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College Counseling

Harley’s Approach to College Counseling is highly individualized and student-centered. Students have direct access to college counselors throughout their Upper School experience, but really, each student is part of a team including faculty, administration, and staff. It’s our job to support each student and we want nothing more than to send students on to the next step of their journey at a right fit school for them. The student centered and driven process is wrapped in care, expertise, and professionalism.

We host college reps during times students are available (no need to miss a class) so they can make connections and learn more about potential schools. We also arrange campus visits for classes as field trips, host an alumni college day (where recent Upper School graduates return to share advice and answer questions), and help connect students with our international alumni network. In fact, representatives from schools all over the world actively seek opportunities to come to Harley and meet with our students!

Our college counselors are accredited and are part of national/global conversations on admission trends. They also attend and present at conferences across the country.

Beginning with our Grade 11 parent night, we offer informational sessions for parents, including one devoted just to financial aid. Our partnership with families is critical, as the college admissions world changes very quickly and having an expert to guide students and families through the process is essential.

View the downloadable College Counseling Guide

Clubs

“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Athletics

​Each and every year, students at The Harley School participate in HAC Athletics, and their success continues to be impressive, both as students and athletes. Our athletic program is an integral part of Harley, teaching student-athletes invaluable lessons about teamwork, time management, persistence, and competition.  Our program allows them to develop physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally as they represent their school on and off the field. They grow, mature, and work hard to be the best teammate they can, while creating lifelong memories with teammates who often remain friends for life. 

Helping our athletes to reach their potential are some of HAC’s best assets: our coaches. More often than not, they are drawn from the ranks of our faculty and  have a deep understanding of the personalities and abilities of the student-athletes on their teams.  

We strive to find the right balance of academics, exercise, and personal growth for everyone.  By offering a variety of sports at many different levels, all student-athletes find a sport they can be successful in. It is with great pride and pleasure that my team and I work to enrich the athletic lives of all our HAC student-athletes. Go Wolves! 

To learn more check out our athletics page.

Student Leadership

Our Upper School is filled with formal and informal opportunities for students to take on leadership roles. Whether following passions or learning new skills, student-driven opportunities take many shapes.

– Independent study: one trimester, full year, and multi-year projects have included automating our solar chimneys, coding handmade musical instruments, or developing a class on financial literacy for underserved high school students.

– Serving on student council

– STEM: Climate curriculum program, biomimicry program, NASA Hunch program

Clubs

“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Hospice

Unlike this class, death is not an elective. Although it is one of two universal human experiences, our culture often ignores, denies, or misconstrues the true nature of death and dying. What happens when we bear witness to this natural process in the cycle of life and develop our ability to be fully present with others when they need us more than ever? It has the potential to change us deeply and fundamentally while shining a brilliant light on the path of our own lives.

With the support of their classmates, teacher, and comfort care home communities, senior students are offered the chance to care for others who truly need their purposeful, non-judgmental attention. In the home-like setting of a comfort care home, opportunities for learning extend beyond a traditional classroom rubric and conventional methods of evaluation. In this course, students will certainly find tangible “learning outcomes” by studying the medical/physical processes associated with dying and the basic nursing assistant skills of comfort care. The ultimate goal, however, will always be rooted in true relationships and connection, which occurs only through empathy and compassion.

Learn more about the Hospice Program at Harley HERE.

Capstone/Independent Studies

This program utilizes environmentally-focused approaches to education and hands-on learning in order to foster the next generation of leaders through a lens of sustainability and problem-solving.

Food & Farm: These year-long and trimester-long classes are held outside as much as possible, allowing students to become leaders in our various growing spaces. They cover environmental justice issues as well as hands-on work such as planning and overseeing planting, harvesting, and preparation of the gardens.

Past year-long focus projects have included: Creating a native plant shade garden in the Wild Wood area, redesigning our hydroponic system, overhauling Harley’s high tunnel, and improving the irrigation system for the MicroFarm.

Culinary Arts: These classes have a two-fold purpose: to give students practical skills in cooking and the science behind different techniques in the kitchen, learning about food justice, food sourcing, labor topics, and sustainability.

Past topics have included: Examining a plant-based diet, looking at the carbon footprint of different meals and food preparation methods, proposing a low carbon footprint menu to the dining hall, links between food labeling and environmental issues of food production.

Beekeeping: This one trimester class provides hands-on training in beekeeping, how to be a beekeeper, and safety and other techniques for working with bees. Once trained students help with all aspects of Harley beekeeping such as hive inspections, honey collection and extraction, and teaching students in Lower School about our hives.

Students pick a research topic addressing honeybee health and the larger environmental picture.

Social Justice

At Harley, our students learn how to evaluate social systems in order to identify complex problems in society through a lens of social justice. They take a hands-on approach to working for a fair, equitable society by researching, exploring and evaluating different perspectives, and offering solutions—both theoretical and practical.

Our faculty integrate social justice into our broader curriculum to assist students in gaining a foundational knowledge about what makes a democracy function. By gaining skills in ideating supportive pathways they become more exposed and experienced to how communities can undergo healing and restorative actions.

 

Capstone/Independent Studies

Students may create independent studies with supervising teachers throughout their Upper School experience or, during Grade 12, they can design Capstone projects—intensive collaborations with Harley faculty and off-campus mentors—involving rigorous academic study and culminating in public presentations. They are empowered to create their own curriculum, set goals, and work on time management skills in order to accomplish their objectives.

Independent Studies run the gamut from The Psychology of Sports to Furniture Design to The Neuroimaging of Alzheimer’s Disease. Capstones, meanwhile, are as diverse as the students who pursue them: Fictional Rochester, Autobiographical Art, Biomimicry Education, Organic Fuel, and Rochester Refugees. 

Indicative of Upper School curiosity and creativity, pursuits such as these distinguish our graduates in college. Through deep dives of this sort, Harley students master more than speaking, writing, and computing: they learn to communicate, advocate, collaborate, organize, listen, and empathize. 

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FALL 2022

FEATURES

Citizen Scientists

At Harley, we are lucky because of our proximity to Allens Creek, which runs along the south side of our property next to the Microfarm, Winslow Natural Playground & Outdoor Learning Center, and our nature center across the bridge. Generations of students have created boats from natural materials to “sail” down the creek, done their best to ice skate on it when it has frozen, and generally enjoyed impromptu fun along the banks and in the water.

Our students in all divisions also utilize the creek as part of their studies. This natural resource helps bring active learning to life.

by Beth Bailey

July 13, 2022

Lower School: Fun and Science in the Creek

Recent Harley School retiree, Tony Cinquino, P ’06, ’10 (Lower School 1979–2021), created several beloved traditions in our Lower School, including the Grade 2 Creekwalk, now in approximately its 30th year. 

Elisa Sharman, Grade 2 faculty member, spoke with Becoming Magazine recently about this hands-on, minds-on experience.

Allens Creek, Home of Elusive Crayfish

Early in the year, all of Grade 2 ventures into Allens Creek on the lookout for crayfish. From the beginning this project was developed to activate learning on several levels:

  • A community-building exercise for the new classes each year
  • Observation of the natural world
  • Gaining a deeper understanding of care for the Earth
  • Using scientific skills

Listening to the lively banter, splashing, and laughter when students “hit the water”, it’s easy to feel excitement and wonder along with them. After all, it’s not every day that rubber boots are donned, fishing nets are handed out, and a quest begins. In this case, it’s the quest to find, collect, and count crayfish.

Every year is different, defined by creek conditions: Has there been much rain or was the summer fairly dry? Is the creek level  high or low? A high creek means the crayfish, natural hiders, are tougher to spot. Low creek level exposes any “man-made” additions to the creek. Lots of rain adds more branches and natural debris to the mix. Each year the conditions are different.

In addition to counting the crayfish, students use their scientific skills to weigh, measure, and compare them. This year, for example, there were fewer crayfish caught, but they were bigger than usual. What, the students wondered, could be the cause? They hypothesized perhaps fewer crayfish meant there was less competition for food, so they were able to grow larger. We now have decades of data about the crayfish in our creek that we can share with other scientists.

Students actively explore and start to understand their impact on the environment, making connections based on what they observe. They might notice glass or even a piece of a retaining wall in the creek. This evidence that people are not taking care of the creek as well as they should helps them to understand they have a responsibility to each other and the world. 

Multidisciplinary? Yes, Please!

The creekwalk is just one part of the streamlife unit, which involves math, ELA, art, and science. The unit begins by learning about fish life cycles, complete with a trip to Powder Mill Park’s fish nursery, followed by reading the tall tale “Jangles” by David Shannon. This story is about an enormous fish who derives his name from the many fishing lures embedded in his mouth that “jangle” as he swims. The story’s lesson: respect nature and  let it be. Students begin to realize why we need to leave no trace and why we should only observe. 

In art, Teacher Ell shows students Japanese fish printing utilizing Gyotaku—a traditional form of Japanese art that began over 100 years ago. By applying sumi ink to one side of a freshly caught fish, then covering the fish with rice paper and rubbing it to create an exact image of the fish, they could prove their catch really happened. Although students don’t actually use dead fish (they used to!) to create their rubbings, they love making the prints.

This creekwalk makes a lasting impression on students, and years later they remember their time in the creek. We hope this decades-long tradition remains active for years to come. After all, taking care of the Earth will always be important, and what better way to reinforce this than with a trip to the creek?

Check out a photo gallery of this year’s creekwalk HERE

Middle School: Tackling Climate Change: One Piece of Trash at a Time

When Grades 5/6 science begin their science unit on climate change, they learn about the impact of plastic pollution on the environment. This is one of the most pressing issues our oceans face today, and if current trends are allowed to continue, the amount of plastic entering oceans is set to double in the next ten years. (source: The Ocean Cleanup)

As Middle School students become more accustomed to observing our natural world, they begin to notice the impact humans have on the environment. Unfortunately, one of those impacts is litter. 

In order for children to conceptualize the human effect, they clean up litter surrounding the creek and are often astounded by what they collect. The trash around the creek has included food packaging and wrappers, styrofoam take-out containers, aluminum cans, water bottles, clothing, plastic bags…and the list goes on. The amount of litter collected in just an hour fills three to five large garbage bags. One year, a student found an old tire abandoned where the side of the road meets the creek. 

It can take up to 1,000 years for plastic to biodegrade. Recycling plastic bottles is the responsible thing to do, but only one out of five plastic bottles are recycled in the US. Annually, two million tons of plastic bottles end up in US landfills. (source: Healthy Human Life)

Once students have conceptualized the amount of litter on our own school grounds, they understand the importance of reducing and managing their own waste.

Upper School: Keeping Track of Watershed Health in the Region

Upper School students in AP Environmental Science conduct Benthic Macroinvertebrate Biomonitoring each year in local streams.

Plunging In

Stream monitoring is an important component of understanding the general health of a watershed. Historically, stream monitoring incorporated only water quality analyses; however, the inclusion of biological monitoring and assessment of physical habitat is critical for the understanding of stream and watershed health. This provides insight into the community of organisms living in the stream, as well as identifying any anomalies. 

Harley students follow the monitoring protocols of the Finger Lakes Regional Stream Monitoring Network to conduct comparative studies of the streams throughout the Finger Lakes region. The data is uploaded to the FLI website to enable direct access to regional data. In the long-term, this data will provide valuable insights about the health of local streams that feed into the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario, and an overall assessment of Finger Lakes water quality.

The highlight this year was conducting Benthic Macroinvertebrate Biomonitoring, an important method of determining changes in biological communities over time. It is commonly used in stream ecology to help determine the health of the organisms that live below the water’s surface and it is also an indicator of relative water quality. Macroinvertebrates are organisms that do not have a backbone (invertebrate) and are generally visible to the naked eye but can be caught in a 500 μm (0.5 mm) net or sieve. This term often refers to aquatic macroinvertebrates, which includes snails, clams, crayfish, worms, and insects.

Students were busy collecting, identifying, and tallying a number of each different species of aquatic invertebrates. The numbers and kinds of organisms were then analyzed to show whether (and the extent to which) Allens Creek is impacted by pollution. 

This year the survey indicated that the area is “slightly impacted.” This means it has maintained fairly good water quality. However, numerous sources of pollution in the watershed may soon threaten the health of the creek. Some areas identified through monitoring are showing early signs of variable human impact. Student-gathered data can help keep track of the trends in watershed health — right in our “backyard.”