Tag Archives: Asian American Teachers

Texas teacher Phuong Kathy Nguyen succumbs to Covid-19

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With great sadness we report the passing of middle school teacher and coach Phuong Kathy Nguyen of Dallas, Texas. She succumbed to Covid-19 on Feb. 13, 2021. Photo credit: Twitter.

With great sadness we report that Covid-19 has claimed the life of yet another beloved educator. Phuong Kathy Nguyen, a teacher and coach in Dallas, Texas, succumbed to the disease on Feb. 13, 2021, in Richardson, Texas. She was only 37 years old.

Kathy was born on July 12, 1983, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her maiden name was Cipriano. She graduated from Lakeview Centennial High School in 2001. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Mulit/Interdisciplinary Studies in 2006 from the University of Texas at Dallas. She completed the requirements for her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Administration from the University of North Texas in 2022.

The fallen educator taught and coached at a middle school in the Dallas Independent School district. Her career there spanned 15 years. During those years, Kathy gained a reputation for being a passionate teacher who did her utmost to give her students a better education for a brighter future. She dedicated countless hours and even her personal time and finances to see to it that her students succeeded, both in the classroom or on the field.

Kathy will definitely be missed by her family, friends, colleagues, and students. I knew Kathy as Mrs. Cipriano when I first started teaching at Lee,” remembers colleague Yasmin Cardenas. “We were both on the fourth grade team. She was always so positive and had a colorful smile that was contagious,” Cardenas said. Friend Alain Castillo agrees. “Kathy was a great person that impacted the lives of whoever she met,” he asserts. Friend Julie Trujillo also had positive memories of Kathy. “She was an amazing teacher. Always with a smile on her face. Her passion lives on through … all the students she taught and coached,” Trujillo declared.

To read more about this beloved educator, click on this link to read her obituary.

Hawaii’s Soichi Sakamoto: Self-taught Swim Coach to Olympians

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Former sixth grade science teacher Soichi Sakamoto from Maui, Hawaii, became a swim coach to Olympic swimmers. Photo credit: Star-Bulletin

Many fine classroom teachers also earn acclaim as athletic coaches. One of these is Soichi Sakamoto, a science teacher who also became a Swim Coach to Olympian athletes.

Soichi was born on August 6, 1906. In the late 1930’s, he taught sixth grade science and health at Puunene School on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The school was built in 1922 on ten acres of land donated by the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company.

At first, Soichi didn’t know anything about coaching a swim team, and his team members consisted of the children of poor sugar plantation workers. Nevertheless, the  inventive teacher established a Three-Year Swim Cub in 1937. His goal was to guide his athletes to the Olympics within three years. The indefatigable coach was able to achieve his goal of creating a team that qualified for the US Olympic team; however, the 1940 Summer Games were cancelled because of the outbreak of World War II.

To get his student athletes to their goal, the innovative coach developed a training regiment involving the use of interval training. As a form of resistance training, Soichi used area irrigation ditches to train his athletes to swim against the current. In addition, he used pulleys and weights to build upper body strength in his young swimmers, also an innovation for the times.

Eventually, Soichi became the Swim Coach at the University of Hawaii, where he served from 1946 to 1961. He also served as an Assistant Coach for the US Olympic Swim Team from 1952 to 1956. Over the course of Soichi’s career, many of his athletes competed in the Olympics, where they earned gold, silver, and bronze medals.

For his work as a swim coach, Soichi earned international accolades. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame, and the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He is also a member of the Sports Circle of Honor at the University of Hawaii.

This superlative coach passed away on Sept. 29, 1997. He was 91 years old. To document the story of this Chalkboard Champion, a book detailing his life and career was written by Julia Checkoway. The biography, published in 2015, was entitled The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory. The volume is available on  Amazon.com. You could also read this 2003 article published abut him in the Star Bulletin.

Dr. Kim Lawe: Educator and escapee from Communist Viet Nam

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Kim Lawe, former  science educator and STEM school principal, now works for the Riverside County Office of Education in Riverside, California. Photo credit: Azusa Pacific University.

Here is the inspirational story of a very amazing educator, Dr. Kim Lawe. I worked with her at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Eastvale, California, before I retired from the teaching profession in 2017. In the brief video below, Dr. Lawe shares a story about her family’s escape by boat from Communist Viet Nam following the fall of Saigon, and how she eventually grew up to become a teacher in the United States.

From her humble beginnings, Kim went through American schools, eventually earning her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Redlands University in Redlands, California. She earned her Master’s degree in Curriculum and Design from California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. She completed the requirements for her Ph.D. at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California. She inaugurated her career in education as a science teacher, eventually becoming the principal of the STEM academy in the Corona Norco Unified School District in Corona, California. Recently she accepted a position in the Riverside County Office of Education in Riverside, California.

“Our family’s journey from Vietnam to the US succeeded because of my father’s diligent planning, and because everyone shared a vision of where we were going and what we needed to do to get there,” Kim asserts. Now a leader in secondary education, this amazing Chalkboard Champion applies that same mindset to create a common mission among the faculty, staff, and students she serves, knowing that collective purpose put into action can achieve mighty things. “My history is a testament to that,” she declares. “I want them to know that together we can beat the odds and rise to the occasion, no matter the challenges.”

To read more about Dr. Kim Lawe. read this profile of her published by Azusa Pacific University.

Educator and community activist Cheryl Chow of Washington State

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Physical Education teacher and community activist Cheryl Chow of Seattle, Washington. Photo credit: The Seattle Times

Many dedicated and talented educators make substantial contributions to their local communities. One of these educators is Cheryl Mayre Chow, a PE teacher from Washington State.

Cheryl was born in Seattle, Washington, on May 24, 1946, the daughter of Chinese restaurant owners Ping and Ruby Chow. As a young teenager, Cheryl graduated from Franklin High School, and then enrolled at Western Washington University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Teaching. Later she earned a Master’s degree in Administrative Management from Seattle University.

Upon her graduation from college, the neophyte educator became a physical education teacher. As a teacher, she was known for her toughness, high standards, and tenacious advocacy for children. Eventually she became a principal of first Sharples Junior High (renamed Aki Kurose Junior High) and then Garfield High.

Cheryl’s devotion to young people is very evident. Among her many achievements, she served as the Assistant Director for the Girl Scouts of Western Washington, a girls’ basketball coach for the city parks and recreation department, and she also directed the Seattle Chinese Community Girls Drill Team. “Everything that Cheryl did, she worked to instill leadership among the girls and kind of mentor them for their adult lives,” remembers friend Lorena Eng. In addition to this work, Cheryl helped to form an outreach program for teens involved in Asian street gangs.

Cheryl also served as the President of the Seattle School Board and worked at the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. In addition, she served two terms on her local city council.

This Chalkboard Champion passed away from a central nervous system lymphoma on March 29, 2013, at the age of 66. She is interred at Evergreen Washelli Memorial Park in Seattle. To read more about Cheryl Chow, see this obituary at The Seattle Times.

Mary Tsukamoto: The teacher who spent WWII in an American internment camp

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Mary Tsukamoto

Japanese American teacher Mary Tsukamoto was incarcerated in an American internment camp during World War II.

At the start of World War II, Mary Tsukamoto was living a quiet life as the wife of a strawberry farmer in a diminuitive Japanese-American community in Florin, Northern California. Then Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941. That event, “a day that will live in infamy,” suddenly turned Mary’s quiet life upside-down.

Mary was one of 120,000 other persons of Japanese descent living on the West Coast. Most of them were American citizens. Mary and the many others in the Japanese American community were forced into a relocation camp by the US government because their loyalty to our country was questioned. Evicted from their home, Mary, her husband, their five-year-old daughter, her elderly in-laws, her teenaged brother and sisters, and other members of her family wound up in a camp in Jerome, Arkansas. There they were incarcerated until authorities were convinced this family of farmers posed no threat to national security.

While detained in the camp, Mary became part of a prisoner-organized effort to provide meaningful educational opportunities for the imprisoned children. Mary taught speech courses for the high school students and English language classes for the elderly. Once she was released from the camp and the war was over, Mary enrolled in college. She completed her degree and became an elementary schoolteacher. In fact, she was one of the first certificated Japanese American teachers in the United States.

This intrepid teacher’s remarkable story is told in her autobiography, We the People, a volume which unfortunately is now out of print. However, with some effort, it can be found through second-hand book sellers or in some libraries (check WorldCat), and it is well worth the hunt. You can read also read her story in my first book, Chalkboard Champions, available through amazon.com.