Aloha.

I'm Mina Suzuki, a HIKI NŌ journalist and a senior at H.P.

Baldwin High School on Maui.

Welcome back for part three of our five-part HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawai‘i series, This Changed Everything: HIKI NŌ in the Age of COVID.

In our first two episodes, we've looked at the start of the pandemic and how it instantly and dramatically transformed our lives and learning.

This time, we start a new calendar year and the second half of the 2020 to 2021 school year.

And we reach a milestone, a full year living with COVID and all that comes with it.

By now the initial shock has subsided, and we've adjusted to the virtual world and life's many restrictions.

But that doesn't mean it's easy for us or for our families.

Honestly, at first it didn't seem too bad.

But eventually quarantine got to me.

I would become stressed and overwhelmed, and I would find myself becoming unmotivated and lying in bed, not being able to move.

Well, my mother was really affected the most.

She's a single parent and was temporarily laid off for nine whole months due to the closure of hotels.

I had to stay home with my grandpa Mike and balance between online school and taking care of him.

What I didn't know was that I was also going to become a teacher, a security guard, a principal, and a cafeteria worker overnight.

I'm just trying to survive.

The only break I can see coming is summer.

I can't wait.

I thank the best and the worst parts of this pandemic for teaching me how to be closer to others.

Right now, I’m just hanging on as best as I can until I can finally reunite with my friends and family.

For better or worse, we're now well acquainted with distance learning.

After a full semester online, we were hoping to return to school in January 2021, but that didn't happen.

The first students would finally start to return in February, but only some of the students some of the time.

Aloha.

My name is Evalani Keawekane, an eighth grader at Kamehameha Maui Middle School.

It's almost been a year since COVID-19 forced the campus to close unexpectedly.

I've only been on campus five times as an eighth grader since August.

But as of this month, February 2021, our school leadership has us back on campus twice a week, all while following strict safety guidelines.

Before entering campus each morning, we have to answer a long list of wellness questions and do a thermal scan upon arrival to campus.

Mr. Dean, you're in there next.

Once okayed we get a sticker which shows everyone that we have been cleared and okay to be on campus.

‘Iwa birds are painted on the walkways to show us the safe direction to move about, and orange dots on the ground remind us of how far apart we should be.

A definition or illustration of what a hero is - Our classes operate in small cohorts that stay together all day.

Even lunch is different.

Rather than being in the dining hall, we now use reusable takeout trays on green wagons.

Our return to campus but lots of mixed feelings.

The new routines are so odd and a bit intimidating.

However, it's been comforting to have people around me and to be out of my house.

Although we are all wearing masks, I can still see the smiles of my friends and kumu in their eyes.

Not even a pandemic and keep us from sharing our aloha for one another.

In our early COVID era stories, most of us focused on our own very personal experience.

But as the pandemic wears on, and we spend way more time than usual at home, students see their parents and siblings struggles up close.

We start to feature more family members in our stories, showing concern and compassion for parents, siblings, grandparents, and even teachers.

I'm Taylor McCann, a junior at Waiakea High School coming to you from my home in Hilo, Hawai‘i.

Juggling my school life and home life during the pandemic has proven to be a struggle.

Up until two months ago, I was able to keep my head afloat during all of this.

Until my dad's business, Volcano House, was forced to close down indefinitely.

In order to continue to provide for our family, he was temporarily transferred across the country to work at another national park in Maine.

Your call has been forwarded to an automated – Coronavirus numbers are much more threatening on the mainland, which gives me anxiety about his health and safety.

Hopping around multiple major airports puts him in contact with millions of different people.

I know he's taking precautions during his travels, but there's no way for me to know if those around him are taking the pandemic seriously.

Thinking about him getting sick while he's so far from our family really stresses me out.

Thankfully, I can rely on my access to technology like Skype, email, and Zoom to stay in touch with him and how he's holding up.

In the past few weeks.

He has since been transferred again to the West Coast, and ever since I've been counting down the days until he is able to make it back home to me and my family safely.

Are you busy?

I am looking at apartments for employees because we have nowhere for anybody to stay because of our friend COVID.

This is Taylor McCann from Waiākea High School for HIKI NŌ.

I'm filming this from my home in Kahului on February 2, 2021.

At the beginning of the school year, my parents decided that it would be best for me to do online schooling.

But what I didn't know was that I was also going to become a teacher, a security guard, a principal and a cafeteria worker overnight.

Here's what I mean.

I have an 11-year-old brother in the fifth grade, Lance, and a nine year old sister in the fourth grade, Kira, which means if I'm doing all online school, so are they.

The three of us are crammed in a 15 foot room all day for the entire school year.

I'm not sure what goes on in their heads, but I swear they never stopped making noise, ever.

[silly noises] And my sister, she has some kind of problem with my bun, because for some reason she likes to try to whack it off my head.

Seriously.

Another thing they do, they are always fighting.

All I have to do is walk out of the room for ten seconds, and then – Kaci!

They fight over pencils, erasers, water bottles, everything.

It’s mine!

It’s mine!

Something else I've been doing is making lunch.

Every day I have to watch their lunches and make sure they eat in time to get to their next meeting, because believe it or not getting them to eat while the TV's on isn't easy.

Finally, I've been relearning fourth grade math.

My sister doesn't like math as much as my brother and I do, so sometimes I have to help her with her homework.

This would be fine if they didn't keep changing math.

Every time I try to help her, it's always the same.

But that's not how we do it in class.

So, I have to go through the workbook that they use to learn the lesson, figure out how they did it, and then reteach it to her.

It's a process.

But it works.

Despite these challenges, there have also been some upsides.

For example, I think my mom skills are kicking in.

It's also been teaching me patience.

I swear the amount of times they've pushed me to my limit is absolutely nuts.

But even though they drive me insane, life would be boring and lonely without these little monkeys.

So, I guess I have to say I still love them, right?

Hey!

The beginning of March had been a hard time for all of us.

COVID had just hit and changed all of our lives, and not for the better.

Staying at home for the past 11 months had been tough.

My grandpa Mike had been sick with pulmonary fibrosis way before COVID had hit.

We were terrified by this new virus we knew nothing about and could be fatal.

We tried to get my auntie to fly out so she could take care of him.

She knew everything on how to keep him safe: medications, what he couldn't and couldn't eat, and even doctor's appointments.

But with COVID, It was really hard to get a flight.

So, I had to stay home with my grandpa Mike and balance between online school and taking care of him.

My auntie eventually managed to get out here.

But by this time, my grandpa needed more from us than what we could offer.

Specialists couldn't come see him in person, so video visits were all we had for checkups.

He needed 24 hours of care, and we had occasional hospital visits.

When he did go, it was just him, by himself.

Due to COVID, nobody could go visit him.

Eventually, he did pass away.

But I still remember him by all the things he loved.

He was a big fan of music and played a good guitar for 46 years.

He taught me how to play electric guitar and ukulele.

He also did work in landscaping and always had our yard clean.

I still remember one day he came home from work with a bird on his head.

He said, “Look Dani, a new friend.” Her name was Aloha.

She had been his pet for seven years.

She is still with us today, and every day I wake up and have a reminder of him.

My dad is in the military.

Sometimes when your parent is in the military, you have to do some things you don't exactly want to do, like moving, making new friends when you move, and having to deal with your parent getting deployed.

My dad has been deployed before, to Kuwait for a year.

I remember that I got to talk to him all the time, and he came home to see us on holidays.

It was still hard for my family though.

I went from seeing him every day to not seeing him in person for months on end.

Now he is deployed again, but this time, it is a little different.

Since the Coronavirus hit worldwide, countries have tightened their restrictions for travel.

Where he is deployed, he can't come home to see us at all, and I can't talk to him as much because he's working a lot.

It is like last time he was deployed, except instead of seeing him every couple months and talking to him every other day, I talked to him maybe once a week and I may not be able to see him until he comes back for good.

However, something that has helped me is making care packages for him.

I like going shopping for him and imagining how happy he might feel by receiving what I picked out for him.

That way, for just a second, it makes me forget he is so far away.

It also helps to occupy my time during all the pandemic restrictions.

I may not be able to see him every day, but I know now that with my family by my side, I will be able to get through this.

Hello there.

I'm George Roy.

I'm a sophomore at Kalaheo High School, and this is being filmed on February 1, 2021.

My father, Brian Roy, is an airline pilot for Hawaiian Airlines.

Recently, the travel industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are many restrictions and fears of flying that affect the overall industry interested in the jobs of many.

There are precautions in place such as requiring masks and sanitizing key touch points to help prevent the spread of the virus.

This also affects how my father operates his job.

He now routinely wears a mask and wipes down on many surfaces.

He also now packs hand sanitizer, rubber gloves, and many masks.

This also has affected my father on a personal level.

As a pilot, he interacts with the traveling public and he cannot work from home.

Since he is considered a frontline essential worker, he has got the first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine to help life return back to normal.

I applaud him for how hopeful and optimistic he has been in these recent months.

Aloha, I'm Emma Tilitile, a senior from Wai‘anae High School, coming to you from the west side of O‘ahu.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, my high school began to conduct online learning to ensure the safety of its faculty, students and the community.

Distance or online learning is an efficient and cautious way to provide students the education they need.

However, students encounter numerous assignments while maintaining priorities at home and find it difficult to concentrate in an environment where they are easily distracted.

But I noticed that students are not the only group of people who are struggling through the technological endeavors of distance learning.

Teachers have altered lesson plans, projects and put in the effort to adjust teaching styles in order to make their students feel more comfortable and engaged.

One teacher that I know who is trying her best to boost students’ morale is Miss Davis.

Morning Lexi, how's it going?

As one of the senior class Council advisors, she seeks to ensure the seniors are still able to enjoy their last school year and feel united as a class.

As she, along with some other motivated teachers and students, organize multiple class activities such as social media campaigns, cap and gown packet pickups, gift exchanges and class T-shirts and masks, these tasks prove difficult at times, as we were limited to virtual meetings and emails.

Virtual encounters that sometimes lead to a lack of interaction, as some students did not feel motivated to participate in class activities.

As one of the many students who continued to undergo the challenges of distance learning, I appreciate all the effort that Miss Davis and all of our teachers are putting into giving students a well-rounded education.

I know that they will continue to give their best so that by the end of the school year, we will finish strong.

Bye, Miss.

Bye.

I can attest that personal connection with teachers has been critical with virtual learning, both for our academic and emotional well-being.

And although our storytellers may not mention it by name, the mental health toll is apparent.

Some common words to describe how we feel are stressed, overwhelmed and unmotivated.

Many seniors take the missed opportunities especially hard, and some students are already jumping into action to help their peers.

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 100% distance learning.

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

I'm going to circle the fives because they don't match.

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 just wasn't going to 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, 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 bring 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, play sports.

As long as it hopes just like one family, I think it'll 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.

Hey sis, how are you?

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 Frances Uy from Moanalua High School for HIKI NŌ.

Okay, bye.

I'll talk to you later.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic I wasn't exactly the happiest in the world, but I was content with life.

Sometimes I'd have family events that would arise and cause me to feel stressed or overwhelmed.

However, I found joy in the little things such as drawing, reading and writing.

I also love to hang out with my friends.

So, when I heard that we were going to have to start quarantining for a few weeks, I was feeling pretty nervous, but I was also kind of excited.

I was nervous because I felt that I wouldn't be able to see as many people anymore, but I was happy because I really wanted a break.

I was both right and wrong.

I was right in the sense I wasn't able to see my friends anymore, but I was wrong because quarantine was not a break.

It was more of a lockdown.

I would become stressed and overwhelmed, and I would find myself becoming unmotivated and lying in bed not being able to move.

I would grow anxious over everything, and angry at the smallest things such as a bird tweeting too loud, or my grandpa walking too slow.

I decided that I needed an attitude change and started by distracting my mind with things that I love to do.

I would spend hours a day drawing, listening to music, and not giving myself enough time to focus on the bad things in the world.

And even though I'm not as great as I was before it started, I'm better than I was when it began, and that's a beginning.

Hi.

This is Kiari Uchida, a sophomore at Roosevelt High School on O‘ahu.

I am recording this at my home on January 29, 2021.

The amount of work virtual learning requires makes life balance feel impossible.

It feels like I'm overwhelmed by a never-ending pile of work to the point where my mental and physical health suffers.

Some nights, I would get less than two hours of sleep and have to go to classes from 8 to sometimes 4.

We have to meet online three days out of five for virtual class with teachers assigned work almost every day.

Some teachers even assign homework on weekends.

It is work upon work upon work.

And by the time it is Friday, I have a large list of assignments to do with no break.

It's like teachers want us to have met all of the criteria within a short amount of time, even though everything has changed.

Bye.

My mental and physical health is getting to the point where all I want to do is sleep.

But I can't do that if I want to keep up.

I'm just trying to survive.

The only break I can see coming is summer.

I can't wait.

Compared to life before this pandemic, it seems like we have more time, time to learn a new language, lose five pounds, gain new skills, or even talk to friends virtually, of course.

But sometimes, if we get caught up in trying out new things, we can forget to prioritize what's important to us.

In my life, nothing brought this issue more to light than the pandemic.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my relationship with my phone, social media, Netflix and YouTube was stronger than when I'm with people.

I connected to the outside world in the wrong ways.

Each time I chose my screen over the people in my life was a chance that I missed out on to bring value to my life and to others.

I was comparing myself to new trends, watching new shows, instead of focusing on the tangible needs of myself and others.

My reliance on superficial things disconnected me from real relationships.

Progressively, I found myself emotionally isolated and lost.

My mental health came to a breaking point.

Until I realized I was already surrounded by the people I needed.

I finally opened up to family and close friends.

I knew I had to do better, so I got to work to spend my time wiser.

I had set goals for myself for what I had to do, like spend more time with family and check in with friends.

However, consistency was key to make sure that I stick to these goals.

For example, I used post-its as a visual reminder.

Every day I use it to balance out my life between school and leisure.

My new habits ensured me that I would play with my brother at least once every day and I take up the opportunity to spend time with family in and out of the house.

Now I am learning to better appreciate and value my relationships with my family, close friends, and my community.

I thank the best and the worst parts of this pandemic for teaching me how to be closer to others, and I intend to be even closer with hugs and hanging out when this pandemic is over.

My mental health has been declining during this pandemic.

I really miss being able to physically hang out with my friends and family.

I feel unmotivated and uninspired to do what I used to be so passionate about.

Actually, my friends and I were going to film a music video for a song she wrote.

We planned to film outside and on the beach surrounded by people.

But when COVID hit and we couldn't leave our homes, those plans went out the window.

We can't film virtually because the song is all about relationships and finding yourself.

So, for now, our plans are on hold.

I see creativity as a form of happiness.

But even filming this right now, it's been a struggle to find the right words and visuals that usually comes naturally to me.

Right now, I'm just hanging on as best as I can until I can finally reunite with my friends and family.

Unlike 2020, the state allows in person graduations in 2021, though they are far from traditional ceremonies, with safety restrictions that limit or even ban guests.

As summer approaches, our student voices continue to lend an important perspective as the prolonged pandemic exacerbates the threat to our academic, economic and emotional well-being.

Next week, our HIKI NŌ storytellers share their personal and family trials going into the third school year impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID’s been hard on my family and me.

Both of my parents lost their jobs.

My father worked for the forest reserve and now looks for part time work.

My mother was a prep cook, but the restaurant she worked at closed during the pandemic.

Money is tight, living space is tight, and keeping up with school has been difficult.

Akeakamai is just one of our student storytellers who will share her pandemic experience.

In part four of This Changed Everything: HIKI NŌ in the Age of COVID.

I’m Mina Suzuki.

Mahalo for joining me, and see you next week for HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawai‘i.