Assembly motivating students to do their best

A local high school was trying to send a message to students, Monday, explaining how hard work pays off.

“The Tassel is Worth the Hassle” is what the motivation assembly was called.

Principal Robert Devine, who came up with the idea, said he wanted to light a fire in the students so they would focus more on grades and attendance.

One senior said it was a powerful assembly.

“The guest speakers: They really made it personable for me that these are real people, especially because they graduated from IF, so they know a lot of what we’re going through and they’ve had our teachers and everything. So, it was cool how everything was for each individual student,” Idaho Falls High School Senior Bailey Lowe said.

The two-hour assembly explained the steps to success. The idea was to help students deal with their fear of failure. About 1,200 students attended the assembly.

Guest speakers shared their journey through high school and college and how hard work led them to where they are today.

Students saw videos of recent alumni talking about how they made it though high school and the activities there were involved in.

One of the guest speakers was Coach Johnson, who is the varsity football coach for the school. He said he hoped his transformational speech touched the students.

“I do take very passionately, the role that the kids play in the community. I believe that all schools should be doing things such as this, to kind of kick kids in the butt and get them motivated to be able to want more because they can strive for a lot more and sometimes they do,” Johnson said.

The principal said he plans to ask the student-body leadership group to work with student activities to keep the theme going forward.

“Leaving high school with that skill of trusting yourself, believing in yourself and thinking ‘I know I can handle all sorts of adversities and challenges’ I’ve learned to have grit’ and that’s a big, big issue going forward,” Principal Devine said.

He said a lot of the students just needed a little recharge of their vision.

According to Idaho’s Department of Education, the state’s high school graduation rate for the 2014-2015 school year was 78.9 percent. This does not include alternative school students or students who earned a GED.