The Bucknall gym teemed with activity on June 3 as students and parents filed in for Fifth Grade Awards and Promotion Ceremony. Student Kristen Park led everyone in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before head of school Chris Nikoloff greeted the afternoon audience. The Gr. 5 dance group Dance Fusion then performed for the crowd.

Next, the annual awards were doled out. Allison Wang won for Academic Excellence, and the award for General Excellence went to Jonathan Ma and Ankita Sharma. Michael Moncton and Doreene Kang were recognized for Outstanding Academic Improvement. The Athletics and Sportsmanship awards were given to Nathaniel Stearns and Shannon Richardson. Kaushik Sankar and Gillian Chu received awards for Courtesy, while Madison Tomihiro and Jonathan Yiu were awarded for Personal Presentation. The Leadership awards went to Sadhika Malladi and Janet Lee, and the Spirit of Cooperation Award was given to Natalie Simonian and Vineet Kosaraju. Kurt Schwartz, Kristen Ko, Kristen Park, Alexander Guest, Nikhil Bopardikar, Shivali Minocha and Helena Dworak all received awards for Effort.

Awards for individual subjects were given to Allison Wang and Janet Lee for both English and Science, Janet Lee for Mathematics, Shalini Arimilli for Social Studies and Lauren Speckman and Johnathon Keller for Physical Education.

After the awards were handed out, the 120 students were called up one by one to receive their promotion certificates. After much applause, LS music teacher Jennifer Cowgill directed the Gr. 5 class’ vocal performance of “Children are the Future of the World” by Russell Robinson and, fittingly, “The Harker School Anthem.”

Elementary division head Kristin Giammona delivered the closing speech to officially bring another successful year to a close. Congratulations to all the Harker fifth graders taking the next step!