Looking into the San Leandro High School gymnasium on Tuesday September 9th, one half of the gymnasium was filled with the student body, while the other side was filled with Keith Hawkins’ voice.
Hawkins, an international speaker, looked out to the students while giving a motivational speech. He drew stories from his past to deliver motivational messages inspiring students to never give up. He shared that he didn’t give up when he had to step up around the house as a kid in order to help his mom.
Hawkins was able to make his speech entertaining while also getting his point across to both students and staff.
(Cargo Staff)
This assembly was organized by English teacher, activities director and leadership teacher, Ms. King.
“This is my first year taking on the role as activities director and leadership teacher,” said Ms. King, “which essentially means that I oversee all student activities like games and rallies and other fun community building or culture building things.”
Ms. King made sure to start the school year off strong by prepping for activities such as the assembly on Tuesday, over summer break, including meeting with Keith Hawkins to coordinate the assembly.
“He [Keith Hawkins] crafted the way that he approached us based on what he said we needed, which was some academic motivation, right, some culture building.” said Ms. King, who not only got Keith Hawkins to speak at the school, but had to create a new bell schedule that day in order to accommodate everyone and make sure all of San Leandro High School got the full Keith Hawkins experience.
This was San Leandro High School’s first school assembly in the new gymnasium and since the COVID-19 lockdown. Hawkins’ speech was especially important considering the school has new administrators. Bringing everyone together at the start of the school year is important to make sure we are on the same page and stay connected.
“I know that we’ve had a lot of transition with administration and sometimes that makes it really hard to have kind of this overarching message to the students,” said Ms. King. “And I think it’s something we’ve been missing.”
San Leandro High School is really shifting the focus to students learning by removing distractions in order to make students successful. At the assembly, students were not allowed to bring devices such as cellphones in order for them to be focused. Ms. King saw the assembly as an opportunity for San Leandro High School to think about how they want to approach the school year.
“I thought a great way to do that would be to have someone [Keith Hawkins] come in, and help us think about what that message could be, reiterated the students and kind of inspire people to think about it as they move forward throughout the school year.” said Ms. King.
Hawkins had various messages to the students in his speech, but the message towards the end of the assembly really reached out towards Ms. King,
“I think his message at the end around people don’t always do what they hear,” she said, “they do what they see, was really powerful… [if] we say we’re doing something, people are really going to pay attention to our actions peer to peer, teacher to student.”
Hawkins’ speech sparked many conversations after the assembly, especially with the engaging partner work he had everyone present do.
