Laserfiche WebLink
Merit Appeals Board <br />January 16, 2025 <br />MR. HONG: Okay. In terms of your teaching —well in terms of your professional experience, <br />could you tell us about that? So, you got your teacher license —where did you teach? <br />MR. KAYE: Yeah. I moved down to Waianae and I became a special ed. teacher for boys and <br />girls with severe emotional and behavioral problems, and I did that job for a few years in <br />Waianae. And when I start to have —when I found out I was going to be a dad, my wife and I <br />moved from there to the Big Island where I continued teaching boys and girls in an off -campus <br />DOE setting for therapeutic classroom for teenagers with at -risk or just severe behavior <br />problems. And I did that for a total of 14-and-a-half years. And I loved it. It was a great <br />experience. <br />MR. HONG: And why did you leave the DOE? <br />MR. KAYE: I left being a teacher —it had to do with some fundamental things I had learned <br />in —about special ed. in teaching college mainly —when you're a special ed. teacher, I believed <br />that the classroom should be different. The experience should be different. The way these kids <br />was —were to learn, would be different. And a lot of times I'd get administrators who absolutely <br />understood this. And so, they were happy with implementing things like community -based <br />instruction and all those amazing things that are proven to work for these type of students. <br />And then, you would get an administrator who would want you to recreate a regular classroom or <br />integrate students into a more regular ed. setting. And it was too frustrating for me to, kind of, <br />give up on the mission, which was education —high schoolers whoI just felt it was a waste of <br />time to be preparing them for regular ed. classroom in their senior year, when we should have <br />been thinking about post -graduate plans and graduate and entering the workforce. And that's <br />really was my main goal as, kind of, aan approach to get kids ready to be a part of a world that <br />welcomes them. <br />MR. HONG: So, after the DOE, where did you go? <br />MR. KAYE: The Hawaii County Fire Department. I became a beach lifeguard and I had a <br />dream of being a lifeguard, right before I became a schoolteacher. I surfed Makaha constantly <br />and I was a North Shore surfer. I was friends with a lot of lifeguards. I was involved in <br />lifeguard races paddle board races that —those kind of things. <br />And so, as soon as I realized teaching had gotten played out in my life, I got a job in 2015 <br />working for the Hawaii County Fire Department Ocean Safety. And it was amazing. <br />MR. HONG: What was your position when you first started/ <br />MR. KAYE: WSO I —and it I was just so lucky because there, I really think I came in at a <br />great time the Fire Department, we had a great Battalion Chief who encouraged older guards to <br />train younger guards. So, I got to meet great trainers. <br />Page 27 <br />