HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i’s new wave of storytellers.

Hi there, welcome to this week’s edition of HIKI NŌ, Hawaiʻi’s new wave of storytellers.

I’m Ivan Elf, a junior at H.P.

Baldwin High School on Maui, and I’ll be your host for the next half hour.

In this episode, we’ll continue to explore how Hawaiʻi students are managing life and school during the COVID-19 era in our on-going series of Student Reflections.

We’ll meet a student who has taken it upon herself to help other students cope with some of the emotional and mental health issues that have arisen during the pandemic.

We’ll continue our HIKI NŌ 10th anniversary celebration by looking back at some of the top stories from the program’s first decade, and we’ll meet a HIKI NŌ alumna who went from high school journalist to professional TV news producer in just a few years.

But first, here is my Student Reflection on life as we try to navigate the new normal.

I recorded it on October 15th, 2020.

Hi, this is Ivan Elf from H.P.

Baldwin High School.

I’m in Waikapū in my new car.

I really like it.

But I’m not here to talk about that.

I’m here to talk about how distance learning has been affecting me personally and, uh, I’m gonna talk about it.

Emotionally, it’s been a little challenging and frustrating with all the constantly working on the computer and sitting down all the time, and that leaves me less time to be focusing on myself and staying active and whatnot.

Socially, I can’t really interact with my friends as much as I used to be able to, not on a physical level at least, and I’m basically just stuck with my family for most of the day, even though that’s not the worst thing ever.

Something I noticed was that we’re not really supposed to talk to classmates in a non-academic way anymore and that really takes a lot of interpersonal communication away from my day-to-day life, and I’ve also gotten bored of a lot of the indoor activities I’ve been doing for like, all of quarantine now.

Academically, I feel like it’s been tougher to really get the teacher’s attention.

In total, there’s less school hours but I feel like that makes the teachers think that they can give us a lot of work, which a lot of them do, and that leaves me sitting in the same spot, working on the computer for maybe 10 hours a day, not the funnest thing to do.

And despite all the negative things I just said, I’m really totally fine and I’m sure I’ll be fine with whatever happens in the future.

We’ll get though it together and at the end of the day the moral of the story is to just keep on keeping on.

Now, from Moanalua High School on Oʻahu, here’s a student who decided to do something about the emotional and mental stresses plaguing Hawai‘i teenagers during this pandemic.

All right, OK, all right, bye-bye.

Because of COVID, um, every school had to figure out how they were going to handle distance learning.

Different complexes, different schools had different plans.

Moanalua High School decided to take on its first quarter with one-hundred percent distance learning.

This has affected students’ mental health at home after losing their normal routines.

I didn’t know how to handle this new way of learning and also including the other problems that I was going through at the time.

Just, everything wasn’t gonna be good and that I would disappoint my teachers and my parents, too, if like, I wasn’t doing good in school, so, that led me to have a lot, way more anxiety than I already had.

I think that many students are feeling stress and anxiety, not only from the distance learning, but you know, things are happening at home.

For me, school was like an escape for, like my problems at home and just like everything that was stressful in my life going on.

I think their outlets for physical activity, talking to their friends, the social interaction, those things have been taken away.

I had outlets like soccer and judo and that was a really good way for me to not only get my mind off of all the schoolwork and student council stuff I was doing, but to just interact with my friends.

In an effort to help other students cope with the isolation caused by distance learning, Taylor started a project geared to bringing awareness to teenagers’ mental health.

My project is researching the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on teens and adolescents and majority of teens and adolescents haven’t been impacted by the virus itself, but the side effects of the virus like being cooped up at home, being quarantined, not being able to go to school to play sports.

As long as it helps just one family, I think it will be worth it.

Taylor Katahira hopes to start the difficult conversation about mental health and help teens find the support that they need.

She said it’s helping her, too, so she started with helping herself and now she’s trying to help other people who feel lost in this like, technology and the digital mess that we’re living right now.

I’m not only hoping to educate and encourage kids to reach out to each other or to their teachers, but I’m hoping to encourage parents and teachers to really sit down and talk to their kids, talk to their students about how they’re really feeling.

You literally have no idea what someone else is going through.

When you’re online, that just makes things even more difficult because you can’t like, see them and you can’t reach out to them in the way that you normally would.

By raising awareness that mental health should be a priority for students, Taylor hopes that others will find themselves in the same way she did.

This is Francis Uy from Moanalua High School for HIKI NŌ.

Hi, I’m Emmy Okinaka, a senior at Waiākea High School on the island of Hawaiʻi.

I’m recording this from my home on October 19th, 2020.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic started, I’ve been restricted from many activities.

One of those activities is dancing.

I’m discouraged that I don’t get to dance in my studio, because I miss my friends and the ability to move around in a big space.

But to make up for it, my dance studio has leaped into online classes.

To be honest, virtual dance classes is a lot different than dancing in a studio.

Sometimes, we have internet issues, poor connection or video lag.

However, this is the only way my friends, my teachers and I can dance together safely.

Nonetheless, we still have a lot of fun.

Even if I’m not in the studio, I’m grateful to continue dancing, even if it’s through a screen.

Not even a global pandemic will stop me from doing what I love.

And now, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of HIKI NŌ coming up in February of 2021, here’s our fourth feature in our series of profiles on outstanding HIKI NŌ alumni.

So, my family and I are currently in the situation where we are considered homeless.

We do not have a home.

So, a story about early college was actually a gateway for me to share with my friends what had been going on at home, um, and I had shared that story and I remember my classmates stopping the camera, turning to me and said, Victoria, why didn’t you share this with us before?

So, I told them, I said, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it was that important.

I’m still the same person, I’m, you know, I’m still Victoria.

It just happens to be that one of the circumstances I went through in my life, um, you know, put me and my family in that situation.

So, we’d done the interview and the executive producer at HIKI NŌ had said, um, you know, he’d gone through the interview and saw the tidbit of gold in that interview and pulled that out to make that the bigger story, um, and for us, that was a jumping point of where we should go further.

So, um, not just being the subject of the story, but also helping in the production, I kinda pitched the idea like, hey you know, I can show you where I used to live.

So, I brought my classmates to where I used to live, just to shoot some b-roll, um, they even caught some really good nat sound.

I don’t like going to school because I was afraid that everybody would tease me because I live here.

You know, bringing my classmates to where I’d lived, I think also helps them see what that story is like, to physically be there and to help tell that story, um, is an experience that I think a lot of storytellers need to have, um, to put themselves inside the subject’s shoes.

It hurts me when somebody says, oh, look at that homeless dude sleeping on the sidewalk.

You don’t know their story, don’t judge them for what they couldn’t handle.

I really think that this interview and this story was a vessel.

It wasn’t just about me.

It was the bigger picture, you know, there are hundreds of students, thousands of students, maybe, across the state that are homeless and they still go to school, they still struggle, but they’re trying their best to make sure that they can better themselves and I’m just one of those people.

After participating with HIKI NŌ, um, it really influenced me in my career today.

I saw how important it was to be a storyteller, to share people’s stories, and that if I had a story to tell that other people did as well.

So, I graduated in 2014 and went to school at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet, so I decided to take both film and journalism because they were both passions of mine in high school.

And then when I had graduated, I was still working at UH as a student videographer for our department that I was in, and I had gotten a call from a friend of mine that I had met through my internship at Hawaii News Now, and said, hey we have a job opening, a producer job opening at KITV.

Um, I remember just thinking like, you know, I don’t have any experience as a producer.

All I remember producing was a student broadcast down in college, um, you know, am I even qualified for this position.

So, I’d taken the job at KITV, and now I’m the producer for the, uh, 6 p.m. show, uh, prime time, Hawaiʻi’s only hour-long newscast and, um, it took a long time to get there and I’m still learning today, as it is.

She always does the on-cameras perfectly.

I really like when she does them.

When I was first hired as a producer at KITV, I didn’t know what they saw in me, when they hired me.

I was just a student, fresh out of college.

I didn’t have any experience as a producer and to take on responsibility of putting together a newscast that people across the state can see was really, really, really nerve-wracking.

I had asked a couple of my colleagues, I said, you know, I had my doubts.

I was like, you know, maybe I don’t belong here or, you know, I’m younger than my anchors, maybe they don’t trust me.

And he said, you know, they wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t see something in you.

And you know, just going back to my roots as a storyteller in high school and in college, that that is true, you know, I have that potential that if I can see somebody’s story, then why can’t I do that for an entire newscast?

That there’s stories out there that are important, you know, and I think that they saw that and I think they also saw my drive as a storyteller.

Head room on Camera Two, head room on Camera Two.

I didn’t think I’d be where I’m at today and if it wasn’t for HIKI NŌ, I really wouldn’t be here at all.

And just being able to, you know, share my story at the beginning and now being able to tell the community’s stories, I think, is an amazing feat.

I think that if 17-year-old me saw 24-year-old me now, she’d be super proud.

This is Joey Fujinaka, a fourth grader at Waiākea Elementary School on the island of Hawaiʻi.

I’m recording this at my home on October 7th, 2020.

I am feeling torn.

I am tired of staying at home all the time.

I miss seeing my friends in person and I want to go out in public.

But at the same time, I don’t want to catch COVID-19.

I am sad because I want to go out and see my friends at school.

Seeing them on a meet is just a tease because I want to go up to them and talk to them in person, but no, I can’t.

I’ve been trying to keep myself entertained after I am done with my school work.

I’ve been playing a lot of LEGOs, video games, and I’m re-reading a lot of books.

Although I can’t wait to go back to school and see my friends in person again, I know that staying at home is the best for us right now.

There are brighter days ahead, we just need to be patient.

Continuing our celebration of 10 years of HIKI NŌ, here’s a story from Kapaʻa High School on Kauaʻi that dates back to January 2016, midway through the program’s first decade.

My brother Jason and I are going to run a half-marathon.

Are you ready?

You think...that’s 13 miles.

That’s double what we did.

Ever since high school, Joshua Iloreta has wanted to run in a marathon.

His younger brother, Jason, is helping him to fulfill that dream.

We decided to do these runs after being inspired by Dick and Rick Hoyt.

He’s been actually running with his son who has cerebral palsy in triathlons, marathons, all these different races for a number of years already.

I Am My Ability, I Am Not My Disability—highlights someone’s capabilities, someone’s human abilities—is a campaign that Josh and I sort of thought about when we decided to run marathons.

If a person can’t communicate but they can show how to love, how to laugh, like that’s the most important part in life.

I think the number one hardship or the number one difficulty for someone with special needs is breaking that barrier that society has, that misconception that because you have special needs or because you have a diagnosis, that you are limited to certain things.

With my brother, people automatically think that he can’t understand what people are saying or that he can’t really move about.

What people don’t understand is that, um, they’re all there.

They’re consciously there, their cognitive abilities are still there, um, they just can’t maybe speak or walk.

I like to swim and go bowling.

I love listening to music.

He likes to just go to the mall, um, and just hanging out at Starbucks or having lunch, or just hanging out, doing brotherly things.

He comes to my room and wants to sleep in, so he will tell me to, you know, lay him on my bed and he can sleep in.

Do you like these?

Yeah?

The Iloreta brothers have motivated many people to speak up and share their support for what they are doing.

The boys, the Iloreta brothers, definitely make a difference.

They have inspired me.

I am so touched by what they do each day and for them to complete their dream and their accomplishment is amazing.

When asked what message they would give to someone going through similar difficulties, Josh and Jason wanted to tell everyone... Don’t give up on their dream and just go for it.

The moments that you sacrifice, things that you sacrifice for, and the moments you spend with this person, that is making a difference in their lives, that is making their world feel less small.

This is Kiara Wetherington from Kapaʻa High School for HIKI NŌ.

This is Ayanna Brenner and I am a senior at Hawai‘i Technology Academy.

I’m coming to you from my home in Makiki, on October 23rd, 2020.

I’m struggling with distance learning because of the lack of supervision and motivation.

When I am at school, teachers are there to redirect me.

At home, my parents are doing their own thing.

My lack of motivation is due to having so much free time and only being in the house.

I feel like I do the same thing every day and it’s very unsettling and unmotivating.

When I really need to get stuff done, I try to put my phone away and go to a quiet place in the house and force myself to do work.

I sit down at the dining room table and tell myself I can’t mess around and I need to get my work done.

I don’t have a table in my room, which means I would have to work on my bed.

My bed is my biggest distraction because I’m not a morning person and if I stay on my bed, I would fall back asleep.

Instead of staying in my room and staying distracted, I have made the dining room table my designated workspace.

I have been pretty successful with getting my work done.

As we continue our look back at 10 years of HIKI NŌ, here is one of the first stories to explore the often amazing relationship between animals and humans, created by students at Kamehameha Schools Maui High School.

Hidden away on a two-acre parcel in Ha‘ikū, Maui, lies the home of Sylvan Schwab and his guests.

But they are not your typical guests, they are all orphans or injured animals.

East Maui Animal Refuge, this is Sylvan.

Can I help you?

The East Maui Animal Refuge, more affectionately known as the Boo Boo Zoo, is home to over 50 cats, 50 birds, 25 deer, 16 goats, two horses, two pigs, one cow, and an endless amount of fowl.

I can’t think of any animal that is on the island that we have not had here at one time or another, because we take in anything if it is in a life-threatening situation.

Each animal comes to the refuge with a story, some, more interesting than others.

Such is the case of Baby, the blind cow.

She was born blind, which is why we took her in.

She was already named Baby when she came.

But, um, along with pretty much all of the animals that we have here, they come because they’re in some kind of life-threatening situation.

This is Gabriel.

Gabriel is our oldest goat and, as you can see, he’s really scrawny because if he was a person, he’d be about 95 years old.

And, uh, Gabriel came because he was attacked as a little goat by dogs and his neck was torn open and his ear was split, uh, so Gabriel’s been here since he was a little guy.

So, what motivates a person to turn their home into an animal sanctuary?

Well, it turns out that the animals aren’t the only ones with a special story.

We started out just doing this because when I met my wife, Suzie, I found out shortly after I met her that she had cancer and that it was not treatable through allopathic medicine on the Mainland, so she basically came to Maui to die, and part of her treatment was occupational therapy to have a drive to survive.

So, when I found out she had cancer, I started collecting sick little critters for her, and that’s how the Boo Boo Zoo started, and over 30 years now it’s evolved into this and Suzie has been clear of cancer for almost 30 years now, and now we’ve saved the life of animals who in fact helped save her life.

Even with Suzie being cancer free, the Schwabs continue to share their home and give their love unconditionally to injured and unwanted animals.

Recently, Sylvan was denied a renewal of his wildlife rehabilitation permit.

Sylvan and the Department of Land and Natural Resources are currently working together to resolve these problems so the Boo Boo Zoo can and will continue its mission.

But we still have this need to care for animals and we established the Boo Boo Zoo as a no-kill facility.

We’re gonna work it out.

One way or another we have to work it out because we have to do what we do, we have to take care of animals in distress.

Sylvan credits the animals for saving Suzie’s life, but one could say the credit goes both ways.

No matter how you look at it, the Boo Boo Zoo is truly a home built with love.

From the East Maui Animal Refuge in Haiku, Maui, I’m Nikki Davis reporting for HIKI NŌ.

Aloha, my name is Lawson Makaneole from Roosevelt High School, and I’m speaking to you from home.

As a result of distance learning and senior year laziness, also known as senioritis, I’ve felt little to no motivation to do my schoolwork or anything school related.

Distance learning has been interesting, to say the least.

With it comes its fair share of problems, like canceling school events, including homecoming and Spirit Week, which I was really looking forward to.

Also, all of your teachers throw homework at you like it’s a competition to see who can stress you out more.

And worst of it all is struggling with preparation for college.

All of it can start to feel overwhelming to deal with and has ultimately made me feel like giving up on school completely.

To counteract this, I’ve started to do things I normally wouldn’t.

I practice card shuffling, learned more songs on my ‘ukulele, and have been cleaning and trying to be more organized.

I believe that if I’m able to find motivation doing the trivial things, then maybe I’ll be able to find my motivation for school again and finish my high school career strong.

Until then, I’ll keep trying.

Now, as part of our celebration of the upcoming 10th anniversary of HIKI NŌ, let’s take a look at a story from Lahainaluna High School on Maui.

Dating back to October 2013, it’s one of the first examples of what became known as the personal profile.

Being half Micronesian and half Filipino and coming here, living here is hard for me.

Kimberly Yap is a senior at Lahainaluna High School.

At the age of five, Kim moved with her parents and a few close family members from Kiribati, a small Micronesian island, to Maui.

My family moved here looking for a better life, looking for a better education for myself.

Right now, our island Kiribati is sinking from global warming and there’s nothing they can do, there’s nothing anybody can do.

It just, it’s a poor community, you know?

It hasn’t evolved yet, into what this world has come to.

Me and my family are deciding whether I should go back to my island after graduation or save the money for college.

We’re just kind of in a stump right now because we don’t know what we’re gonna do.

My family’s trying to teach me one culture and then I’m living in another culture so, what, what culture do I live in, you know?

My family’s very strict.

Girls aren’t allowed to cut their hair.

They’re not allowed to dye their hair.

You’re supposed to live conservative.

Being a girl, in our tradition, you can’t be out late, and you just have so much rules you know?

You have to be the one to take care of the siblings and cook all the meals.

Girls were meant to be, you know, the housewives instead of the smart business maker.

The main focus or the main cultural thing about Kiribati is just to respect your elders and to respect the ones around you and I think that’s really stuck onto me and it’s been like my life.

It is who I am and I’m proud of who I am.

Not going back home is like losing a big part of my life, but this is home now.

I don’t want to be a housewife and I think that’s why the best choice for me is to go to college.

I need to grow up and I think going to college, getting a good job, maybe going back home, showing my family that I’m successful in life, could really like, help us out.

This is Sophia Fredy from Lahainaluna High School for HIKI NŌ.

Thank you for watching this episode of HIKI NŌ, can do.

Be sure to tune in next time for more Student Reflections on school and life as we learn to deal with this new reality.

Plus, we’ll continue our look back at 10 years of HIKI NŌ, Hawaiʻi’s new wave of storytellers.