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SY: Okay, hi. Today is August 23, 2011, and we're at the Centenary United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, and we're talking with George Nakano. I'm Sharon Yamato, and Tani Ikeda is on camera. So, George, this is the second part of an interview with you and I believe we left off when you made the switch in your career from working at Hughes to teaching, and I'm curious why or how that switch came about, why you made that switch.

GN: Well, I was interested in having a profession where I could have some impact on society, and I felt that one of the ways would be to reach out to young people. And I felt that as a teacher that would be a way of doing it, and so... and it was something that came about as a result of my volunteering with, like the Gardena Pioneer Project, and it was a hard decision from the standpoint that I already had two children and it would mean that I would have to take a cut in pay, going from Hughes Aircraft to going into teaching. And so I had to talk it over with my wife and asked her if she would be willing to work part time to make ends meet, and so that's what we had to do.

SY: That's, and the interesting thing is that you switched to teaching in a school in South Central.

GN: Yeah, it was --

SY: So was that by choice?

GN: Well, I wanted to teach high school. I didn't want to teach junior high school. I think there were other positions open that were not in inner city, but that's the one that came up as, that had an opening. And so I went and had an interview with the principal and I was impressed with the principal. He also used to be a math teacher at one time. He grew up in New Orleans. And so anyway, I made the decision to take the position at Jordan High School.

SY: And what was that like, teaching predominately black students, right?

GN: It was all black at that campus at that time.

SY: Okay, and so, and you were teaching math, and what was that experience like?

GN: They, I had also a regular math class as well as geometry, and so in the geometry class I had the high achievers and so when you have those high achievers it's no different than, I think, any other community. But then I also had the low achievers as well, so it was a good cross section of students that I was working with.

SY: Was discipline a problem? Did you have discipline problems?

GN: I didn't have any discipline problems. You know, I was fair to the students. One of the things that, training that you go through, orientation training for those teachers who are gonna be teaching in inner city schools, and for some of us who have grown up in those poor areas, it's not a cultural shock, but for those who come from the middle class, who have never been in an area like that, they truly need the orientation. And part of the orientation training is that you don't try to be friends at the same level. Otherwise you lose respect. You are the teacher, you are gonna be open, you are gonna be fair. You don't talk down to the students. And those were the important parts, I think, part of the orientation training.

SY: I see, and did you incorporate other things into your teaching other than math, or was --

GN: I did. Since I had geometry, I think of all the math classes geometry is the one that's closest to pure logic, so I incorporated some of the things that I learned in college, logic -- I took a logic course in philosophy -- and so I incorporated some of those fallacies in there for them to be able to identify different kinds of fallacies. And so I did those kind of things.

SY: Made it interesting.

GN: Yes.

SY: So was, was teaching rewarding for you?

GN: Yes, it was. I was totally exhausted at the end of the day, but my mind was clear.

SY: That's nice.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.