Ever since students came back to school during the year of  2021-2022 after COVID-19, staff and districts still tried to follow through with the protocols of COVID-19: social distancing, washing hands, no eating in classrooms, assigning seats for students, etc. 

During the year 2021-2022 new freshmen and incoming seniors at the time never really experienced the traditional thing in high school events they would usually do like homecoming, homecoming parades, winter formal, and all full grades into the gym for assemblies. 

 With COVID-19 dying down, but still around this school year 2022-2023, students went back to school like it was a normal school year on September 07, 2022. They had their first assembly with all grades together crowded in the gym. Some seniors, like me, had to sit on the ground because it was packed with students. 

From my experience as a senior this year, I haven’t felt this crowded of a gym in an assembly since being a freshman in 2019-2020. The assembly was alright, it was nice seeing every staff member, teachers introducing themselves again, and seeing new faces at the school. 

I interviewed our new Principal, Mr. Miller, and asked him how he felt about the first assembly of the year. He responded, “I liked for the first time in many years, that we had the entire student body together showing the school spirit and that sense of pride.” The seniors also did a good job. I liked the senior sunrise, and I’m really anxious to see what our seniors will do this year to help the school moving forward. It’s been a hard couple of years with the pandemic, and we’ve lost so many of the traditions that made high school fun, and so I just thought it was good that we’re getting back to that. And I also like how ASB and our student councils are asking for feedback, if you look at the weekly message, they want to know what they can do to make it even better for students, and include student voices in that because students’ voice is so important. And so they’re planning, they’re saying ‘hey, give us feedback so we can make each assembly even better.’ I know that they’re working right now on the homecoming assembly, and they want that, and they want to bring back some of those traditions. They’re working on Homecoming and on bringing the fireworks back. That sense of pride and that wonder, that’s what I remember from high school and I want to see that again for our own students. Miller also asked me personally, what I thought about the assembly. I responded back to him, “Well we’re seniors now and like it feels weird and good at the same time, because the whole gym was full, and  I haven’t seen our gym that full before to the point some of us seniors were sitting on the ground.” 

Mr. Miller asked, “And so did you guys talk to the student council? Because that is one of the things they change based on feedback, cause no seniors should be sitting on the ground, it should be 9th graders, if anybody, right?” And so they’re gonna have seniors sit first. They’re gonna have the seniors in and they really want to do the class competition. I don’t know if you guys remember this in 9th grade, I mean you’d have to think back but, you know we really used to have the classes cheer and they would do class competitions, and not that they were rigged but, often the seniors would win the class competitions, and so I love that that’s back.

Up next is our ASB president Matthew Vu. I asked, “How did you feel during and after the first assembly was over?” He responded, “During, super stressful because it’s the first one after a while, and it took like forever for the people to get seated, and so I was kinda worried that we were gonna go over time, and we did. But you know, I thought the assembly was pretty successful. Activities went smoothly, as expected. We had people participate in this cheer competition which was refreshing to see after you know the pandemic, we haven’t had  in-person assemblies in a while. We definitely could improve, some parts were choppy, but we’ll take that forward towards the next assembly to do better. After the assembly, you know, people were complaining about the mic being too loud, we’re definitely gonna fix that for the next one. We’ll tell people to tone it down. The National Anthem couldn’t be heard, so we’re thinking of modifying that section for the next assembly, and also people seem to be into the games so we’re trying to have more fun activities for our future assemblies. I think, yeah, afterwards lots of teachers congratulated student councils. They said that, you know, ‘some good assembly for the first one being back.’ And so I’m proud of my councils and then hope that we can continue making better ones moving forward.” Lastly, we have Mr. Mei the Activities Director. I asked him five questions in this interview. “How did you feel during and after our 1st assembly was over?”

Mr. Mei responded, “I felt like through like other than the going in the assembly it kinda took too long, but I felt like for the most part it was pretty smooth. Obviously, like we always like after the assembly, we always look at things that we could improve on, so you know like the sound systems, or you know talking too loud on the mic, because there’s a lot of comments about how at some parts, some people were  basically yelling into the mic. Yeah, so you know how I feel, there are things we could work on and make  better.” 

2nd question, “What did you think about our first assembly? Overall.” “I thought that there was a lot more people participating than the past years, and I think part of it because for once we have the whole entire school there instead of like half the school is there and the other half is just in the cafeteria or like in the community room or the library, and so I kinda prefer this way because assemblies are supposed to be like spirited and it’s meant for this whole school it’s not suppose to be just like “oh half the school it’s optional to go if you want but the other half you don’t have to go.” Like I feel like everyone should be going, so in that part I kinda thought it was really cool, and it looked more like when I was here in school.”

3rd question, “What do you want to see later on this year in this school?” 

“I want to see just like people to continue to participate and more hopefully who decides to participate, as we do the class cheers or like the chants. We’re working on improving the flow of people going in and out of the assembly. As a whole I think I want to see like a whole spirited culture like more hyped. Trying to bring back more traditions after we lost some of it during COVID. But also like bring back some old traditions that we here use to have here which we hasn’t been seen a long time and so we are already kinda did one of that which was we had the whole school go to the assembly. I also want to kinda see more communities get together, like that’d be cool if you know see a bunch of people go watch our soccer games, or like our volleyball games, any sports for that matter like it be good to see the communities kinda supporting each other. So student councils is already kinda taking a step in leading that like we picked one home game to go to so like up there we see those dates like football, volleyball, boys soccer, girl soccer. We picked one date out that our student councils are gonna go to support and so we want people to see and be like “oh we should do that too. Like our girl’s soccer or like the boy’s soccer we should go watch the girls’ volleyball game or like tennis. Like tennis we could all go and imagine just like 70 tennis player all like sitting in one section at a game and people can see it like “woah that is the tennis team?” 

4th question, “Do you remember or know what old traditions we usually did the school?” 

“So we use to have a marching band and traditionally we had the marching band like do some performances. Now we have dance and cheer, like yeah we had that back then too but there was more that we had, like marching bands would also perform during the halftime for the football games. That was kinda the cool thing we had back then, but obviously since we don’t have marching bands anymore we don’t do that anymore. Yeah I think that was one of the bigger traditions I remember from back then.”

5th question, “Do you know what seniors this year are gonna do for school activities?” 

“Not particularly, like we’re slowly bringing things back. We had the senior sunrise and the senior sunset we’re gonna have at the end of the year. You know seniors are always gonna do their senior prank. Um but there is a senior all night party which seniors will figure out with their senior parents. I think like they’re looking at potentially doing a senior field trip that’s separated from the all night party, it’s just like a fun trip somewhere, so that wouldn’t be a tradition I guess that’ll be just be a like new thing.”

That was Mr. Mei you guys! 

What did you guys think about our 1st assembly? What are you guys looking forward to this coming school year? 

This is Olivia Yang writing this article for y’all <3