AANHPI stands for: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander. Many students and teachers here at Central Kitsap High School identify themselves as AANHPI. There are many ideas that staff and students had to make it more well known around the school including, adding it to teachers lesson plans, advertising, and non-mandatory articles for students to read during advisory.

Some AANHPI students think that the school has not sufficiently advertised the AANHPI month.

“I feel like it is very under celebrated in the school and is very underutilized as well,” Said Ryan Torres, a senior at Central Kitsap High School. “Because I haven’t really noticed anything happening.”

Some students also are unaware of the  website created by the district to honor people who identify as AANHPI. The students think that this site should be more widely advertised.

Torres also gave some ideas for helping people learn about the AANHPI heritage month.

“Well, first of all, giving attention to it would be a huge thing,” Torres said. “And make sure students actually go out there, make it enticing enough for students to learn.”

Teachers have been given suggestions of how to incorporate AANHPI heritage month in their lessons.

“We have an equity team and we have several teachers from around the district,” said David Tracewell, a CTE and language arts teacher who identifies as AANHPI at Central Kitsap High School. “Their focus is to celebrate as many groups as possible and they’ve already sent stuff up at the beginning of this month. Not only things you can do in the classroom, curriculum wise, but then celebrations out in the community as well.”

At Central Kitsap High there is an AAPI club that is very supportive of AANHPI heritage month.

“They should do more advertising,” said Tracewell. “They have their posters in the hall now. They did a great job with the Chinese New Year. Which was great because they still have the advertisements out there. So just getting the advertisements out there. But also word of mouth they need each individual group member needs to recruit others.”

Some students have different ideas of how to spread the word of the AANHPI heritage month.

“I believe the school has a calendar and they could put more things on the calendar to announce, like the beginning of months, or just things like [AANHPI Heritage month] in general,” said Pereston Kearsley, a junior at Central Kitsap High School. “So at the beginning of the month, they could have put on the calendar something saying [AANHPI heritage month starts].”

Instead of working AANHPI month into a lesson plan Kearsley had a more direct approach.

“I don’t know if it should be mandatory, but like they could link articles or a major event in advisory,” said Kearsley “The articles will give more background and history, nationalities and all that about people who Identify as AANHPI.”

Most students are not aware, but the school is doing their best to make sure that everyone is getting represented.

“CK is so huge, and there’s so many different groups and trying to cover everybody is a big task, but I think the district’s done a great job each month, making sure that the representation is there,” said Tracewell.