Brainiacs of the practical; Waiakea High team hopes to be No. 1 in real world knowledge

Three months ago, the five students who comprise Waiakea High School’s LifeSmarts team didn’t know a whole lot about credit scores or blue chip stocks.

They stewed over the proper way to defrost a frozen item and probably couldn’t tell you much about the nuances of composting, or the differences between various federal agencies.

But these days, the students can tell you a lot more. That’s because they’ve spent the past several weeks stuffing their brains with an array of consumer education-related knowledge — all in preparation to compete in the LifeSmarts Hawaii State Championship later this month.

“For me, this was really exciting,” said 17-year-old team member Blair Martin. “It’s a bit intimidating at first because you know these are topics that are going to show up in your life, and very soon. But I think it’s so good we have this opportunity to learn these things.”

Waiakea is one of four high school teams in Hawaii to qualify for the state competition, which quizzes students via online tests and in-person competitions. Students are tested in five topic areas: personal finance, health and safety, the environment, technology and consumer rights and responsibilities.

Each of the four winners was selected from a pool of 19 statewide, which completed the online qualifying round last year. The other state winners hail from Oahu.

“It’s been pretty awesome,” Martin said. “We’re all friends, and it’s just another experience we all get to be part of as friends.”

Waiakea is no stranger to competition success.

Several of the LifeSmarts team members also were part of a winning team which in November won the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council’s Academic WorldQuest competition. In the spring, those students will represent Hawaii at the national competition in Washington, D.C.

Team adviser Whitney Aragaki advised that first-place WorldQuest team, too. It was shortly after that win, while students were still on a WorldQuest victory high, she encouraged them to give the LifeSmarts competition a whirl. She thought knowledge gleaned from the LifeSmarts preparation alone would be useful.

“It’s hard to study for consumer education because, as adults, we learn by doing, and we learn by failing,” Aragaki said. “And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have the kids not fail?’ They’re learning before they step out in the real world. They’re learning what a 401K is. They’re learning about insurance. They’re learning all these things that sometimes, we expect our students to know before they graduate, but we don’t teach them.”

Waiakea also is a “Smarter Learning Community School,” with five academies focused on college and career readiness. Each student and teacher is a member of an academy, which span areas such as health services to arts and recreation to business, engineering, science and technology.

Aragaki thought LifeSmarts would complement the school’s career and college readiness mission in a different way.

“We push careers here, but what about the other 16 hours of the day?” Aragaki said. “It’s, ‘How are you going to be a productive citizen in the community, aside from your career?’”

The winner of the Feb. 20 state championship will advance to the national competition in Denver this spring.

The Waiakea students aren’t too nervous. They all have different strengths, they explained, and gleaning all the real world knowledge has made all the preparation worthwhile.

“It’s useful, and not just for the teams that make it to the state competition,” team member Kylan Sakata, 18, said. “Just looking at the topics and saying, ‘I don’t know anything about personal finance’ — I think that’s been really good for us. Because then, we know we need to step up and think, ‘Let’s look into personal finance.’

“Sometimes, we’ll be studying these obscure questions and think, ‘Wow not many people would actually know that.’ And that feels really good for us.”

As one component of the competition, students are inviting the community to watch their 30-second YouTube video that can be found at tinyurl.com/WaiakeaLifeSmarts.

Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.