Education and Work Prep School:
My Experience and Adventures in Searching for the Perfect Career
Part I
Lynne Fukuda
Instructor of Psychology
Leeward Community College
E-mail: lfukuda@hawaii.edu
Dedicated to all teachers, K-12 and college and adult education. May they be blessed in their tireless efforts and sacrifices in educating our children. And to my favorite kindergarten teacher, Mrs.T, who is now an angel in the sky teaching little angels in the clouds—may you always be remembered by your former students.
It is the 21st century, and seemingly, one of the worst economic eras in US history since the Great Depression. Imagine having very little jobs available but skilled workers to meet any demand, the prices of basic resources and needs inflated beyond reason, and having children and adults who have been schooled and prepped for a vague range of work skills or none at all. As the economy dips and changes, as globalization takes effect, and as careers come and go and transform, we are left with hordes of unskilled laborers who are educated in post-secondary education and yet so lost and not prepared for the work force.
How do we tell our new college graduates that there is a different world out there for them to explore and conquer? How can we send them off with a mere Bachelor’s Degree and fill them with false hope that they will do better, be more well-off, and be happier than their predecessors when they may never reach the same level of success or satisfaction as their parents and grandparents did while having a minimal education? My parents did not finish college. My mum attended CUNY for a year or so before getting married, which was her real career—wife and mother; my father had gone into the army, receiving the GI Bill, handsomely rewarding him with a paid education at a vocational school rather than a university since most GIs in those days only desired the minimum to get by. I went to many years of college, meandering from the tender age of 16, leaving college and going back to college, earning three degrees. And yet, with all my schooling, I am not better off than those who went to work right after getting their BA when the economy was still good. The four-year degree carried my friends far; many are successful, some having their own businesses, others having gone onto a great career, and many having their own homes and living comfortable lives.
In today’s world, the BA is a mere standard as a high school diploma had been ten or twenty years ago. What does one know with only a BA? I am not insulting the great halls of academia, for they teach their students well, giving them a well-rounded education with a vigorous curriculum. However, one must be well-learned and continue in academia to succeed with such training, perhaps going on to grad school, med school or law school rather than just jumping into the work force.
Globalization, no matter how fair it may seem, giving job opportunities world-wide to citizens of many countries, has deprived our own college graduates of an entry-level job, something a person in a developing country could easily obtain with a good English-language background, some training in business, and expertise in their field. Out-sourcing has become commonplace. Many employers would rather choose hard-working, mature foreign individuals who truly want a job from an American employer and will accept less than minimum pay instead of hiring a new college graduate who would not accept such menial pay and would need far more training on the jobs as well as on job ethics, communication skills, customer service skills, and much more. Why would a company that uses robots, message machines, and the Internet to do business even try to take time to train young human employees that are more a liability than an asset?
A few years back, when I was a student at USC, my professor asked me to look up universities that offered vocational programs in conjunction with a regular curriculum of social sciences, humanities, math, and science. Only the community colleges offered a comprehensive, real-world training to those who needed both a college education, although it was an Associate’s Degree, and who would give one an opportunity to be put to work upon graduation.
“It was a real problem,” one of the Maui college counselors told me when I visited their college in the heyday of gourmet chefs, luxury restaurants, and great hotels with benefits. “We can’t seem to retain our young culinary arts students until graduation since they get recruited right out of our school before they have finished their education.”
It seemed like a win-win ending to a young person’s dreams, and yet, in the years that followed, young chef’s helpers and such were the ones who lost their jobs as the hotels and restaurants down-sized when the economy went bad. Without a degree, these young cooks had nowhere to go. And yet, they had a skill, and when the economy improved, or even before that time, they would find employment, even if they had to work in a small establishment and make a little bit less money.
Business majors, especially those with MBAs, were very popular. As the economy boomed, CEOs, business leaders and such were exalted as gurus with their MBAs fresh from Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Some became enormously wealthy. Others, with computer science degrees, flourished for quite some time and are still successful. Although they are college degrees, computer science is a specialized field that is highly technical, and like electrical engineers, they are highly valued even at the BS level.
But what of the other students? Humanities majors, those who chose majors with strange and vague names like Buddhist psychology, had a much harder time landing a job. What could they do in a place like Hawaii that has only jobs that consist of tourism, construction work, menial labor, health science, education, and clerical? I am an anthropology major, but I now teach psychology at a community college. I am hoping to become a teacher, a true, bonafide, and credentialed teacher to meet the demands of Hawaii’s economy. Looking through the want ads in the papers and online, education is the only sure market in these small islands. As long as people live on these islands and continue to have children, educators will continue to be in demand. With eager students to teach and classrooms to fill, teachers, even with their less than great pay scale, will have a steady job that is demanding and secure.
Having an education to span three students and decades of teaching experience, I still do not have my teaching certificate to carve myself a place in the State of Hawaii league of professional teachers. Thus, in my deep search for a permanent, secure, and satisfying career, I came to the conclusion that I would return to my first love. After doing twenty years of college teaching, I want to teach young children.
“If you teach in college, why in the world would you teach young children?” someone asked me when I said that I had a dream of becoming a schoolteacher. I blushed slightly, feeling as if the person had asked, “Why did you want to have a baby when your children are all grown up and out of the house. Why would you go through all that trouble?” Yet, I am sure it is very much like going backwards and having a baby, enduring times of suffering as I adapt to my new audience, young children, learn from them as they learn from me, just as parents learn from their children. And finally, when they are graduated, I will sigh until my next batch of children comes along, feeling like a mother who has an endless supply of children in her home.
Teaching college students is certainly easier. They have already grown up and decided their path. They wish to learn, earn their degree and have a career. And yet, in today’s world, which seems shamefully gray and less promising than in the last few decades, I want to create a change. I see the saddened eyes of our youth when their parents struggle to feed them, some having two or three jobs to sustain their families and keep their homes. I notice a lonely shoulder in teens that have no one to guide them because everyone is so busy with his or her own personal problems. And most of all, I see the hollow eyes and the angry tears of children whose parents are repeatedly deployed. They act out, voicing their pain against the unfairness of fate that takes their most beloved teachers away from them: their own parents.
For a time, I pondered and explored the idea of becoming a counselor and now I am more certain that in becoming a school teacher, especially in elementary education where the students are still young and in need of influence, I can do what I desire to do most. I can still counsel children as their teacher. Old enough to be the parent of some of the children’s parents, I can also advise them on child rearing and on how children feel. I see the lack of good values; I see things missing in the upbringing of our young children. I am not blaming the parents, but I see that society has a mission to instill good values, patriotism, good self-esteem, healthy ways to resolve conflict, and many things that were once done by the intact family.
School, with its crazy schedule, has become a source of stress for many children. Yet it could, in the future, become a place of refuge. Would it not be wonderful if children entered school and found a sanctuary, much like a church or temple, that would calm them and give them the security they lack at home? It would be a safe place to be nurtured, where a child could explore, create loving relationships, and belong. Activities filled with fun and healing as well as renewal can bring much happiness to a child who truly needs this in addition to learning his or her academics.
In my quest, from substitute teaching workshops, classes for teacher prep, and working in and out of the school system, I met many individuals with many fine backgrounds—people of the world who had traveled abroad, had served in the military and had been injured or retired, stay-at-home moms with an extensive knowledge of children, once part-time teachers who wanted to be genuine teachers, chiropractors, accountants, real estate agents, and other professionals who made close to six figures—fighting for a chance at teaching our youth. We created a motley crew much like the crew of Star Trek’s the Starship Enterprise, an international group of people who, like the ambassadors of many different stars and planets, had come together on a mission of peace and love.
I beheld in that small, old-fashioned classroom, where we shivered from the overworked air-conditioners during the summer weeks, a room full of knowledge and experience, valuable sources that had no monetary value. Travelers of the world brought perspectives and talk of the world that existed around us. Former military persons brought forth the robust feeling of survival and self-discipline; part-time teachers brought genuine love of teaching and the love of children; stay-at-home moms had the wisdom of mothers, and many professions brought with them real-world experience that could be translated into subjects such as economics, business, math, social studies, science, English, art, music, and much more, bringing with them the love and expertise of true and seasoned teachers. It was certain that we did not have the advantage of youth as many newly graduated education majors did, being barely older than some high school students, but we had worldly experience, something that might have made us more mellow, parent-like, and wise than a young college graduate who had only studied education courses.
I love the program of Troops to Teachers, which allows retired military personnel to train to become teachers in our schools. It is a beautiful way to rehabilitate returned military veterans to serve in the civilian community, acknowledging their worldly experience and their survival in the dangerous world of war. Their discipline, their integrity, and their work ethics all will inspire our future students to have more patriotism, appreciation for sacrifice, and to understand those who have served.
I was heartened and knew that my second career as I call it, before I return to college some day to teach teachers, will be an adventure of a lifetime. Observing children as I had once observed monkeys in the field in the hot summer and fall of Puerto Rico, interacting with innocent children as I had as a foreign language teacher and as a kindergarten aide, I will once again be given the great privilege to work with young people who can be influenced by matured and experienced adults, who have savored their lives and wish to share. It is hoped that we will teach them survival skills as well.
I will speak in Part II of my continuing adventures, meeting with those who wish to teach our children who are our future. Who are they and what do they want to do? How are they working to reach their goals? What do we envision in public education in the near future? Stay tuned. Thanks for your patience as I was away from the computer on my various adventures.
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