<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So when you were going to LACC you still lived at home and then did you eventually... when you went into the army is that when you left home?

PS: Yeah, that's when I left home. I worked for North American Aviation where my dad was working for one summer and one semester, but that was a good experience for me because it motivated me. I realized that it was not the thing I wanted to do the rest of my life. I wasn't very good with working with my hands anyways and so I knew that I was a misfit. And so when I went back to school I went, for a semester or two I did much better. I was still not an outstanding student but I got by. I did okay. And then went into the army for a couple years as I mentioned in Colorado and then came back and much better motivated. By then Los Angeles State College it was called at that time was using the facilities at LACC so I took a couple of courses there and then they moved out to where they're located now and then during the Reagan years it got changed to Cal State Los Angeles. So I graduated from there in 1958, became a biology teacher, got a job in the valley. And then went into counseling after a couple of years but that was a good move for me because I enjoyed working directly with people.

SY: So when you were in college you knew you wanted to be a teacher?

PS: Yeah, I decided I wanted to be a science teacher.

SY: And you wanted to be in science.

PS: Yeah, so I taught biology, biology and physiology. Yeah, I enjoyed teaching physiology, teaching science is a lot of work, if you don't have help there's a lot of setting up to do. And then you have to deal with the papers and it was just... so I was glad to have gone to go into counseling and I enjoyed working with the kids.

SY: And that was something that you were able to do without any kind of additional courses?

PS: Then you had to take classes to get a degree, to get a credential.

SY: So most of your working career was as a counselor then?

PS: Yes, I was at Cleveland High School for thirty-two years, one school, never changed schools.

SY: Wow.

PS: And then I had kind of a run-in with the head counselor and so I went into Special Ed and so I was itinerant Special Ed counselor until I retired for about two or three years. And that was good; it allowed me to travel around. I was able to, one of my schools was Fairfax High School and I got acquainted with Kay Ochi who very active in the NCRR and so that's been a good relationship. I was able to meet with her and have some contact.

SY: And in your role as a counselor what kind of work did that involve?

PS: It was general guidance counseling.

SY: So kids would come to you --

PS: Career counseling and part of it I taught a class in guidance. It was a ten-week course in guidance that came opposite of driver's education, driver's education used to be mandatory by the state. So they had this and it wasn't a whole semester deal so they had to do something with the other ten weeks so it was a class called guidance. And so we were able to basically get the kids in the class who I was counselor to, and I was counselor to people who were within a certain alphabetical area, towards the end of the alphabet. So it worked out pretty well, I was able to see the kids in class who were going to be my counselees and then I was their counselor until they graduated so I enjoyed it. It was good work.

SY: And you ended up retiring after thirty-two years.

PS: Yeah, thirty-five years total.

SY: Thirty-five years, wow.

PS: Yeah, that itinerant counseling was interesting. What I did was I worked with the Special Ed kids and I was what they called a least restrictive environment counselor so I'd go in to make sure that kind of liaison between the student and the parents and the teacher to make sure that the kid was in the right place. Because the kid could either be in a Special Ed class where there were only maybe six or eight students to the class or they could be in a pull out program where they're sitting in a regular class, pulled out as special needs to get special attention.

SY: So these were academic issues?

PS: Yeah, academic issues mainly so I was able to do that. I was able to travel around and go to different schools so that was a good ending to my career which I liked.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.