics teacher, and myself, flew to Quito, Ecuador, then to the Galapagos, where we boarded a 140-foot yacht to cruise around the islands for seven days, ending with a day in the port city of Guayaquil.

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We visited a total of seven different islands, all of which varied in topography from barren desert black lava flows to scrub, tropical jungles and mangrove lagoons. Each day we went on hikes, raft tours along the coast or snorkeling along with extensively trained and knowledgeable park naturalists.

A highlight of the islands was our proximity to the wildlife. We saw adorable sea lions napping, posing and frolicking in the surf, land and marine iguanas, blue footed boobies with fluffy cotton chicks, frigates that floated in the air currents behind the boat, as well as males displaying their distinctive red pouches under their beaks to attract females to their nests, colorful crabs along the black lava rocks, finches, sea turtles, sharks, whales, rays, penguins, flamingos, many varieties of colorful fish and of course the

giant Galapagos tortoise, both in the wild and in captive breeding centers.

Most of these creatures could be approached without them showing any fear!

Life aboard the ship was also enjoyable; we dined on delicious buffet meals, star-gazed from the top deck, played cards, chess, spoons and even Twister and Jenga (difficult on a rocking boat).

Spanish students had the additional benefit of having their land tours

HARKER SUMMER LEARNING

delivered in Spanish, as there were Puerto Ricans, Spaniards and Ecuadorian travelers aboard the ship. Additionally, we had the opportunity to visit Colegio Miguel Angel Cazares in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, where students had a lively exchange about their schools and cultures. The trip culminated with a day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and a tour of the beautiful Malecón 2000, a miles-long riverfront with parks, monuments and museums.

Photos provided by Diana Moss

Faculty Tech Grants Improve Classroom Experiences

By Zach Jones

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his year, Harker faculty once again took advantage of Harker’s summer technology grant program to improve their classroom teaching methods. Since the program’s inception more than 10 years ago, dozens of faculty members have used tech grants to formulate new ways to teach, create and track assignments, devise engaging lessons and more.

Upper school librarian Meredith Cranston and history teacher Julie Wheeler collaborated on a project to help students better assess political issues. “Our tech grant goal was to identify the best platform to allow students to explore the broad range of political discourse, respond to these media forms, assessing credibility, accuracy and perspective and practice creating their own forms of political media in conversation with classmates and instructors,” Cranston said.

Cranston and Wheeler created a class blog for analyzing political issues, “a space where course content, current events and student interests will drive a lively and ongoing inquiry into democracy,” Cranston said.

Finally, they set up a site on Libguides. com that aggregates news and media on

political issues, so students can create news feeds. “Together, we built a project that I know none of us could have come up with on our own,” Cranston said. “It was a very rewarding experience, and I feel very lucky to have had it!”

To help give her students greater access to geometry resources, middle school math teacher Vandana Kadam used Athena, Harker’s repository for online learning resources, to host “multiple resources for students for practice; I also posted all the homework answers so students can access this information any time,” she said. Kadam decided on this project after finding success in using Athena for a similar purpose with her Algebra II and Trigonometry classes.

“Students in the geometry classes will be able to use the practice material to get ready for tests, work on the activities for better understanding of the topics and also be able to check their homework at their own pace and come to class ready to ask questions,” she said. “This will be a huge time-saver.”

While working on the project, Kadam discovered more possibilities than she had originally imagined. “An idea that came up during the project is to put up some student work on the Athena page

for other students to see,” she said. “I feel that the Athena page is now wellorganized and students will be able to make full use of the resources.”

At the tech grant show-and-tell on Aug. 21, upper school biology teacher Jeff Sutton demonstrated an iPad application called Doceri, which allowed him to display an activity from his iPad on a laptop, which could in turn be hooked up to a projector. This granted him the ability to move freely about the classroom while making presentations and marking on the virtual whiteboard that faced the students. He plans to use the applications to display PowerPoint slides and make notes on them at the back of the classroom, so that the students can focus on the lessons being taught.

Another application he found, called Assist, analyzes photos of multiple-choice answer keys and saves them as files that can be compared with photos of student quizzes. The application then assigns grades to the student quizzes based on how well they match the answer keys.

Sutton said students might be able to grade their own quizzes with the application by using a mounted iPad to take photos of their quiz sheets, which would then be graded automatically.

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Harker’s Teacher Institute Draws Record-Breaking Attendance

By Debbie Cohen

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ummer at Harker got off to a great start as, in early June, a record-breaking number of educators from around the Bay Area attended the eighth annual Harker Teacher Institute.

More than 175 participants came out for the event held on the upper school campus to learn about technology and different methods to improve classroom curricula. Hosted by Harker’s instructional technology department and sponsored by the Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators (SVCUE), the annual institute has become increasingly popular.

Tools for Student Research,” presented

by Kathy Clark, Harker’s lower school librarian, who has used NoodleTools with students in grades 4-5 for the past six years. Clark led a discussion of NoodleBib, which assists students in creating properly cited bibliographies.

Harker has long held ties with SVCUE, the local affiliate for San Mateo and Santa Clara counties of ComputerUsing Educators, Inc. of California (CUE). CUE and SVCUE are committed to networking, resources and the integration of all forms of technology throughout the curriculum.

This year’s event focused on free or inexpensive classroom technology tools and kicked off with a welcome address from Dan Hudkins, Harker’s K-12 director of instructional technology.

The half-day institute included a continental breakfast, afternoon lunch

The workshops taught by Clark, Ramig and Hudkins were just a few of many useful options to choose from.

Another popular workshop was Renee Ramig’s “iPads in Middle School Classrooms.” Session leader Ramig, director of technology at The Seven Hills School in Walnut Creek, has been

This year’s event focused on free or inexpensive classroom technology tools. and three breakout sessions with a number of workshops to choose from.

Presenters were primarily Harker teachers from K-12, with one presenter from the local community.

Workshop titles included “NoodleTools:

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Extremely relevant in today’s quickly evolving world of publishing was Hudkins’ afternoon session, “Where are We Going with eText?” With so many variations of readers and texts from Kindle to Nook to iPad, it can be confusing to navigate as the textbook world begins to move from paper to digital format. Hudkins presented informative background on current pitfalls, options and opportunities.

working in educational technology for the past 26 years at a variety of Catholic, public and independent schools. She shared some apps that middle school teachers have successfully used in their classrooms.

The institute started as a summer session that trained Harker staff to use mathematics software and develop a project-oriented curriculum. In 2008, however, Fred Triefenbach, then assistant director of instructional technology and a computer science teacher at the upper school, had the idea that Harker should share this knowledge with the community at large, which led to the creation of the Harker Teacher Institute.

This year’s event was bittersweet for Triefenbach, who was preparing to retire after 12 years of working at Harker. “Over the years, the event has really evolved into a huge success,” he said proudly, adding how gratifying it has been to share his knowledge about technology in education with the wider educational community.

GlobalEducation

By Zach Jones

Teacher Shares International Language of Music at Tamagawa

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pper school music teacher Susan Nace visited Tamagawa Gakuen in Tokyo as part of this year’s teacher exchange. The trip started in late June and lasted through the first week of July.

Nace taught classes to students in grades 8, 10 and 11. “I had a lot to share about vocal and choral techniques that were unknown to them,” Nace said. “I also shared some of my teaching materials.”

Nace found that the students were very receptive and eager to learn, and that the teachers “were very curious and interested in vocal pedagogy, as their choral teachers are instrumentally trained.” She was also impressed with how artistic the Tamagawa students were. “Everyone sings in a choir and takes art classes every year,” she said. “Each of the upper grades has its own choir, which sings major works. They have several large lecture/recital halls and music rooms in which to hold rehearsals.”

Photo provided by Susan Nace Aside from teaching, Nace also had many opportunities to experience the rich Japanese culture, visiting the famous Rikugien Garden and sampling many different foods, including “every conceivable way to eat tofu, conger eel, salmon roe, cockles and fish that I am unfamiliar with.”

The students even taught her a bit of Japanese. “One taught me to write my name in katakana so that I could sign her songbook!”

Exchange Teacher to St. Stephens Delves into Culture

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arker’s global education program sent upper school English teacher Jennifer Siraganian to Saint Stephen’s College on the Gold Coast of Australia, as part of this year’s teacher exchange with the school.

During her two-week stay, Siraganian lectured to 125 grade 10 students on the subject of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” She also taught Claudius’ famous soliloquy from “Hamlet” to grade 12 students and illustrated the Gunpowder Plot’s influence on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” to grade 11 students.

“The students were so friendly, excited and personable.”

-Jennifer Siraganian, upper school English teacher

Photos provided by Jennifer Siraganian

“After observing over 40 English, writing, ESL and history classes, I noticed that the St. Stephen's teachers are warm, wonderful and dedicated to their students,” Siraganian said. “The students were so friendly, excited and personable. In addition, the kids were fascinated with California, often asking me if I knew any famous people."

During her breaks from teaching, Siraganian visited a local wildlife sanctuary with St. Stephen’s teacher Sam Cleary, who visited Harker in the spring, and went with a number of St. Stephen’s teachers to the popular dinner show “Australian Outback Spectacular.”

Personal highlights from the trip included “timing sprinters at the St. Stephen's Athletic Fair. I sampled Australian delights such as Pavlova and Lamington squares at a real Aussie ‘barbie’ hosted by the English department.”

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Tech Enhances Network through Cisco

By Zach Jones

Photos by Kyle Cavallaro

pper school students, faculty and staff saw firsthand the results of Harker parent philanthropy as they set foot on campus at the start of the year. Digital signs, manufactured

by Cisco, have been placed at various points around the campus to inform passersby of upcoming events, lunch menus, sports scores and more.

The signs are expected to be a big help in keeping those traversing the upper school campus up to date on the many happenings at Saratoga, while also allowing several of the school’s key donors to see the fruits of their donations and hard work. The hardware for the project was made available to Harker through a special Cisco donation program, wherein Cisco employees can have three dollars added to every dollar they donate if the donation is made in Cisco products equal to that value. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of Harker parents employed at Cisco, the school has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cisco products in the last several years.

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“For many years, the Cisco families have been giving us stuff which blinks in closets, and so they don’t get the opportunity to say, ‘See, I helped buy that,’” said Dan Hudkins, director of instructional technology. Making the latest Cisco implementation visible to all who pass through the upper school campus on a daily basis is also an outward gesture of thanks to Cisco families.

The signs have been placed in strategic locations with large amounts of foot traffic to ensure that they are viewed by as many people as possible. Three of the screens are located in the main classroom building: one in the lobby, one just outside the college counseling office and another in the hallway

near the northern entrance of the building.

The Shah Hall and Dobbins Hall lobbies each have one of their own, as does the Nichols Hall atrium. One more will sit on the wall in the Manzanita Hall dining room.

Each sign’s content is tailored to the area where it is located. For instance, the dining room sign will be updated daily with lunch menus, while the sign in the main building hallway may contain announcements, information about upcoming events or video clips of recent sports highlights. The content of each sign is handled by a person in the building or department where the screen is located.

The signs, however, are just one component of a planned multimedia technology project to produce and share video with the Harker community in a variety of ways. Once fully implemented, Cisco’s Show and Share server will enable those who produce videos at Harker to quickly and easily encode their videos into various formats and then make them available to the appropriate audiences.

Experiences Parent Collaboration

“Sometimes there are things that you want to share with everybody. YouTube works great for that,” Hudkins said. “But some things you only want available to students.

Some things you only want available to upper school students. Maybe you have a recording of a faculty meeting; you only want the rest of the faculty to see it.”

Using the server, video producers will also be able to simultaneously create videos for a wide variety of devices, including highdefinition TVs, laptops and smartphones.

Both Show and Share and the digital signs are part of Cisco’s Digital Media Management Suite, meaning videos produced by Show and Share can easily be output to the signs.

The Show and Share server is planned for rollout over the course of the 2012-13 school year. Digital signs are tentatively expected to appear at other Harker campuses by the spring of 2013.

Over the summer, tech also completed the installation of Cisco’s LAN Management System (LMS), also known as Cisco Prime.

Making the latest Cisco implementation visible to all who pass through the upper school campus on a daily basis is also an outward gesture of thanks to Cisco families.

With the ever-increasing use of online teaching resources combined with new device policies that allow students to connect to Harker’s network with smartphones and tablets, the need for improved network management became more apparent than ever. Cisco Prime enables network managers to take a more active approach in keeping Harker’s network infrastructure up and running.

“It used to be that network administration, in terms of troubleshooting, had to respond to a report of a failure,” Hudkins explained.

“Now we’re actively monitoring so that we avoid failing.”

Cisco Prime allows Harker’s network administrators to keep track of the status of the network much more efficiently than before. It can notify tech staff, for example, when a piece of network hardware’s software is out of date and automatically install the most up-to-date version. It will also alert them when a power supply is becoming unstable.

The project was helped immensely by parent and Cisco employee Mark Basinski (Alexander, grade 7). “Thanks to Mark’s help, we were able to implement the system very efficiently,” Hudkins noted.

The new LMS also offers the ability to schedule downtime for large portions of the network in order to save on energy costs.

Hudkins hopes to begin this stage of the implementation sometime in the fall.

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Advancement

s t n e r Ne w Pa

G i v e n Wa r m Re c e p t i o n b u l C untry o C k e W e l c o m e a t S i lv e r C re

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he weather was as warm as the atmosphere as nearly 200 guests turned out for a summer evening reception for new parents held at the Silver Creek Valley Country Club in San Jose this past June.

The annual event welcoming newcomers to Harker was graciously hosted by board member Sally Anderson, with opening remarks by Chris Nikoloff, head of school, and Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement.

After time for mixing and mingling, Rosenthal kicked off the evening’s program by showing clips from televised news stories about Harker and its students. Many of the new parents had not seen the clips and were clearly impressed at the school’s many newsworthy accomplishments.

Following that, Casey Near ’06 spoke about her years and experiences at Harker, noting the impact her peers had on her and how wellprepared she felt for college and beyond.

Attendees were visibly moved by the event.

They also enjoyed appetizers, drinks and dessert while connecting with one another as they prepared to become a part of the Harker community.

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Photos by Kyle Cavallaro

By Debbie Cohen

Advancement Harker Parents Get Plugged In at Back-to-School Events

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arker parents became better acquainted with the school’s vibrant community by bonding with fellow parents and exploring the many volunteer opportunities available during a series of recent back-to-school events which kicked off the new year.

On hand at all events were current parent volunteers and advancement office personnel to welcome newcomers and answer any and all questions about volunteering.

“These happenings are a fun and important way for new parents to become a part of the Harker community by getting involved and learning from returning parents.”

-Teré Aceves, K-5 volunteer program director

Faculty Giving Paves Way for “All In!” Annual Campaign Kickoff

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he Harker School is proud of its faculty, who set an example for the Harker community by going “all in” last year with a recordbreaking 100 percent participation in the school’s annual giving campaign drive.

“This is just one of many ways our faculty show their dedication to our students’ education,” said Melinda Gonzales, managing director of advancement.

Now, with the fall launch of this year’s “All In!” annual campaign, parents are poised to join faculty in supporting student programs by making a gift themselves.

The official campaign phoneathon is the week of Sept. 30, but parents may make their gift any time by going online to www. harker.org/onlinegiving or by using the envelope included in this publication.

If parents have any questions about making their gift, they are urged to contact Gonzales at melindag@harker.org. They are also invited to visit Harker’s new “Recognition & Thanks” page on the parent portal at www.harker.org/rt.

Photos by Kyle Cavallaro

“Each month we recognize our most recent donors and volunteers – those people who help to create our strong and vibrant community,” noted Gonzales.

At the lower school, immediately following drop-off on Aug. 31, was a special breakfast for parents, with volunteer information and sign-up sheets on display.

Additionally, there were other welcome events affording new and returning parents the opportunity to mingle, including an elementary school-age barbecue, kindergarten barbecue and lower school parents-only coffee and social time.

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Advancement Photos by Kyle Cavallaro

C A P I TA L C A M PA I G N Illustration provided by Joe Rosenthal

Meanwhile, on Aug. 27, middle school parents enjoyed a breakfast at the Blackford multipurpose room immediately following the parent orientation, where volunteer information and signups were available. And on Sept. 6, upper school parents had the opportunity to attend a volunteer informational breakfast in the Nichols Hall atrium.

“These happenings are a fun and important way for new parents to become a part of the Harker community by getting involved and learning from returning parents,” said Teré Aceves, who directs K-5 volunteer programs.

Phase 4/Step 2 of the capital campaign will help raise funds for a much needed new gym and theater on the upper school campus. Plans involve housing those two buildings under one roof, in a cost-effective effort to cause as little campus disruption as possible. The building will be located on what is now Rosenthal Field.

Senior Parent Appreciation Gift Tradition Gains New Luster

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arents of Harker’s very first upper school graduating class in 2002 established the now annual tradition of a senior parent appreciation gift as a way of showing their thanks for their Harker experience.

“It was structured so that any incremental giving to the annual giving campaign over and above what a family had given during the previous year would go to fund a beautification project on campus,” explained Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement, noting that plaques have been placed in areas that have been beautified, commemorating each of the

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students’ families who participated in making that year’s senior parent gift.

Last year, the parents of the graduating class added a new feature to the tradition, requesting that the money be used to establish a class fund that will become part of the school’s general endowment.

The 2012 Class Fund was established with their cumulative gifts of approximately $35,000.

“Alumni and alumni parents are welcome to continue to make gifts each year to their class funds as a part of their annual giving gifts. And students will thus be able to benefit from this generosity year after year in perpetuity,” said Rosenthal.

Advancement Alumni and Alumni Parents Leave Lasting Legacy for Harker’s Future

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arker ties run deep, as demonstrated by the many alumni and parents of alumni who continue to support the school long after their association with Harker has ended.

Highlighted in this issue of Harker Quarterly are several such donors who support the school in this impactful and meaningful way.

“The entire Harker community is enormously grateful to them,” said Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement, reporting on the strong and enduring connections of both former Harker students and parents of Harker students.

Silvestri Family Among the Harker supporters are Chet and Irene Silvestri, who have two sons, Adam ’97 and Matt ’93, who attended Harker back when it was a K-8 school (Matt Silvestri’s wife, Tiffanie, also appears in the photo). After the boys finished at Harker, Irene Silvestri continued to be

“The Silvestris learned about the positive impact our exciting plans are going to have for the school and were inspired to make a generous leadership gift to our capital campaign.”

-Joe Rosenthal, Executive Director of Advancement

actively involved in the school as a long-term substitute teacher.

“The Silvestris learned about the positive impact our exciting plans

Shalini Mohan '02 Another Harker supporter, Shalini Mohan ’02, was a member of Harker’s first upper school graduating class.

“It’s an incredible feeling to be fortunate enough to have a career I love and the ability to give back to the school that set me on this amazing path.”

-Dr. Shalini Mohan '02 are going to have for the school and were inspired to make a generous leadership gift to our capital campaign,” said Rosenthal, noting that Irene Silvestri continues to be involved with Harker by sitting on the school’s advisory board.

Mandell Family Jay and Susan Mandell’s two sons, Jeffrey and Sean, both graduated from Harker’s upper school in 2009 and are currently attending Stanford University. While their sons were attending Harker the Mandells became benefactors with their very generous gift to the school’s capital campaign, supporting the science and technology center, athletic field and aquatic center.

Following their sons’ graduation, the Mandells continued to support both the annual giving and capital campaigns. Susan Mandell also remains actively involved as a member of Harker’s advisory board.

She graduated from medical school and successfully completed a sixyear combined Bachelor of Liberal Arts/M.D. program at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. She was later awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences.

After a return visit to Harker, which included a chat with her former science teacher Anita Chetty, Mohan took the unique opportunity to name the jellyfish aquarium located in the atrium of Nichols Hall with her generous gift to the capital campaign. In doing so she joined another alumni donor, Neal Mehta ’02, who was his class’ first capital campaign donor.

“It’s an incredible feeling to be fortunate enough to have a career I love and the ability to give back to the school that set me on this amazing path,” enthused Mohan. “I will always be proud to be a Harker Eagle!”

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GreaterGood Photos provided by Jaap Bongers

By Debbie Cohen and Sara Kendall Key Club Students Collect Food, Raise Funds for Those in Need Members of Harker’s Key Club had a productive spring, collecting clothing, toys and food for the Sacred Heart Community Center and donating animal carrier crates and raising $1,100 for the Silicon Valley Humane Society.

The funds were raised by selling baked goods and root beer floats.

Additionally, one student anonymously donated $500 towards the cause.

Kerry Enzensperger, director of the upper school community service and activity program, reported that Key Club participants were thrilled with the results.

of cancer research. Relay for Life is the signature activity of the American Cancer Society and the Harker team “Girls for the Girls” has raised nearly $3,872 towards the cause. Shown here are team members (from left) Sue Prutton and daughter Hannah Prutton, Chris Douglas and daughter Michelle Douglas, Heather Wardenburg and daughter Amy Wardenburg; all daughters are grade 12.

Art Teacher Donates Items to Needy Children in Zambia For the last four years, Jaap Bongers, Harker’s upper school art department instructor and chair, has used the summer break as a unique opportunity to personally donate items to needy

Initiation rituals, traditional dances by masked actors and healing ceremonies by witch doctors can still be found, although it is getting harder and harder to locate them.”

The Key Club is part of an international high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International.

Key Club members assist Kiwanis in carrying out its mission to serve the children of the world.

Harker Mothers and Daughters Unite in Common Cause at Relay for Life Event A dynamic group of Harker moms and their student daughters participated in this year’s Relay for Life event, held in Los Altos on June 9-10 in support

children in the Republic of Zambia, a landlocked country in Southern Africa.

In preparation for the annual sojourn, he uses the school year to collect toys, children's clothes and children's books (many of which have been donated

by Harker students) for the Zambian children, often accompanied by friend Ben Spencer-Cooke, upper school English teacher.

Come summer, he fills a big plastic storage box with the donated items, which he takes with him to Zambia.

There, he donates the toys, books and clothes to needy children.

“I do this while traveling to very remote villages where there are still wonderful ages-old original culture.

Photo provided by Chris Douglas, parent

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During the 1970s, Zambia began sliding into a poverty from which it has not yet recovered – which is why the donated goods Bongers collects during the school year and hands out in the summer are so appreciated.

After handing out the storage box of donated toys, Bongers then refills it with ancient traditional artifacts he discovers and buys on his travels. “I note down their use, meaning and age. I have found objects and heard about customs that were not yet known. Once I return to Harker, I use this information, the items and the pictures for my Study of Visual Arts class,” he said.

A particularly interesting find this year was an old food box from the Lozi tribe, which Zambian women use to present food to their husbands.

During the 1970s, Zambia began sliding into a poverty from which it has not yet recovered – which is why the donated goods Bongers collects during the school year and hands out in the summer are so appreciated.

GreaterGood What began as an interest in sailing morphed into a crusade to save the Earth’s waterways from plastic pollution for Dolan Dworak, grade 7.

Dworak enrolled in sailing lessons a couple years back and that led to his

presentation at the lower school about his work with Sea Scavenger.

He brought along an art project titled “The Picket Line: Protest Plastic Pollution” to show the younger students what he and several students from the middle school (along with art instructor Elizabeth Saltos) created with trash they

“Too much marine life is dying due to plastic pollution, and my generation can stop the problem and save the animals.” -Dolan Dworak, grade 7 current volunteer efforts with the Sea Scavenger Conservancy, a nonprofit San Francisco-based organization working to rid our waterways of plastic pollution.

Today, as the junior “SeaEO” of Sea Scavenger, Dworak represents the organization as a spokesperson, educating fellow Harker classmates, speaking at scout troop, church, school and city council meetings, and even attending international marine biology conferences to spread the word about the dangers of petroleum, a byproduct of plastic waste infesting our oceans, seas and tributaries. He is also busy recruiting other Bay Area students to serve on Sea Scavenger’s junior board of directors and helps coordinate monthly shoreline cleanup efforts and publicity for the cause.

Last year he gave an engaging

picked up during a cleanup at a local beach. “The Picket Line” will soon be displayed at multiple locations in the Bay Area.

All five of the world’s oceans contain gyres – massive islands of trash afloat off the coast. The plastic breaks down through wind, sun and wave action and the chemicals leach into the water. Sea animals mistake the plastic for food, ingest it, are poisoned and die.

Humans ingest the harmful chemicals through tainted water and seafood.

“Too much marine life is dying due to plastic pollution, and my generation can stop the problem and save the animals,” said Dworak.

Founded in 2008, Sea Scavenger works to establish ongoing cleanup operations in the remote ocean gyres where great concentrations of plastic are accumulating. They also strive to develop new technologies for plastic extraction and seek innovative uses for recycled ocean plastics.

The entire Dworak family takes part in a monthly shoreline cleanup effort along the Bay. The plastic debris is sorted to determine its origin and so the group can work with its manufacturers to try and find alternatives to using plastic.

Photos provided by Susan Dworak, parent

Middle School Student Inspires Others to Clean Up Plastic Pollution in Ocean

Dworak attended the fifth International Marine Debris Conference in Hawaii as junior spokesperson for Sea Scavenger.

The event, held every 10 years, hosts 38 participating countries, and attracts a large number of participants, including hundreds of scientists; Dworak had the distinction of being the only child in attendance.

Next up on Dworak’s agenda is a trip in June of 2013 to Seward, Alaska, to participate in Gyre X, an international expedition led by the Alaska Sea Life Center. Dworak has been asked to serve as Gyre X’s youth social media coordinator. The expedition will include an array of scientists and artists who will study and collect marine debris from remote parts of Alaska that will later result in an exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution travelling to museums around the world.

“I hope to get more people involved and to increase awareness, because the less plastic we use means the quicker the problem is solved,” said Dworak.

Plastic pollution is a huge problem, but one that is not impossible to solve. Scientists are studying the environment. Industry is redesigning products. And organizations – with the help of passionate participants like Dolan Dworak – are creating awareness.

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EagleReport

By Zach Jones

players scored par on hole 19, but Scobie parred on the 20th hole to finally win the match.

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arker athletics started the 2012-13 year on a high note with wins in football, volleyball, tennis, water polo and cross country. As the fall sports season had just begun at press time, the most recent results were not available, but stay tuned to Harker News Online (news. harker.org) and keep an eye out for the winter 2012 issue of Harker Quarterly for the latest!

The Eagles got off to 2-0 start after victories over Yerba Buena High School and Andrew Hill High School.

“They executed very well,” said Ron Forbes, head coach. “When we got a big lead the boys didn’t play down – they did well for a young team.”

Defensive play has been key, thanks in large part to defensive coordinator Mike Taribassi.

Water polo photos by Kyle Cavallaro

Boys water polo started the season with an overall 4-2 record, going 2-1 in consecutive weekend tournaments, with victories over Harbor High, San Lorenzo Valley, Willow Glen and Santa Clara and losses to Monterey and Pioneer.

Girls Golf

Harker lost an earlySeptember non-league match to Notre Dame-Belmont, but Kristine Lin, grade 11, led all golfers with a score of 38.

Girls Volleyball Varsity began the season 2-1, after a five-set, exciting win over Priory, a victory over Fremont and a tough loss to a seventh-seeded Homestead.

JV also started strong, going 3-0 with crushing defeats of Priory and Fremont and a close win over Homestead.

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All volleyball photos by Robert Boucher, parent

Cross Country The runners’ season opened with a solid performance in a late-August scrimmage at Gunn High. Harker had first and sixth place finishes in the boys varsity race, and the girls had one runner in the top 10.

Girls Tennis Harker had a great start on the courts in early September, decisively defeating Milpitas High and Fremont.

The girls had a particularly strong showing against Fremont, winning every set.

Golfer McNealy’s Summer Highlights Include Top Eight Finish at USGA Tournament Harker golf standout Maverick McNealy, grade 12, had an eventful summer highlighted by a top-eight finish at the prestigious USGA Junior Amateur Championship in July.

McNealy faced Canada’s Matthew Scobie in the quarterfinal match, where he rallied back from four down after eight holes, winning three straight holes with birdies. On hole 18, McNealy earned a par to force the match to extra holes. Both

He wrapped up his summer in mid-August by making it to the quarterfinals of the Northern California Golf Association’s Amateur Match Play Championship. After winning his first two matches, he later fell behind by two with four holes remaining. He nearly rallied with two birdies to force a playoff, but hit the bunker in the suddendeath playoff, allowing his opponent to advance.

Earlier in August, McNealy won the Silver Creek Valley Junior, shooting 65-72. He scored birdie no fewer than seven times in the first round.

“It felt good to finally win one, though my results in bigger events have been exciting,” he said.

Photo by Janet Savage, parent

Football photos by Robert Boucher, parent

McNealy's second place finish earned him the final spot in the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship by a single shot, becoming one of 150 golfers in the country younger than 18 to compete in the championship.

Varsity Football

Boys Water Polo

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“I was very, very happy with my first performance on an international stage,” McNealy said. “By making the top eight, I earned an exemption from qualifying for next year’s Junior Amateur at Martis Camp in Tahoe!

Very exciting!”

Grade 7 girls cross country team finished second at the Crystal Springs Relay Jamboree in midSeptember. (L to R): Sarah Savage, Sharon Yan, Gloria Guo and Akshaya Vemuri.

EagleReport Harker volleyball team member Shannon Richardson, grade 9, wrapped up a stellar July by winning the USA Beach Junior Volleyball Championships (National Division) age 14 and under category, with her partner, Alexandra Kim of Daly City. The event was held in Milwaukee. In the two days of play, Richardson and Kim went undefeated.

Richardson and Kim competed against 16 other teams from around the country for the title.

In her warm-up to nationals, Richardson had a great round in July, including four tournaments and a high performance camp and minitournament that was even tougher than the national event.

Her first event was July 14. Richardson and her partner for the trip competed in a California Beach Volleyball Association (CBVA) Cal Cup Qualifier in Pacific Palisades, earning first place in the age 14 and under category,

qualifying them for the Sept. 2 championships in Manhattan Beach.

Immediately afterwards, Richardson moved on to the USA Junior Beach High Performance Championships at Hermosa Beach, July 19-21.

Richardson's team advanced to finals where they took the gold medal, beating the one team they had lost to in pool play.

Next, July 22, the pair went after the 16-and-under category in a CBVA tournament in Doheny, Calif., where they earned second place.

Richardson’s last outing in this trip was a CBVA Qualifier in Santa Barbara July 24, where Richardson and her partner took first place, beating the team they lost to in Doheny two days earlier. The Milwaukee triumph followed.

Richardson has played volleyball at Harker since grade 4 and clearly has a great future!

Cross Country Team Gains New Head Coach

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

Olympic Medalist Swimmers Speak to Harker Athletes

Next stop was the USA Junior Beach Volleyball High Performance Camp at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. There, Richardson participated in a mini-tournament; she was the only camper who did not lose a single match with any of her partners.

New to the Harker athletics coaching staff this year is Scott Chisam, head coach of the Harker cross country team. Chisam’s past experience includes head coaching positions at UCLA and Stanford University. At UCLA, he coached the women’s track team to its first two NCAA championships. He was also the head coach of the United States team at the 1984 World Cross Country Championships, and has served as assistant coach to a number of high schools in the Central Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation.

In addition to his extensive athletics experience, Chisam is also a certified emergency medical responder and was a member of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team. Chisam is sure to be a valuable asset to Harker’s fast-growing athletics program. Welcome!

By Zach Jones

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

Frosh Wins Nationals after taking Three Golds and a Silver on High Performance Camp Training Tour

Harker athletes had the unique opportunity to meet two Olympian swimmers Sept.

6, when threetime gold medalist Ambrose “Rowdy” Gaines and silver and gold medalist Cullen Jones spoke to students at the Singh Aquatic Center at the upper school campus.

Gaines, who won his three gold medals at the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles, shared his story of perseverance and determination. He began swimming competitively at age 17 after being denied spots on his high school football, baseball, basketball, golf and tennis teams.

“I am living proof it’s never too late to achieve your dreams,” he said, reminding students that setbacks are a part of the journey, such as when he broke a world record in 1980, only to find out the next day that the United States would be boycotting that year’s Olympic games.

Undaunted, he pressed on, practicing rigorously six days a week, winning SEC and NCAA titles and qualifying for the 1984 games, where at age 25 he became the third-oldest Olympic swimmer to date to win a gold medal.

After Gaines spoke, Jones took his turn to tell about his experience at the 2012 games in London, touching on his stay at the Olympic Village and his daily regimen, which consisted of a near-constant cycle of training and nutritional intake. Gaines was also at the London games, as the swimming commentator for NBC. Aside from winning the silver and gold, highlights of the London games for Cullen also included meeting athletes such as NBA stars Dwyane Wade and LeBron James as well as tennis legend Serena Williams.

Follow Harker sports at Harker News Online at http://news.harker.org.

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PerformingArts Harker Varsity and Junior Varsity Dancers Take Home Awards at Dance Camp

Dance Camp

received second-place ribbons. In the drill competition, Sharma received a medallion for her second-place finish.

“It was really fantastic seeing the dancers take classes and participate with dance teams from all over California,” said Kuehn, noting that the students did a fantastic job representing Harker’s dance program.

“I am hoping the students walked away with a greater sense of team unity and Harker pride. This camp gave them a preview of what life is like as a professional dancer – taking classes, working on choreography and rehearsing all day long,” he said.

By Zach Jones

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his summer Harker varsity and junior varsity dancers won a number of awards and earned the opportunity to perform in Hawaii and London.

The United Spirit Association Dance Camp, held in July at the University of California, Santa Cruz, featured classes on technique and choreography and also featured a number of competitive challenges.

Under the guidance of upper school dance teachers Amalia De La Rosa and Karl Kuehn, the Harker dancers won several awards.

The group comprised Ria Desai, Michaela Kastelman and Molly Wolfe, grade 12; Jenny Dai, grade 11; Noel Banerjee, Darby Millard, Erika Olsen and Jacqui Villarreal, grade 10; and Selin Ozcelik, Emily Pan, Kristen Park, Ankita Sharma and Madison Tomihiro, grade 9.

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Photo provided by Karl Kuehn

As a group, the Harker dance group was awarded a “superior” plaque, the highest group recognition at the camp, and was invited to perform at next year’s NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii. They also won the teamwork challenge and received an award for being the most improved team at the camp.

Kastelman, Millard and Villarreal were recognized as All-American dancers, an honor that included an invitation to perform in London with the United Spirit Association. For their overall technique and performance acumen, Kastelman, Banerjee, Millard and Villarreal all received "super sensational" ribbons. Millard and Kastelman reached the final round of competition and were among the top 10 dancers at the camp.

Desai’s and Sharma’s efforts in drill classes earned them firstplace ribbons and Park and Ozcelik

“This camp gave the students a preview of what life is like as a professional dancer – taking classes, working on choreography and rehearsing all day long.” -Karl Kuehn,

upper school dance teacher

The junior varsity team is now working on their routine for the family picnic and the varsity troupe will be preparing for the homecoming festivities.

According to De La Rosa, a huge benefit was having members of both junior varsity and varsity participate, bringing together the whole dance department. “The dancers had an opportunity to challenge themselves both individually and as a team,” she added.

PerformingArts Performing Arts Teachers Continue Professional Development Over Summer

By Sara Kendall

vocal ensembles, went on tour to Los Angeles with Ragazzi, a Grammy award-winning boys chorus based on the peninsula. Sandusky is the group’s associate artistic director.

Karl Kuehn, upper school dance teacher, also

Photo provided by Karl Kuehn

connected with Ragazzi. “I worked [with them] on choreography for their upcoming season,” he notes.

Kuehn also taught a summer dance intensive at Atlas School of Dance in San Jose and attended the Dance Teacher’s Summit in New York City, where participants took part in movement sessions, seminars and workshops led by expert teachers.

“I worked on my improvisation skills in a week-long intensive course in improv and sketch writing.”

-Monica Colletti, middle school performing arts teacher Monica Colletti,

Photo by Ashley Batz

middle school performing arts teacher, visited the famed Second City organization in Chicago. “I worked on my improvisation skills in a week-long intensive course in improv and sketch writing,” she said. Second City is a top-notch theater and improvisation group that has produced countless Saturday Night Live alumni.

“A lot of film equipment that I learned how to use and edit with, I will be using at Harker this fall.”

-Jeff Draper, upper school performing arts teacher

Every summer, Jeff Draper, upper school performing arts teacher and dean of the class of 2013, is the education director at Young Rep, a theater workshop in Walnut Creek now in its 39th year. He directed and taught classes as varied as British scene study performance, Shakespeare in performance, a make-up master class and an advanced voice and speech class. He also taught film acting: “A lot of film equipment that I learned how to use and edit with, I will be using at Harker this fall.”

Upper school music teacher Susan Nace participated in Harker’s Tamagawa teacher exchange program. Read the full story on page 21.

Finally, Laura Lang-Ree, K-12 performing arts department chair, worked on both her directing skills and her theater skills at the Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City, a course that brings in current Broadway professionals to work with participants. She took courses on script analysis, vocal interpretation and dance.

Lang-Ree is also the vocalist for the Los Gatos/Saratoga Big Band, and performed with them at Santana Row and the San Jose Jazz Festival.

Photo by Kyle Cavallaro

Jenny Sandusky, who leads lower and upper school

and directed two circus shows in the month of July and found outlets for a wide variety of skills across various media including finishing another children’s book.

Photo by Mark Tantrum

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Danny Dunn, lower school technical director, wrote

any of Harker’s performing arts faculty enhanced their professional resumes this summer, returning to Harker with new stories and new skills.

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Milestones at the upper school campus, took his tennis skills off campus this summer – all the way to Oklahoma City, Okla., to compete in the inaugural Jim Thorpe Games. The games benefit the Jim Thorpe Association, which encourages and celebrates excellence in athletes representing Indian nations. "My regular partner, John Blackhawk, who is CEO of the Winnebago Nation in Nebraska, couldn't make it so I teamed up with another partner," Pasqua said. The last-minute Photo by Kyle Cavallaro change didn't rattle him. In fact, the duo proved to have a winning chemistry, and they took home a bronze medal in doubles.

Pasqua said he had also planned on entering the men's 35 singles, but the category, it turned out, wasn't being offered. He instead entered men's singles, where he was consolation champion.

The games are named after legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, a Native American who competed in college football, professional football, Major League Baseball and the Olympics.

All proceeds from the games go to benefit the Jim Thorpe Bright Path Youth programs and Native American diabetes research.

Victor Adler, a mathematics teacher at the upper school, also found an exciting outlet for his talents and experiences this summer. While teaching a pre-calculus summer class, he was offered a diagnostic test to give his students that would help show where each student stood in math placement. Coincidentally, a friend 34

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of his who teaches at the University of California, San Diego, called and said he was working on an interesting project – the same diagnostic test Adler had been offered.

There was an opening on the test development team, and Adler was happy to join in.

Photo provided by US Journalism

Craig Pasqua, the tennis director

By Sara Kendall

"The cool thing is that these guys have collected a lot of data," Adler said.

"There's a very methodical, rigorous method to producing questions on this test that allows you to collect good

In addition to being part of great data collection and test development, Adler was also able to work with teachers from around the state ...

University of California and California State University professors. "It gives me a greater connection to what is being taught at a large swath of educational institutions," Adler said.

Chrissy Chang, K-8 P.E. department chair, was invited by the San Jose State University department of kinesiology to speak at the department dinner for the university’s 150th graduation in late May. Chang is a 1996 graduate of the department and a former student-athlete on the women's basketball team. She currently serves on the board of directors for the SJSU Alumni Association and Order of Sparta.

Chang said as a proud alumna, it was an honor to be chosen as the speaker for this event and added that the university has helped shaped her into the person that she is today.

“The celebratory evening was great,” said Chang. “To be in the presence of faculty and staff who prepared me as well as the graduates to be leaders, difference-makers and problemsolvers within the kinesiology field was awesome. It was an opportunity to thank those who gave me the tools

data. You can take the test online and get the data back nearly instantly."

The test helps teachers analyze where students are weak and at what stages.

"I have a feeling the test will be a bit too easy for Harker students," he said.

"It's aimed more at the general public."

In addition to being part of great data collection and test development, Adler was also able to work with teachers from around the state, including

Photo provided by Chrissy Chang

and foundation to be successful in my career and share my personal story with the graduates. Be a proud Spartan! Go Spartans! Hail Spartans!”

Chang teaches grade 8 P.E. and middle school health, is a member of the coaching staff and has worked in the past as a director of the summer program.

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PASSAGES

In Memoriam

Bill Bost

Photos supplied by the Harker archives

Greg Martin

By William Cracraft

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Memorial for Bill Bost

arker’s former director of global Sat., Nov. 17, 2 p.m. education, Bill Bost, passed away Bucknall gym in June and his friends at Harker are joining with Bost’s dear friend, Mike Kerbyson, in holding a memorial to celebrate his life. The memorial will be Sat., Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. in the Bucknall gym, followed by an informal gathering at the Sonoma Chicken Coop in Campbell.

Bost’s children, Tanner and Klara, and their mother, Katrina Church, will be flying in from North Carolina.

Bost started at Harker in 1993 as a grade 4 teacher and in 2001 became director of special projects in the advancement department.

A year later he took on the position of grant writer/director of international programs, which later became the global education program; Bost became director of that program in 2004. He also worked for many years as a summer program administrator. Kristin Giammona, elementary division head and long-time friend of Bost’s, said she hopes many will attend the memorial, “so Tanner and Klara can grasp how important and special Bill was to Harker and to his Harker friends.” If you have any photos you would like to include in the memorial’s slide show, please email them to Giammona at kristing@harker.org.

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reg Martin, longtime parent at The Harker School (Araby ’11; Delaney, grade 10; Conor, grade 8) and a devoted volunteer at the annual picnic and fashion show, as well as other events, passed away Sept. 5 after a brave battle with cancer.

A memorial service Sept. 9 was followed by a reception at the Martin family’s favorite restaurant, Capers.

“Everyone who worked with Greg will remember his sense of humor, zest for life and loving, caring manner,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school.

Kelly Espinosa, picnic coordinator, worked with Martin for many years on the picnic committee. “Greg was in charge of the setup in the MPR,” said Espinosa. “He took great pride in acquiring beer for the bar that matched our picnic theme each year and puzzling out ways for us to have the most popular football games available to picnic goers. As one of two men on our female-filled committee he took our teasing in stride, kept us laughing, and was a dedicated, creative contributor to our team who will be sorely missed.”

Photos supplied by the Harker archives

Martin was both a logistics guru and an awesome treasurer for the fashion show, said Sue Prutton, that event's former organizer. “He made life easy for those who depended on him; he was always committed to excellence and had abundant common sense. More than that he was just fun to be around, and that’s an invaluable commodity.” He will be missed.

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AlumniNews It’s been a year since Wendy Tsai ’04 spontaneously moved to Shanghai to work for the Neri & Hu Design and Research Office, an internationally renowned multidisciplinary architecture and furniture design firm.

Tsai was in New York researching boutique hotel precedents while working for another architectural firm when she came across an intriguing magazine article about the Hotel Waterhouse, located in Shanghai and designed by Neri & Hu.

“The design opportunities are definitely a lot more interesting here in Shanghai – it’s like the new American dream, where anything can happen.”

-Wendy Tsai ’04

Tsai was immediately struck by the impressive architectural detailing of the hotel, a 1930s warehouse now made over into a small yet elegant hotel noted for fusing modernism with the city's storied past. The 19-room hotel boasts a renovation with many of the old walls remaining intact while new elements sprout out of the old, creating a rare architectural linkage between then and now.

“I really liked the details in Neri & Hu’s work, so I sent them an email

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telling them so … and ended up moving to Shanghai to work for them four weeks later!” recalled Tsai incredulously.

Having only been to Shanghai once for a family vacation when she was 10, she didn’t know what to expect. But, she figured, with so many exciting architectural developments now happening in China, “Why not check it out and see how it is to live in Shanghai while I can still explore and move around?”

The decision turned out to be a wise one for Tsai, who is learning much while on the job at Neri & Hu. The awardwinning firm, regularly featured in international design magazines, was founded in 2004 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu. One of the things that attracted Tsai to Neri & Hu was its global reach in providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic and product design services. Currently working on projects in eight countries, Neri & Hu has a multicultural staff with a capacity to speak more than 20 different languages.

“The projects we have at the office are very diverse and interesting,” said Tsai, noting, for example, that she’s had the opportunity to oversee the design and completion of a new store concept of a luxury retailer dedicated to young contemporary designers like Harker’s own Alexander Wang ’98.

“The design opportunities are definitely a lot more interesting here in Shanghai – it’s like the new American dream, where anything can happen,” she said.

Yet, despite her new, exciting life,

Photos provided by Wendy Tsai ’04

From New York to Shanghai, Wendy Tsai ’04 Lands Dream Job as Architect

By Debbie Cohen

Tsai will always have fond memories of her time spent at Harker. “I really miss the Harker days,” said Tsai, who got her start at the middle school back in 1999 with the then-available boarding program. “The dorm years, as well as the high school years, will always have a special place in my heart.”

According to Tsai, Harker fostered a supportive learning environment, both academically and socially, leading the way for her to explore various art media that helped prepare her portfolio for architecture schools.

Tsai now advises other Harker alumni who wish to take on work abroad to travel and explore as much as they can while not yet completely tied down by obligations.

For Tsai, following the path to her dream architectural job has been quite an adventure and memorable experience. “At first I was in cultural shock. Now, I enjoy learning something new every day … nothing ceases to be surprising!” she said.

AlumniNews Siddarth Satish ’06 certainly knows how to get extra mileage out of his graduate work. What began as a study for his master’s thesis led to his becoming a finalist in a prestigious contest, followed by the successful launch of an innovative startup company.

Last year, thanks to his graduate work on blood loss monitoring, Satish became part of the only finalist team representing Stanford University to compete in Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development Partners.

The health technology business uses the iPad as the base of a new method to help anesthesiologists monitor blood loss during surgery in real time.

The contest, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and the U.K.’s Department for International Development, called for innovative solutions to save the lives of mothers and newborns around the time of birth and elicited more than 500 submissions from almost 60 countries.

Only 65 finalists, including Satish’s team, were selected to advance to the final stage of the competition, with a public vote online. Called “Lowest Mobile Platform for Real-Time Monitoring of Blood Loss,” Satish’s project was mentored under the co-advisement of Stanford University professors Michael Hsieh and Mark

Many surgical teams currently use visual estimation to determine how much blood a patient loses during procedures. However, overestimating or underestimating blood loss can contribute to patient complications, morbidity and mortality while increasing care costs.

Photo provided by Siddarth Satish ’06

Master’s Thesis Results in Innovative Startup Company for Alumnus

Gonzalgo, along with David Rempel, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Although Satish and his group were not ultimately awarded grants, they attained the prestigious status of finalists and the project resulted in an innovative spin-off – Gauss Surgical Inc., a startup company he co-founded with CEO Dr. Milt McColl, a serial life sciences entrepreneur, former venture capitalist and former NFL linebacker (who won two Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s). The two co-founders, who are also entrepreneurs-in-residence at StartX, the Stanford student startup accelerator, were able to raise $1 million in seed funding last fall from several angel investors.

The health technology business uses the iPad as the base of a new method to help anesthesiologists monitor blood loss during surgery in real time, hoping to facilitate better intraoperative fluid management and more appropriate blood transfusions.

According to Satish, who serves as chief technology officer, the mobile medical platform uses the iPad to scan surgical surfaces that are covered in blood, chiefly pieces of gauze that soak up blood during surgery. Through an iPad app, those scanned images are sent to the cloud, where Gauss’ algorithms determine and deliver an estimate of how much blood is present.

While still under development, a final business model will likely be similar to those which hospitals are used to seeing with medical devices and software. The product will showcase at the American Society for Anesthesiologists' and the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management’s annual meetings in the fall.

While clearly enthusiastic about his new business venture, Satish further shared some exiting news about his girlfriend, and Harker classmate, Alisha Tolani ’06. Tolani, who attended Stanford, was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship by the Department of State and will be traveling to Honduras this fall. Similar to the USAID contest Satish had placed in, Tolani’s project involves a study of obstetrical outcomes among highrisk populations of laboring mothers in government hospitals.

“I think she’s particularly excited about putting her Spanish skills to great use after taking seven years of Spanish at Harker!” he said.

Both Satish and Tolani credit Harker’s encouragement of forward thinking with helping to pave the way for their future successes. “Although I pursued a technical path after high school, the true highlight of Harker for me was my involvement with debate,” said Satish, a former Harker debate captain.

“The skills that I developed as a debater I use every single day, both in my technical work and towards the business, as a model for thinking. I’d highly encourage students to get involved with debate, even if they are planning to pursue a technical degree in college,” he said.

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ClassNotes

Submitted by Class Agents

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.

1973

1982

1990

1997

Class Agent: Alan Stevens (alanclassreunion@earthlink. net)

Class Agents: Tina (Johnson) Murray (tinammurray@earthlink. net); Pauline (de Vos) Aasen (thedutchfox@gmail.com); Keil Albert (kaalbert@geo-consultants. com)

Class Agent: Chris Yamashita (iamtheyamo@yahoo.com)

Class Agents: Chelsea Gilliland (cgilliland@gmail.com); Lindsey Hochrine (lynn.laka@fireskyresort. com)

1976 Class Agents: Joy Aliason Younes (joycyounes@yahoo.com); Cindy Cottrell DeAngelo (cldeangelo@yahoo.com)

1977 Class Agent: Mike Pons (michael.pons@gmail.com)

1978 Class Agent: Silvia Malaccorto (smalaccorto@contoural. com)

1979 Class Agent: Chip Zecher (chipzecher@hotmail.com)

1980 Class Agent: Greg Argendeli (slackmaster@gmail.com) Congratulations to Edrice Angry on her recent marriage! See the Celebrations section for a photo and more information.

1981 Class Agent: Kristin (Scarpace) Giammona (kristing@harker.org)

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After a 26-year career, Jana (Kofman) Bartley, Jr. has retired as a major in the Marine Corps. She now spends her time doing volunteer work with the Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society, a private nonprofit charitable organization providing members of both the Navy and Marines, their families, retirees and widows educational, financial and other assistance.

1984 Class Agents: Karri Baker (karribaker@me.com); Kristin Quintin (kquintin@intevac.com)

1988 Class Agents: Eric Xanthopoulos (eric.xanthopoulos@gmail. com); Aileen Eveleth (a_eveleth@yahoo.com)

1989 Class Agent: Katie Wilson (mkate_wilson@yahoo.com)

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1991 Class Agent: Ashley Anderson (anderbruin@gmail.com)

1992 Class Agent: Amanda Mathias Bonomi (amandambonomi@gmail. com) Howard Huang reports that he got married. See the Celebrations section for a photo and more information.

1993 Class Agents: Joy Paterson (joypaterson@gmail.com); Tala Banato (tala.banato@gmail.com); Kelle Sloan (kelles@harker.org)

1994 Class Agent: Leyna Cotran (leynacotran@gmail.com)

1995 Class Agent: Lisa (Bowman) Gassmann (lisagassmann@gmail.com)

1996 Class Agent: Ashley S. Franke (ashley.franke@gmail.com)

2002 Class Agents: Akhsar Kharebov (axarharebate@gmail.com); Yasmin Ali (yasminfali@gmail.com); Isabella Liu (isabella.a.liu@gmail.com)

2003 Class Agents: Julia N. Gitis (juliag@gmail.com); Maheen Kaleem (maheenkaleem@gmail.com)

2004 Class Agents: Jacinda A. Mein (mjacinda@gmail.com); Jessica C. Liu (jess.c.liu@gmail.com)

2005 Class Agent: Erika N. Gudmundson (erika.gudmundson@gmail. com) Erika Gudmundson has settled nicely into her new job as a communications senior associate at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. In the summer issue of Harker Quarterly there was an article about her previous work for the Treasury

ClassNotes Department in Washington, D.C.

enough to be involved with the arts community in D.C., and recently put up a large-scale performance installation as part of the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festival!

Photo provided by Erika Gudmundson ’05

Meghana Dhar is enjoying living in San Francisco (with two Harker alums!).

After graduating from UC Berkeley and working at Visa in corporate strategy/pricing she just transitioned to corporate development at eBay and is loving the new work. She still stays in touch with Harker through debate, judging high school tournaments whenever she gets a chance, and stays in touch with all the students she coaches.

2006

Photo provided by Mariah Bush’06

Amulya Mandava just finished a fellowship in the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Healty (NIH). She was also fortunate enough to get experience doing ethics consultation for clinicians and patients in the Clinical Center Hospital at NIH. This fall, she will be starting a two-year master's degree in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, doing work at the intersection of philosophy of religion and religious ethics, and generally immersing herself in all things divine. In her free time, she's been lucky

Mariah Bush spent much of this year adventuring around Australia and the South Pacific – with a recent sojourn to Thailand, complete with elephants

and tigers (oh my!). She completed her trip working in New Zealand with former Harker photographer Mark Tantrum on a

College. This summer, she began working as a therapist at Confidence Connection in Boston and moved to Brighton, all while working on exams to become an official licensed clinical social worker.

In June, Lauren Harries finished her first of two years with the new Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training (APT) in Philadelphia.

She spent three weeks of July studying at the Society of American Fights Director's Actor Combatant Skills Proficiency course, an intensive program run by the University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts training actors in unarmed, rapier, dagger and broadsword techniques.

2007 Class Agents: Cassie Kerkhoff (ckerkhoff@ucsd.edu); Audrey Kwong (audmusic@gmail.com)

Amit Mukherjee had a busy two years living in San Francisco, working for J.P. Morgan's Internet and digital media team, where he was part of the core Facebook IPO team.

This summer he took a month off during which time he attended a 10day silent meditation retreat and spent some time vacationing in Bermuda. Now he's moved to D.C. to work as a technology investor for New Enterprise Associates, the world's largest venture capital firm.

He is thrilled for the move, sad to leave all the Harker friends he reunited with in S.F., and hopes to reconnect to all the Harker alums on the East Coast (N.Y. and D.C. in particular).

VyVy Trinh had a blast when she came out to Harker for a visit last spring and co-taught a class with Kate Shanahan, elementary English department chair. According to Kate, the students loved having VyVy, who has a background in education,

Photos provided by Kate Shanahan

Class Agents: Meghana Dhar (meghanadhar@gmail.com); Jeffrey Le (Jeff87@gmail.com); Casey Near (caseylane@gmail.com)

photography venture.

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Amanda Polzin recently graduated with a master's in social work from Boston H A R K E R Q U A R T E R LY

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in the classroom. And, she added, “it was great to come full circle with her!”

2008 Class Agents: Stephanie Syu (ssyu363@yahoo.com); Senan Ebrahim (sebrahim@fas.harvard.edu)

2009 Class Agents: David Kastelman (davidksworld@gmail.com); Stephanie Guo (stephanie.j.guo@gmail.com) Tara Panu recently teamed up to play in the mixed doubles division of the 10k California Open with Karthik Dhore ’11 at Seascape in Aptos.

Michelle Lo was recently honored with a Chi Am Circle scholarship in recognition of her extraordinary extracurricular activities, high scholastic merit and community spirit. Chi Am Circle is a nonprofit Asian American women’s organization established in 1965.

Photo provided by Christine Davis

Photo provided by Kate Shanahan

ClassNotes

Former Harker gridiron and swimming stalwart Cole Davis, along with several of his Stanford University swim teammates, competed in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, held June 25-July 2 in Omaha, Neb. Although Davis did not place on the team, the experience was one he will never forget.

2011 Class Agents: Rani Mukherjee (rani.mukherjee18@gmail. com); Hassaan Ebrahim (hassaan.e@gmail.com) Over the summer, Vlad Sepetov gave Spanish teacher Diana Moss and her son, Kevin, grade 12, a tour of his school, the University of Washington.

2012 Class Agents: Will Chang (12williamc@students. harker.org); David Fang (12davidf@students.harker.org) Sonya Chalaka enjoyed spending time with Julia Lambert, an exchange student from Germany, who spent a semester at Harker in the fall of 2010 and was a member of the 2012 class.

Photo provided by Jeffrey Lee

Harker upper school debate instructor Jonathan Peele joined his former advisee Dwight Payne at the opening football game held at the University of Northern Carolina (UNC), where the Tarheels won 62-0. Dwight currently attends UNC and Mr. Peele graduated from the college in ’04.

Photo by MaryEllis Deacon

Photo provided by MaryEllis Deacon

2010 Class Agents: Kevin Fu (kf800@yahoo.com); Adrienne Wong (adriee@gmail.com) 40

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Photo provided by Diana Moss

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Photo provided by Jonathan Peele

ClassNotes Alumni Celebrations

’

SAVE the DATE ALUMNI REUNION

Photos provided by the happy couples.

Please join us in congratulating the following: Edrice Angry ’80 was married this past June to Joe Quintero. The couple lives in Modesto.

Howard Huang ’92 was married two months ago in Los Angeles and is now living with his wife, Caroline Tang, in the Inland Empire.

ALUMNI: Grab Your Friends and Send Us a Video!

Do you have a way with a video camera?

What about an iPhone? Whether you’re a professional videographer or just downloaded iMovie, we want to hear from you! Join other classes in creating a short (one minute max) video highlighting memories of your time at Harker. What was your favorite class? Where were the hangouts when you were here?

Send us a clip about your favorite memory, or maybe give a shout out to your favorite teacher, coach or someone you hope to see at the reunion.

Post your submission to YouTube and send us the link. Once approved, we’ll post the video on our Web page to help us reach out to fellow alumni and promote our upcoming activity-filled reunion weekend, Nov. 2-3.

Be creative! Send all video entries by Oct. 15 to MaryEllis Deacon, director of alumni relations, at maryellisd@harker.org.

If you are a Harker alumna/us, please join us for two fun-filled events the first weekend in November, as we welcome our alumni home and celebrate the Harker community with the homecoming game.

Both happenings are hosted by the alumni office on the upper school campus. So mark your calendars now for:

Fri., Nov. 2, at 6 p.m. (game to begin at 7:30 p.m.), for a family-friendly alumni tailgate at homecoming on

Davis Field, with alumni association award recipients announced at halftime. Mingle with former faculty and friends under the alumni tent, snack on your favorite foods from the kitchen, and enjoy being back on your old campus. Children are welcome to attend. Prior to the game, join fellow alumni as we form the gauntlet for our Eagles to run through and take the field. Fellow football players are invited to email alumni@harker. org for a special T-shirt for the evening.

Sat., Nov. 3, from 5-8 p.m., for a mix and mingle, adults-only (aged 21 and up) reunion held in the Nichols Hall

atrium, sponsored by the alumni association.

Join the PAMA Boys for great music with dancing, drinks and fun with friends. Time capsules will be unpacked, memorabilia displayed, and plenty of pictures shown, all sure to bring back fond memories and stories.

Recipients of the alumni awards will also be introduced and recognized during this time.

Scan this QR code with your phone's bar code reader app for videos and more information!

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LookingAhead Pledge Now

presents

Sept. 30-Oct. 6

Make your gift or pledge before the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic (Oct. 14, 2012) to be eligible for the Napa weekend drawing!

Hamlet

John Hunter

Inspire Great at Thinkers

Building a Generation of Leaders Wed., Oct. 3 | 7 p.m.

Thurs.-Sat. Oct. 25-27, 2012 | 7 p.m. | Blackford Theater www.harker.org

62nd Harker Family & Alumni Picnic

HOMECOMING Davis Field Fri., Nov. 2, 2012

Photo by John Dolan

Sun., Oct. 14, 2012 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Blackford Campus

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Khaled Hosseini Author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

Fri., Nov. 30 | 7:30 p.m.

RSVP required www.harker.org

The Harker School | 500 Saratoga Ave. | San Jose

LookingAhead GRADE

DATE

LOCATION

K-5 9-12 6-8

Sun., Nov. 4 Sun., Nov. 11 Sun., Dec. 2

Lower School Upper School Middle School

K-5 9-12 6-8

Fri., Oct. 19 Thu., Nov. 8 Thu., Nov. 29

Lower School Middle School Upper School

January 8, 17, 22, 29 RSVP Required

Visit www.harker.org for details

Photo by Janette Beckman

OPEN HOUSE EVENTS

Concert Series Fri., Oct. 26

The Parker Quartet Fri., Feb. 8

Sebastian Bäverstam All shows 8 p.m. | General Admission: $20 Pre-event reception one hour prior to each performance. Complimentary hors d'oeuvres and soft drinks included. Cash bar for wine and beer.

Tickets: www.harker.org/concertseries

THE HARKER SCHOOL FASHION SHOW

Reunion age 21 and above only Saratoga Campus

SAT.

NOV.

3

Santa’s Winter Wonderland Bucknall Gym Email to RSVP: alumni@harker.org Call for questions: 408.345.9264

SAT.

DEC.

8

Connect with friends!

Fri., Feb. 22, 2013 Model Workshop Oct. 20 | 1 p.m.

Model Tryouts Oct. 21 | 12 p.m.

Model workshop and tryouts held at MPR, Blackford campus

Harker Quarterly (USPS 023-761) is published four times per year (September, December, March and June) by The Harker School, Office of Communication, 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, CA 95129. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Jose, CA and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Harker Quarterly, 500 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, CA 95129.

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circa 1960

T

Harker Does Travel

4 0 8 . 2 4 9 . 2 510 H A R K E R Q U A R T E R LY

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telling note on him from the state of Nebraska’s website, where he was inducted into the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame: “[Wagner] continued to fly passenger service for United until his 1957 retirement from United Airlines as the company’s senior captain with more than 31,000 hours flight time. He was presented with the President’s Award, United Airline’s highest honor. Wagner’s last flight for UAL was from Honolulu to San Francisco on a DC-7 christened the Captain Reuben L. Wagner.”

Could it be that the PAMA outing was to greet Wagner upon arrival at SFO in 1957? Only the PAMA boys know for sure! Harker Quarterly has made enquiries to United Airlines and will publish details as we get them from PAMA alumni and United.

w w w. h a r k e r. o r g

·

S a n

J o s e ,

C a l i f o r n i a O of C: 9/12 (BHDG/JJJ/RM/DQP) 7,406

Photo courtesy of Harker Archives

here are field trips, and then there are field trips! The cadets at Palo Alto Military Academy made a trip to the ramp at San Francisco International Airport, but we don’t know exactly when! We have this Harker Archives photo as being taken in the late 1960s, and the aircraft paint job has been identified as the 1960s, but it may be from as early as 1957. The aircraft is a propeller-driven Douglass DC-7 and, in 1958, United started putting DC-8 jets into service. Naturally, they wouldn’t stop using their older aircraft immediately, but the next clue is that the pilot’s name, Captain Reuben L. Wagner, is under the cockpit windows and he was quite a famous guy – a United Airlines senior captain when he retired in 1957. Here is a