Our annual Welcome Back Assembly was held on August 23 which was a bit later in the month than in the past due to a holiday. The purpose of the assembly is to introduce new staff, new student council members, and get students excited about the new school year. 

The disappointing side of the assembly is that we did not have enough time to do everything we planned on doing. For example, we had planned to have the new teachers play a game, the slipper game. But things didn’t go as planned as time was precious and the game was the last thing we had to do.

In the beginning, during set up, Mr. Michael Cheap, who retired at the end of last school year, kindly helped out with the sound system. This was very helpful because Ms. Jamie McGhion replaced Mr. Cheape and was new to the whole set up and how things are run. And thanks to Dominic Manuwa, my fellow student council classmate, for also being a big help with assembling the big speakers. Our sound system was set up, plugged in and ready to go. With all this help we got perfect loudspeakers that served its purpose. 

As we set up the speakers, we also set up the dividers of grade levels, banners, and separated the beach balls. This year we decided to make it fun and added some beach balls and a couple of regular big sized bouncy balls. It looked like students had fun and passed around the balls. We only had only six beach balls, and I feel we should add more. But the fun only lasted about 20 minutes, then students ended up either holding them or popping them. 

Next, was all the regular things we have during our Welcome Back Assemblies. It began with the presentation of colors by our JROTC and the band playing the National Anthem and Hawaʻi Ponoʻi. We then presented our administration and then it was our principal, Mr. Darin Pilialoha’s speech about attendance, being on time and being welcomed back into school, which I’m sure many people agreed with. All six grades levels introduced their student councils, and intermediate is one whole council. Student Government was also introduced and took the longest. We also introduced all the new teachers with their favorite songs down a tunnel lined by all the Student Council members. 

We then had several presentations. One was for the winner of the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center’s logo contest and the other was to recognize the students who played on the 12U Nanakuli Hawks youth baseball team and won this year’s State Championship and then went on to the mainland to compete in the national championship.

Then we shared about the Class of the Year award won by the current Freshmen class and one of their advisors, Mr. Jeff Uyemura Reyes, share the meaning of the Spirit Stick. And then we announced the winner of the Welcome Back Assembly Banner contest who was the Sophomore Class and presented them with the Spirit Stick.

The assembly ended with the football, softball, and volleyball teams leading the school in the singing of the Alama Mater.

So overall we had an okay Welcome Back Assembly. It could’ve been faster and we could’ve had time to play the games. But we did get through all the important things and that’s enough, but next year we are looking at making some changes to the assembly. 

Now we prepare for Homecoming!