Prospective Harker applicants and their parents learned about courses, extracurricular programs and community at the annual Open House on Sunday.
Upper School Division Head Paul Barsky introduced a student panel with seniors Elie Ahluwahlia, Victoria Ma, Ishan Mysore and Albert Yao. The panelists discussed their personal experiences at Harker, academic advice and thoughts on student belonging.
Elie emphasized the curiosity and compassion she sees in the classroom environment.
“In my classes I feel how interested my classmates are about what we’re learning,” Elie said. “The teachers are very passionate and curious to hear about what students are doing. I also feel I always have a wall of people to support me at all times here, and I feel that they care about my success.”
Throughout the day teachers led ten-minute long mock classes called mini-lessons. Chemistry teacher Ran Tao performed acid-base experiments, European history teacher Byron Stevens conducted a visual lesson about Raphael’s School of Athens and French teacher Agnés Pommier led an immersive primer on elementary French phrases.
English teacher Beth Wahl facilitated a discussion of the opening scene from The Tempest. She showed attendees several live adaptations of the play, emphasizing Shakespeare’s modern relevance.
“I wanted to get the students involved, to have them understand that my approach to teaching is interactive, not lecture,” Dr. Wahl said. “I also tried to get rid of that stereotype that Shakespeare is some kind of stuffy thing — language that we don’t understand, or stories we don’t relate to. We can’t put ourselves back in the 1600s, but as much as I could, I wanted students to get a sense of the freshness of these stories.”
Student and faculty representatives from various programs like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Journalism, and Living with Intent, Focus and Enthusiasm (LIFE) manned tables to connect with prospective applicants and their parents.
Varsity cross country runner Robinson Xiang (12), attending on behalf of Harker Athletics, came to Open House to inspire prospective applicants to consider a program that has taught him valuable lessons.
“I want to bring my passion to these eighth graders to show them everything that the Harker sports community has brought me in the last four years — the camaraderie, the support of coaches and the teammates,” Robinson said. “The number one question I get from parents is, ‘how do I balance academics or extracurriculars with sports?’ What I tell them is that sports actually help your kid do these things better.”
