HIKI NŌ 1304 [intro music plays] [sound of ocean waves] HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i’s new wave of storytellers.

[intro music continues] Aloha and welcome to this week's episode of HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i’s new wave of storytellers.

I'm Camrenn Cabalar, a junior at Hilo High School on east Hawai‘i Island.

Tonight, we’ll share many stories from students across the islands, stories of personal growth, finding passions and staying motivated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But first, I'd like to share my own work.

It's a student reflection that I started working on this summer.

Check it out.

I am recording this in my school on October 12, 2021.

During the shutdown, I spent each day playing video games and browsing the internet.

My dad would always tell me that there is more to life than just being in front of your computer screen.

He was right.

After a while, I grew tired of it.

One day, I was scrolling through TikTok and I stumbled across people giving out financial advice.

Something [snaps] clicked in my head.

I have time now to plan my future to become a financially stable adult.

I dove deeper into these financial TikToks.

I learned about credit cards and what they are used for.

I learned how I could invest all my extra money into stocks and real estate.

From my family, I learned the importance of having multiple skills for different sources of income.

With this knowledge, I feel as though I am a step ahead.

I have time now to set up the foundation for my future.

Looking back, the time that was given to me was an opportunity.

Now I am focused on reaching my goals of becoming a financially stable adult in the future.

And now, I'd like to introduce you to my HIKI NŌ mentor, Ms. Shirley Thompson.

She mentored me during the scripting, shooting, revising, and revising more.

At HIKI NŌ, we are lucky to get one-on-one guidance from people who work professionally in the film and TV industry.

Let's hear from Ms. Shirley about what her experience was like as a HIKI NŌ mentor.

My main day job is being a documentary editor, and so I edit documentary films.

Uh, a lot of them end up on PBS, and I've had my own freelance editing business for over 30 years.

I think about being a mentor as sort of sharing the lessons that I learned along the way being a filmmaker that I learned through hard knocks, because I wasn't a person who got to go to film school per se.

As a mentor for HIKI NŌ, I'm just there to guide the students with advice and feedback on their stories from the, the very first outline of their story through the scripting process, the filming of the story, and then finally the editing.

What is editing?

When we edit, we put the story together.

We put – Yeah, the most important thing about HIKI NŌ, is that it's, it's all about the student’s voice, and it's a student-produced newscast.

So, nobody cares what the mentor thinks, or, or what the mentor’s, you know, um, take on the story is.

It's really, what's most important is that it's an authentic story told by students from their point of view.

And so, I always approach it, to the students, “How can I be helpful to you?

What are your questions?

Um, what are things that have been, you know, things that you're not sure about?

And let's just talk it out.” So, when I worked with Camrenn at Hilo High on his student reflection, we started working in a summer workshop.

And right away, I could tell that this idea that he had about, um, learning to be a financially stable adult was just fresh and new.

And so I, uh, I was really excited to, to hear more.

And, um, when they first started, you know, they, I think they, this particular team had a sense that these, um, reflections needed to be more serious, like, somehow it was like it's, it’s PBS, so it must be very serious.

There's more to life than just being in front of your computer screen.

He was right.

After a while.

I grew tired of it.

One day, I was scrolling through TikTok and I came across people giving financial advice.

Something [snaps] clicked in my head.

Then I was like, “You know, no, it really needs to be like, authentically you.” I have time now to plan my future to become a financially stable adult.

Just be yourselves, you know.

Write it the way that you would write so it's from the heart.

And that's a, that's an expression I use with the students a lot, that it's like I, I want you guys to really tell the story from the heart.

And, um, and so that gave way to, um, a, a friendlier approach, I think, in terms of his read, you know, that he wasn't trying to put on some kind of a broadcast TV persona.

You know, instead, he could be himself and, uh, and he's a high school kid from Hilo High and so he comes off as, you know, really authentic and original camera and telling his story.

As I mentioned before, how lucky are we students to get to work with professionals like Shirley?

Next, let's visit Central O‘ahu, where a middle school student from Highlands Intermediate shares her journey on the racetrack.

Highland Intermediate eighth grader Marina Vowell loves the thrill of driving go-karts.

For 30 seconds to 50 seconds, it's all about me, and I forget about the rest of the world, and it's a really fun experience.

When Marina was in first grade, her dad took her to watch her a race at Aloha Stadium on the island of O‘ahu, and she's been hooked ever since.

I'm like, “Oh, this looks really fun.

I want to try this.” So, a couple years later, when I turned eight, uh, my dad got me a cart, and we started prepping it and fixing it up.

A few months later, Marina started officially racing in the junior division of Sports Car Club of America.

She was the youngest competitor in her group.

As time went on, I got better and I got faster, and in my class, which was groupings of 8-year-olds to 12-year-olds, I started placing in the top three, which meant I had the top, one of the top three fastest times out of all of us.

Marina quickly rose to the top of her division.

She was about to compete on the national level when the Coronavirus pandemic hit, and racing was put on hold indefinitely.

That was originally supposed to just delay racing at first.

But after a couple more months, and people starting to figure out what it is, that's when carting and just racing in general stopped altogether.

And to this day, I'm still not racing, which is kind of sad.

High case counts forced Sports Car Club of America to cancel its 2021 racing season.

The city is also looking to renovate Aloha Stadium, which would prevent SCCA from holding races in the parking lot.

I don't like not knowing when I'll be able to race again, because if racing just pops up out of the blue, then I won't be prepared, and I could possibly miss a couple of races in the beginning.

With all this uncertainty, Marina says it could take a major life change to get back into the driver's seat.

My family is planning on moving to Alaska, and in Alaska, there's a lot more racing opportunity, opportunities up there.

So, I'm, I'm more hopeful about racing up in Alaska more than racing down here in Hawai‘i.

The Vowell family plans to move in the next few years.

By then, Marina hopes racing can resume, and she's excited for the chance to compete in a new environment.

What I'm really looking forward to the most is really getting back into the driver's seat and taking another go and pushing harder than ever because, who knows, another scenario like this might happen again.

And it might be, I might be out of the seat for more than a year and a half.

When racing resumes, Marina hopes to continue for as long as she can and is even considering a career as a Formula One driver.

But no matter what happens, she says she'll always find joy and excitement in racing.

Those four times I get to drive around the course is really the highlight of the day.

This is Caleb Colmenares from Highlands Intermediate School for HIKI NŌ.

Marina wasn't the only one to find racing as a passion.

Let's watch this story from the HIKI NŌ archives by its students at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School on Kaua‘i about a whole family that shares raising as a passion.

[race car sounds and announcements play] Twice a month, 15-year-old T’ryane Sakamoto rides in the fast lane.

I started drag racing because I would watch other people race down the track and I thought it was fun.

And a few years ago, I was able to try this sport and I fell in love with it.

The sport of drag racing is where two vehicles race in a competition of speed in a straight line.

Because of T’ryane’s dedication to drag racing, her two younger siblings, Ryant and Ryancie, were inspired to race.

I love drag racing because it's fun, and it's family oriented.

I love it because the adrenaline, and it's so fun to go so fast.

Drag racing is a family affair because of their father, Mr. Ryan Sakamoto, who started drag racing in 1990, and now passes down the torch to the new generation.

Working with them with the cars and working with them every day cleaning and teaching them the discipline of how to take care of stuff.

Drag racing has brought my family closer because it involves a supportive pit crew that comes to help us as we race.

We created a, a, a bond, um, because it was something that they were interested in.

The Sakamoto’s compete at Kaua‘i Raceway Park on the west side in Mānā.

Junior dragsters who range in age from 5 to 17 race 1/8 of a mile.

They say drag racing is fun, but it's also very dangerous traveling an average speed of 85 miles per hour.

Well, drag racing, you need a lot of safety equipment.

So, you have helmet, a neck brace, a fire suit and race shoes.

So, when you race, the only thing, the only skin that you can see are your eyes.

You're strapped in seatbelts and arm restraints and everything.

I learned that these cars are built very safe for the kids.

They are safe in the car.

The Sakamoto’s have been very victorious over the years.

My best memory might have to be when I got a perfect reaction on my first race.

Perfect reaction is, uh, when the light turns from yellow to green and the reaction time between the light turning yellow to green.

The family bond that the Sakamoto’s have takes their love for drag racing far.

This is Kolton Gusman from Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School for HIKI NŌ.

[talks and shouts] [sound of ocean wave] Aloha.

My name is Kailani Ibanez, and I'm speaking to you from Kihei on Maui.

Last year, I was a sophomore at H.P.

Baldwin High School.

That's when I produced this student reflection for HIKI NŌ that I'd like to share with you now.

[sound of ocean waves] Aloha.

I'm Kailani Ibanez and I'm a sophomore at HP Baldwin High School on Maui, and I'm recording this from my home on October 8, 2020.

When we first started quarantine, I was excited.

My first year of high school had been extremely stressful for me, especially towards the end of third quarter, and being able to finish my freshman year from the comforts of home was a huge relief to me.

When quarantine first began, I mainly just did the virtual homework I got from school and relaxed in my room.

But as the months went by, and distance learning for the new school year began, I realized that during quarantine, I actually hadn't tried any of the things I had always wanted to do.

It’s stuff like trying to learn the ukulele, practicing painting, drawing, or even embroidery, which is something I wanted to learn for years.

But as my responsibilities towards school grow, I know that I'm running out of free time.

However, I know that if I set aside at least a little bit of time each week to work on these hobbies, I can start a habit of consistently doing something that makes me happier and helps to cultivate the skills I want to.

And like everyone else who's had to adjust to staying at home, I just have to keep trying one day at a time.

[sound of an ocean wave] Since I completed that project, a lot has changed.

Now, I'm a junior and I have a lot of things on my mind.

I’ve produced this personal reflection as a way to capture what I've been going through.

I hope you enjoy it.

[sound of an ocean wave] From day one, I have been a reader.

Over the years my parents’ goodnight stories turned into novels filled with faraway lands, impossible feats, magical swords, heroes, villains, all characters who had a destiny, a purpose, a fate already written and preserved in ink, something determined long before you picked up the book.

And while I knew I could never be a part of the fantastical worlds I often dreamed of, I always felt like I was missing something.

Unlike every success story of a famous artist or scientist, I never felt any particular calling towards one career as a child.

Sometimes I wanted to be a librarian.

Other times, I thought I would be a teacher, an artist, or a writer as an adult.

But I never had a burning passion for any of those options, and nothing ever felt completely right.

Now, as a junior in high school, it feels like everyone I know has a passion or dream, from college choices or career options, something, anything.

And while my peers’ ideas for the future could change and evolve into something completely different down the line, I couldn't help but compare myself to them because it’s still better than what I had in mind, which was nothing.

My carefully planned life, filled to the brim with extracurriculars and classes, comes to a halt when I reach the day I graduate high school, because from there, the pages to my story are blank.

For the first time in my life, there's no plan.

The answers I'm looking for can’t be found in a book.

There's no magical sword in the stone or prophecy to follow, and as much as I wish, there's no robot that can scan me and tell me exactly what I'll be happiest doing for the rest of my life.

Because no one can tell you what makes you truly happy except yourself.

And that leaves room for the doubts to leak in.

What if I never find the right career?

What should I even major in?

What if I choose the wrong college?

What if I end up miserable?

What if I do it wrong?

What if, what if, what if?

It's overwhelming, but I've realized that I shouldn't define my success in life based on having a promising next step.

No one can truly plan for the future because almost all plans fall apart somehow.

And ironically, all my overthinking about the future is distracting me from the time I have right now.

The good, the bad, the beautiful.

Being given the freedom to dictate my own story isn't a curse.

It's a gift.

Even if I don't have all the answers yet, I still have the opportunity to find them.

However long it takes me, one day, one page at a time.

Next, a HIKI NŌ student from Maui High School shares highlights from a report she did for the PBS News Hour Student Reporting Labs about how lazy we've all become during the pandemic.

[sound of keyboard and mouse clicks] I'm usually a pretty active person.

[music plays] I just finished my run.

Here’s my log for today.

[music continues with a record scratch] Or at least I used to.

Since March 2020, school has been online, and with each passing month, I found myself spending way less time being active and more time just doing nothing.

Like, no joke, I swear I'm literally sitting there at least 16 hours a day.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a new environment keeping us cooped up and stuck at home.

A recent 2020 study published in the Preventive Medicine Reports using surveys measured how the pandemic has affected people's physical activity.

Almost half of the people they studied were sitting for two thirds of the entire time they spent awake.

And so that's a really large amount, and much larger than other, um, population-based surveys in the past.

So, we all know that sitting around is bad, but we're stuck at home in the middle of a pandemic, what other choice do we have?

A 2019 study of hunter gatherers in Tanzania might point us in the right direction.

The researchers were studying the Hadza, who are sedentary for 9 to 10 hours a day.

The Hadza actually are sedentary for about as long as we are in, in, industrialized societies.

But the sort of key is that the Hadza are not sitting in chairs when they're resting.

They're resting in postures that actually generate light levels of muscle activity, so squatting postures or kneeling postures.

So maybe what matters isn't how long we're sedentary during the day.

What's more important is how we rest when we're being inactive.

So to get more active, how does all this relate to our couch potato lifestyle?

Well, the first step is to realize just how sedentary we've become.

Sitting is one of those things that we just do right away.

We don't even realize it.

So, part of the problem is that we don't recognize it.

And if we can figure out how to recognize it, then we can figure out how to change it.

But that first step is seeing when it happens.

[music plays] Then, we can make changes, like standing during a Zoom meeting or taking a walk during a phone call.

These changes may not seem like a lot, but they’re the first steps towards making conscious efforts to improve our lifestyle.

In fact, the video’s almost over.

Why not stand up and take a walk right now?

Treat your body to some movement.

It'll thank you later.

[guitar music plays] [sound of an ocean wave] Let's travel to Hawai‘i Island now to meet a student who shares how his father inspired him.

To tell you the truth, I'm afraid if I do catch the virus that, um, uh, it'll be, um, so detrimental that, uh, you know, I might not see my family again.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, then the COVID pandemic hit.

And the weight on me and my family got even heavier.

It's just really hard to like, focus on other things sometimes with him being sick.

Dealing with cancer within the family as well as myself, it's a really hard task and that, uh, my family actually knows it.

Reason for that is because they see me, you know, at certain days, um, it's difficult for me.

There's some days I'm so tired from the chemo treatments that, you know, I won't be able to drive.

I won't be able to go to the store.

Daily life is a struggle for my family.

I'm trying to relieve some of that stress by getting my driver's license.

Then I can help my dad run his errands and take him to the doctor.

It's strange because as a police officer, my dad was always the one helping others.

It was very hard for me to retire, and the reason for that because I really, really do love my job.

And living in the community where I work is, um, it is and it was the best part of my career because a lot of, uh, people in the community as well as the kids in school, um, who I always visited as a community policing officer, um, they know me as Uncle Robin.

Um, I had to, you know, I got a chance to meet a lot of people, made new friends, and it continued through the years, uh, during my career, and, uh, I miss all that.

I know my dad misses being a cop, and it's important to him.

But to me, he's my dad, and I have a lot of respect for him.

Now that I'm graduating high school, I really want to make him proud.

My hope is that my son would graduate and be a respectable adult, as soon as he turns 18.

And whatever, um, the future holds for him that I want him to be very successful.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my dad and the important life lessons he teaches me.

What is the most five important things in life?

It's health, friends, family, love and purpose.

With all those five, um, you know, life goes on.

This is Dylan Crusat from Konawaena High School for HIKI NŌ.

[sound of an ocean wave] Now let's peek behind the curtain at a local theater on Kaua‘i, where students from Kaua‘i High School found that the pandemic continues, but the show must go on.

Hawai‘i Children's Theatre on Kaua‘i is working on the show Moana, a step back into the theater world for everyone at the company and audiences alike.

So, with the pandemic, theatre, and I think the arts mostly everywhere, kind of really got shut down, and so, this will be our first step back.

So, the play this year is Moana Jr., and it is a hour long musical that is about this brave girl who is destined to be the chief of her tribe, and she knows that her destiny lays out beyond the island itself.

In the story, Moana's destiny takes her across the sea.

And during her journey, the tides of the ocean can sometimes get rough, much like challenges faced throughout the process of bringing a show to life.

As an audience member, when we come and watch a show, we always think how effortless it looks.

But what the audience doesn't know is the months and weeks and hours of practice that come, uh, from the cast members.

A lot of things play into this play.

Like, it's not just the, the actors, it's like, the crew that like, works nonstop, and like, the makeup, the hair, the costumes, everything, and it just all fits in together, and we all work equally and it's yeah, it's just crazy to see how much, how much effort gets put into this thing.

Four hours learning You're Welcome for Moana Jr.

So, it took us four hours to learn the song, learn the choreography, pick up the scene, and now we have to go home, we have to practice it on our own, we have to listen to our recordings, we have to watch the dance so that when we come in the next time to run it, we are a little more comfortable with it.

While challenging, another hidden aspect of theater is how rewarding it can be and the impact it has on everyone involved.

All of a sudden you see this kid who, or an adult actor, maybe, too, who came in a little unsure, who all of a sudden blossomed and is this confident person on stage that I hope that they can bring with them to whatever, uh, paths, um, lead them.

I think those aspects of spontaneous moments of joy that you couldn't create any other way, they just kind of happen, um, those are some of the most fun things that people don't know about.

And those are really the jewels and hidden gems that everybody takes with them, as sort of these memories that they tuck into their heart.

Theater is an experience for the audience, and as viewers, we don't always get to see what goes into bringing a show to life.

Beyond the final production is the effort and hard work put into the show by the cast and crew and the irreplaceable skills learned and bonds that are formed.

From Kaua‘i High School, this is Natalie Lett for HIKI NŌ.

[choir sings “You’re Welcome”] Thank you for watching this episode of HIKI NŌ.

We hope you've enjoyed the work of Hawai‘i’s new wave of storytellers as much as we've enjoyed sharing it with you.

Be sure to tune in next week for more proof that Hawai‘i students, HIKI NŌ, can do.

[outro music plays]