Over the summer, sophomore Mohan Awasthi visited Okayama, Japan (a sister city of San Jose) as a Silicon Valley Youth Ambassador. He and other ambassadors toured through local schools to meet with teachers and students and teach English to the classes they visited. During one stop, Awasthi gave a speech about what schools are like in the United States. “Overall, the public schools themselves are extremely well run and maintained, and there are many extracurricular activities for any type of student,” he said.
On a visit to Okayama’s city hall, Awasthi and the other ambassadors met with the mayor of Okayama and received a tour of the building. “Also, similar to the school speech, we spoke to the mayor about how we came to keep a good relationship between San Jose and Okayama,” he said. “Overall, it was an extremely fun and rare experience.”
During a homestay with the family of a local high school student, Awasthi got a firsthand look into the everyday lives of Okayama citizens. “I got to try more authentic Japanese food, play sports, visit their school and see many landmarks in Okayama: Kojima Jean street, the Stone Windmills, Okayama castle, and the Makido stone cave,” he said. Forging bonds with his host family, he added, was one of the most memorable parts of his visit.
The upper school’s Club Fair had the Nichols Hall Atrium packed and bursting with activity on Sept. 13, as students flocked to see the offerings of the more than 60 active clubs on campus. Club representatives set up tables and chatted with fellow students about a huge range of interests, including technology, art, music, sports […]
Last week, Nidhya Shivakumar, grade 7, was announced as one of the Top 300 students nationwide from the 2,499 middle school students nominated for this year’s Broadcom MASTERS science competition. Her project, titled “Halophytes: A Potential Solution for the Remediation of Soil in Saline Wastelands,” was chosen for the Top 300 by a panel of […]
Last week, Harker’s upper school student newspaper, the Winged Post, became one of 49 student newspapers identified as finalists in the National Scholastic Press Association’s 2017 Pacemaker competition. A total of 275 student publications were in the running for this year’s Pacemaker, which NSPA executive director called the organization’s “preeminent award.” Of these 49 finalists, […]
Over a period of three weeks in September, middle school students attended special talks held by Erika Leonard, the California program director for the international non-profit organization KidPower. For the past 27 years, Leonard said, KidPower has been “teaching social safety skills to people of all ages, abilities and identities.” Topics at each of the […]
Upper school science teacher Kate Schafer recently began a two-week scientific survey in the Gulf of Mexico, where she and other scientists are “studying shark and red snapper populations in locations around the gulf,” she said. Schafer is currently situated aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Ship Oregon II as part of NOAA’s […]
This morning’s Homecoming Rally capped off Spirit Week with fun, games and plenty of cheering! Classes gathered on Davis Field and competed for spirit points in a series of friendly and exciting games, as well as performances by the Harker cheer squad and varsity dance troupe! Seniors were awarded a whopping 100 spirit points when […]
Saturday night’s Homecoming celebration brought hundreds of members of the Harker community together to watch the soaring Harker Eagles, who had a 4-0 record going into tonight’s game, face off against the Rams of Rio Vista High School. Prior to the game, families socialized and enjoyed the food options on offer at the tailgate area, […]
Melody Huang, a teacher at the Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy, spent two weeks in mid-September at Harker as part of this year’s teacher exchange with the Chinese sister school. She began her first week at Harker by visiting several lower school English classes, as well as Jared Ramsey’s U.S. history class and Tobias Wade’s […]
Harker chess players had a very successful weekend at the U.S. National Game/30 and Game/60 Championships in Santa Clara.
After a Harker career spanning 40 years, Cindy Ellis, middle school division head, has announced that she will be retiring at the end of the 2017-18 school year. Ellis’ time at Harker included working as a houseparent for the school’s boarding program (which closed in 2002), teaching algebra and pre-algebra at the middle school and […]
In the summer of 2014, Bay Area high school students Luyi Zhang, Emily Li and Lucas Xin saw an opportunity to alleviate poverty while visiting the rural village of Dagouyan in China’s Ningxia region. The area’s cows, it turned out, were in demand in Chinese coastal cities because of Ningxia’s cleaner atmosphere. “However, most farmers […]
Last weekend, 29 upper school students made the yearly trip to Ashland, Ore., to visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The long-running repertory theater, founded in 1935, is a yearly destination for upper school English teacher Pauline Paskali’s English students, who gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s works by seeing it interpreted in a live setting […]
On Friday morning, lower school students were treated to a special visit by members of San Jose Taiko. Formed in 1973, San Jose Taiko is recognized as one of the world’s top ensembles in taiko (“drum”) performance, an art form with roots dating back to sixth century Japan. During the latter half of the 20th […]
Music teacher Dave Hart invited Bay Area woodwind ensemble Frequency 49 to his middle school classroom on Thursday to show his students how chamber music is performed by professional musicians. The students, who had been creating chamber music compositions in class, watched as the members of the sextet – pianist Margaret Halbig, French horn player […]
Upper school students packed Nichols Hall on Friday morning to seek out volunteering opportunities at this year’s Service Fair. Student-run organizations and local organizations such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Outdoor Science School had tables set up where representatives offered information about volunteering opportunities to passersby. The Tutoring Club, one of the many student […]