Highlights:
Students are divided on the usefulness of school assemblies. While some hear “assembly today during Poʻokela” and imagine a relieving dose of community engagement, others panic at the mandated socialization and loss of work time.
When Poʻokela rolls around, which is more valuable: grades or school unity?
At Lahainaluna, assemblies act as an over-century-long staple of school participation that students all across campus find sanctuary in. Some think they add enjoyment to an already stressful school experience.
“When I'm stressed,” says freshman Grace Cherry, “assemblies are something to do that’s fun.”
When asked about the current Poʻokela system, she pointed to how she thinks the period is just “one long period of nothing,” even going as far as to say it “dulls students' spirits.” Assemblies, on the other hand, “create a sense of community. You feel like you’re a part of something bigger.”
Freshman Minori Hironaka agrees. “It brings us together because we get to do activities which involve everybody like musical chairs; you get to interact and compete with everybody.”
When asked about whether assemblies impede on work time, Hironaka says, “It's not like they’re missing out on not being able to do homework because they can just do it at home or in other classes. It's all fun activities, so it can't really impact them that negatively.”
However, it does impact freshman Keiya Miller. For Miller, Poʻokela is an opportunity to finish assignments, socialize, and receive aid from teachers—an opportunity disrupted by school assemblies.
“They are a cool, fun thing to do and take a break from school,” says Keiya Miller about assemblies. However, “sometimes it's not in the right moment. When students have deadlines, it prevents them from doing their work, making school even more stressful.”
This happened to Miller recently, who was “relying on the Poʻokela time to get it done, but now I have to worry about when to finish it. Sometimes I just want to skip the whole thing altogether.”
Kaizan Munemitsu has a more nuanced view. Though he doesn’t love assemblies, admitting he’d “rather be doing something else,” he also describes the shortcomings of Poʻokela as a work period.
“The whole concept is kind of just cooked,” he says, specifying how “it becomes more of a social hour thing for most students rather than a dedicated work period.” He himself admits his guilt in this, saying that he enjoys the opportunity to “be a bum and play video games” during the free period.
When asked what he’d do to improve the current system, he emphasized, “If you enforce work too much, people will begin to hate it. But also, they don't enforce it already and it’s become a social hour that people prefer over assemblies, so I guess it's something you can't really fix.”
Freshman English teacher John Pope agrees with Munemitsu’s observation, but says he has an idea or two for ways to improve Poʻokela. Pope notes that the majority of his students spend their Poʻokela “scrolling on their phone” while they only “intermittently work on PTP (Personal Transition Plan) assignments and other assignments for class.”
He attributes this not to the concept of Poʻokela itself—which he explains serves as a “period to have school-directed educational time which we can spend on personal transitional education”—but rather that “the study hall system structure simply doesn’t work, especially for students of your age.”
“It’s not Poʻokela,” says Pope, “but how it functions. I would rather have less study halls and more school-directed education because I do think it’s valuable as long as it is directed.”
When asked what this would look like, Pope explains, “We need to direct the students and get them on the same page as their class. This means more direct class time discussing the stuff Personal Transition Plans touch upon, not just a free period where students do whatever they want.”
Senior Magdalena Granillo agrees. “I would probably make one to two times a week classes to meet and go over with their teachers what they’ve done on their own. For example, if they didn't stay on task, they have to work with a different group of students during Poʻokela and actually get the work done,” she proposes.
Though Pope sees the potential opportunities Poʻokela can open up for students, he's still against people bailing out on assemblies in the name of academics.
“Assemblies are a very important aspect of being a high school student and having school pride. If we give them the option to not go, they will disengage. In the end, we will lose the come-togetherness and cohesiveness of a school,” he says. “At that point, you might as well not have them in the first place.”
Munemitsu points out that assemblies are “forced cohesion, though. The fact you have to force them to go makes it so it isn't really that cohesive in the first place.”
Sophomore class advisor Ms. Emmons helps run the sophomore assemblies. She says, “I'm very social, so I love them because we get to have the community aspect of it, but then we also get to celebrate you guys as students, which I love.”
Yet, Emmons is highly skeptical of students who claim they lack work time.
“Maybe like a tenth of the periods are for assemblies. So you tell me, out of like nine-tenths of the total, you all can't get your work done? Seems fishy to me, right? At some point, y'all have to take accountability over your own self. Say, 'I have stuff I need to do and let me do it,' instead of like, 'Nah, I'm gonna go hang out with my friends and talk or whatever it is,'” says Emmons.
Whether you believe assemblies are a waste of time or a symbol of school pride, our goal for next year is clear: integrating these student voices into our schedule to achieve a more effective student-work balance.
That way, the next time a student hears we have an assembly, their focus isn’t on missing assignments, but rather on the exciting opportunity to take a break and engage with their community.
