A Success Story in Public Education

The Clarence T. C. Ching PUEO Program at Punahou and Its Partnership-Marriage Methodology

Carl R. Ackerman

• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781649905116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

"Old friend and colleague Carl Ackerman is a big man...the shirt size generous, the heart enormous, the mind copious and agile, the enthusiasm enough to power several major cities and all the ships at sea. The cheery voice, the warm regard and respect for all people, the impulse to see good done, the capacity to innovate, the eagerness to follow through; all these are immense as well. If Carl is in the room you know it--and you thank your lucky stars. Punahou School's wonderful PUEO program and the many worthy young people benefitting from it have long known such good fortune: years ago in a community... in a world... too short on equity, too bereft of opportunity, too impoverished of empathy, Carl saw a need and stepped up. The program he created and ran has made a very big difference to many deserving young people and their families for whom undue struggle, frustration, even hopelessness, would seem inevitable. And so it continues. Try to praise him, though, to give him even a little much-deserved credit, he'll chortle and deflect and change the subject. "C'mon, man, " he'll imply, "there's still work to do. Let's talk about that." In the pages of this book you'll meet some thoroughly admirable kids and learn their stories. With an innovative and comprehensive program in action you'll see good intentions become effective results. You'll see intriguing models of management and cooperation. You'll see the fine and noble efforts of a very big man indeed." ---David McCullough, Jr.

Dr. Carl R. Ackerman received his scholarship to graduate school from President George Bush, Sr., in the White House as a Teacher-Scholar. He earned his PhD in European History from the University of California at Berkeley and has spent most of his adult life living and teaching in Hawaii. He lives in the majestic Manoa Valley in Honolulu with his wife, Dr. Lyn Kajiwara Ackerman, and his two daughters are both at Arizona State University; Laura Keiko Gilah Ackerman is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at ASU, and little sister Jennifer Xin Ackerman is in the Honors College as a freshman.

CHAPTER I

Why was the PUEO Program Necessary? (The Big Educational Divide)

Several years ago, I was called into federal jury duty in downtown Honolulu. It seems that all jury-driven courtrooms exist in some central, downtown location, and this was true of my federal jury. Waiting on the steps of the courthouse for the building to open in downtown Honolulu, I looked at the many faces of those I suspected would be my fellow jurors. And indeed, once we got in and presented our summons, many of them were my suggested comrades (by training I am a PhD in Russian history, so please excuse this nomenclature). We all entered the courtroom slowly and, having been directed to an elevator that was too small to hold all of us, we took turns going up. We waited in an entry level room where a courthouse clerk gave us instructions about the day, and we all seemed to be eager to get going despite the pall-like silence created by our collective mission, our personal doubt, and almost everyone's inclination to play with the almighty cell phone.

Well, once we arrived in the courtroom, our distinguished judge went through the process of picking jurors. Our case was one about a man who was accused of sending illicit drugs through the mail on the Big Island of Hawai'i. He sat next to his lawyer, nervously turning around at various moments. He was tattooed, hair a bit messy, thin, Polynesian, and very nervous. I immediately wondered why he was in this circumstance—and I would never know about his relative guilt, if any, as I did not get picked for the jury.

Ironically, on that very day I had been invited to speak to students at the John A. Burns School of Medicine about the Clarence T. C. Ching PUEO Program, and the J.A.B. School was not far from the federal courthouse; I returned to this downtown Honolulu location in the evening after having taught some afternoon classes at Punahou School, as my jury role encounter and the federal court system had taken place in the morning. The medical students were all sitting politely in a semicircle in a classroom in the medical school, and the ubiquitous Matthew Nagato, the filmmaker who had included PUEO in one of his vignettes in his much-celebrated documentary Ike, was preparing to show his film. The students were all in informal garb and had the shiny, young faces of those who had succeeded in the educational system, both private and public. They had arranged for a potluck with food near the open arch of their semicircle of chairs. After the showing of Ike, the students, a good cross section of Hawai'i—Polynesian, Asian, and a few haoles—were quick with their questions and terrific with their comments. These young almost-doctors knew their future was secure—they were the cream of our educational institutions. Upper middle class status was only a few years away.

As I drove home to my house in the lovely Mānoa Valley in Honolulu, I began to think about this uneven experience during my day. On the one hand, I had seen what happens to an individual who might end up in our prison system, and on the other, the success written all over the young adults who spoke with self-assured future status and job security.

All the data about educational institutions in the United States point to low prospects for those who do not finish high school and even for some of those who do but fail to enter some sort of higher learning after high school. Also, there is universally accepted data about higher prospects and definitely higher income for those who finish some form of higher education. While I did not know the man who was on trial and I do not know the future of those medical students, they indeed did represent, on a very personal level, the educational divide in Hawai'i and the United States.

This book, in one sense, represents more hope for the educational institutions in our country through one program and one small group of dedicated people. It also underscores that public education at times (but not always) simply needs a small bit of help. Public education can prove very successful if our attention is laser-focused on the children.

The story of the Clarence T. C. Ching PUEO Program unfolds below, not in any chronological order, but within the context of vignettes that may help all who read this book, in education or not, who believe in the ability of one-on-one conversations to create systematic change. To create this change, one needs time, patience, and the willingness never to cast blame, but only to admire success and to constantly improve upon this success.

CHAPTER II

What was the Impetus for PUEO? (A Personal Vignette)

Years ago, I listened to the remarkable erudition of David McCullough, Sr., the noted historian and father of one of my friends at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawai'i. Yes, this is the school that graduated President Barack Obama (known as Barry when he was at Punahou). McCullough suggested that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. In a speech at Punahou School, he commented that we all receive help from many people—and so “self-made” is really not an appropriate term.

In that regard, the spark that started the PUEO Program perhaps came a generation earlier when my father and uncle lost both parents and were sent to live with an elderly aunt and uncle in New York City. Being unable to cope with the youngsters, their aunt and uncle sent the boys to what is now called the Governor's Academy in Massachusetts. This wonderful boarding school led these boys, Leopold and Lester, to attend Harvard (my father) and M.I.T. (my uncle). Dad went on to fly DC-3s in all arenas of World War II, with the most harrowing trips flying over the Hump—that is, over the Himalayas on the Burma route into China. He did many things after the war—almost all successful—ranging from newspaper writing to advertising and finally became a developer (with an unsuccessful run for governor in Arizona in 1960). I knew all these stories at a young age and realized the power of a private school education.

Leopold Ackerman running for governor in 1960 with presidential candidate John F. Kennedy

My mother, a Vassar graduate and New Yorker, settled with my father in Phoenix after World War II and started an integrated preschool in the 1950s in Phoenix. This was not easy. Once, my father, when he had launched his political career, was told by some heavyweights in the political scene in Arizona that he would need to tell my mother to stop her civil rights activities. To my father's credit, he replied curtly to this advice: “My wife is a Vassar graduate. I do not tell her anything.”

Marrying three men at different times, each, as she says, “for the perfect time in her life,” my mother was Gloria Steinem before the 1970s. Taking her children to anti-Vietnam War rallies, raising four kids in Phoenix, moving just north of Los Angeles to Malibu, and always maintaining a strong sense of loyalty to friends and a liberal-left ideology, this five-foot, two-inch Jewish woman dominated the academic, moral, and intellectual development of her children. The oldest and brightest child, Mary, went to UC Berkeley during the sixties, meeting Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and others when she was the girlfriend of the road manager for Country Joe and the Fish. The next child, Byron, was brilliant in mathematics as a graduate of Santa Monica High School (Malibu did not have a high school then). He was an anti-war activist, graduated from UCLA after years at Berkeley and Columbia, and became a noted computer specialist. Years during college were spent around the country organizing anti-war demonstrations, and as a leader of this movement, Byron gave a tour of New York City to John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their Bed-In period. The youngest in the family, Elizabeth Leslie (the second name after my mother), graduated from UC Santa Cruz after being a surfer, thoughtful and creative student, and always a great support to her friends and family. While employed in various administrative educational jobs in LA including a VP stint at Hamilton and Beverley High Schools, Tootie (her brother Carl nicknamed her this as he could not pronounce Elizabeth at an early age) recently started the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA) in Los Angeles, the first all-girls public school in California for at least a century. She married the late Joe Hicks, civil rights activist and at one time CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Los Angeles (SCLC was first started by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.).

Leslie Steinmetz (née Ackerman) with granddaughters. Front row: Jennifer Ackerman, Katarina Hicks, Megan Dervin-Ackerman. Back row: Natasha Hicks and Jessica Dervin-Ackerman. Missing: Laura Keiko Gilah Ackerman who will appear later.

This was my immediate family, and all were dedicated, devoted, and a bit uncompromising in their missions—but only because their missions were guided by altruism and a deep sense of social justice (and I did not even mention my two wonderful stepfathers, Fred Steinmetz and Jerome Shore, who were both at one time political activists also). Not to mention my stepmother, Celia Franco Ackerman, who, being of both Spanish-Mexican and Anglo heritages, had to avoid the rocks of other children who did not like this mixed race child in the small town of Miami, Arizona. She gained great fame in Phoenix by wearing mink in her pickup truck, all the while taking care of six children in the large adobe house near Camelback Mountain where I spent my summers. Celia had us all go to Catholic Mass (a rather interesting and wonderful experience even for this Jewish child). My half-brothers, Doug and Paul, shared the Ackerman name as they were adopted by my father. They taught me how to take care of those younger than I and were fiercely loyal to me as a younger brother, and they remain so to this day. Celia's sister and brother-in-law would often accompany us to ASU football games, and I remember my cousins Steve, Stacey, Stanley, and Alan (the Sanchez Family), and Uncle “Juke” and his wife, Auntie Deenie all rooting for the Sun Devils with us at Arizona State. As one of those serendipitous moments in life, my oldest daughter Laura just took an assistant professor job at ASU with her dashing husband Kyle, and my youngest daughter, Jennifer, will attend ASU as an undergraduate in the fall of 2020. More Sun Devil football games for sure. Of course, the point here is not on football, but my exposure to various ideas and concepts that ran the gamut of the American experience and also included the diversity of relationships and experiences that make our family—and our country—so wonderful.

My own journey as the third child in the original set of four took me from Phoenix (where my parents first settled), to Malibu (where my mother took up shop after the divorce), to Santa Monica (where I went to high school). This high school was the perfect microcosm of American society at the time with low-income students (below Montana St.), middle-income and upper- income students (above Montana St.), the upper-income students from Malibu, and the polyethnic and racial groups who attended this salad bowl school. We had a Black Student Union Club run by my friend Thomas Jefferson, a MECHA Club headed by another friend, Manual Alas, and many other clubs devoted to our multiracial and multi-interest student population. Several of us even started a tutoring program at a nearby elementary school, Broadway Elementary School on Lincoln Blvd. (where my mother taught), which, at that time, was in a gang-dominated area of Venice, California.

From Santa Monica High School (and a surreal camping trip in a VW Camper to the former Soviet Union, circa 1969, with my mother, Tootie and stepfather Fred Steinmetz, from Leningrad to Sochi, and a brief stint as an au pair in the Malibu Colony), I headed toward Berkeley. Being part of this radical campus, majoring in history, and being influenced by many left-wing groups allowed me to journey to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade where I built apartments for several months (the name means “we shall overcome”). Seeing the goose-stepping Cuban army and hearing the speech in Jose Marti Square, Fidel Castro shouting, “Patria o muerte” (fatherland or death), made me reconsider the Left and drift toward more practical solutions. In addition, during my years in Berkeley several friends influenced me greatly: Andy Winfrey, Bonnie Smith, and Terry Kane Chinn (now Terry Moore). Andy let me know that it was possible to buy a house, even if one had to reach out to gather many different resources and in turn pay the mortgage by recruiting renters, in addition to introducing me to jazz music of all varieties. Bonnie showed me how to raise two children as a single mother while working full time and how to always be kind even in the most difficult circumstances. Terry revealed how to live one's life as an artist (as a bit of an eccentric) while maintaining life in the regular academic world. They were my partners in life at Berkeley.

Several years later, after my BA in history and two teaching credentials, I became a teacher at Saint David's Elementary School in Richmond, California. Richmond at that time represented an area in California that had dire poverty; I learned a great deal from the Sisters of Notre Dame that ran this small school. My partner there was Barbara Kringle, a devoted and bright lay teacher.

While at St. David's, I received a call about an interview at UC Berkeley for a school called Iolani that was located somewhere in Hawai'i. Actually, while not being able to pronounce the name for a while, I was intrigued by Headmaster (and Episcopal minister) David Coon and his Assistant Head Charlie Proctor when I first met them at the placement center at Berkeley. My history training as an undergraduate had been good at Berkeley, and I could coach baseball, I told Headmaster Coon and Charlie, as I had played for many years as a boy. Iolani School sounded wonderful, and it was! I was off to Hawai'i, even though my family had a special intervention dinner with me in San Francisco to persuade me to think about the consequences of this decision. Hawai'i seemed awfully far away for my relatives—and they knew my proclivity for adventure.

Still, before I had left the Bay Area, I had taken two jobs. One was a paid summer internship with the Department of Labor that lasted for three years where I monitored the Summer Youth Employment Program under the Comprehensive Employment Act of Congress. This job allowed me to see PUEO-like summer programs all over the western region of the United States. My fiscal and programmatic monitoring took me all over California, Arizona, and Nevada. My mentor, Eric Gray, and I had long discussions about our work and the most efficient way to help kids get out of poverty. In addition, another mentor in another job at the Mission YMCA, Sandy Gong, helped me understand the plight of kids in the Outer Mission of San Francisco. We even took these fine kids camping (despite the wolves). Even today I remain an advocate for the Y and have remained on the board of our University of Hawai'i Y for the past twenty years or so.

Iolani turned out to be even better than I expected. The students were top grade, and the faculty was the same. A math teacher there, David Masunaga, was perhaps the brightest individual I had come across in my life, with his equations, Escher designs, mastery of many subjects, and even Russian language in the mix. Christopher Strawn, another faculty scholar, was the classicist extraordinaire who had a job in the music industry before he donned his Iolani Latin prowess. Chris could play Vivaldi while quoting Dylan or Prince. And finally, there was Alan Suemori, a gentleman who wrote plays at Columbia, and became both well respected and honored at Iolani. It was Alan who first introduced me to the book, Money Ball—so critical for the success of PUEO. Many years later at Iolani, my longtime friend and fellow teacher at Punahou, Dr. Bonnie Traymore, would teach Advanced Placement US History and work in a program similar to PUEO called KA'I. For the past twenty years or so, Bonnie became someone I called when seeking advice. This New Jersey turned Hawai'i resident gave great counsel and was a trusted friend, and both my daughters loved Auntie Bonnie. All of these critical relationships were met one-on-one; each proved to be not only a help in building PUEO, but in my overall living experience—these were the first Partnership-Mar...