<Begin Segment 22>

AI: And then, when was it that you decided to go into the classroom yourself and become a teacher?

AK: It was in about the '70s, early '70s I decided to go in as a regular classroom teacher.

AI: And what was your first classroom, what was your first school?

AK: And it was kindergarten. And it was overwhelming because we had like, thirty in the morning, thirty kids in the morning, thirty in the afternoon.

AI: Oh, my.

AK: Uh-huh. I still have that feeling where you really need to get in with the families and whatever. And when I first went to work with the district they were still having this riffing all the time, because, riffing -- reduction in force is what they were calling it, unless you have seniority you were bumped every year and things like that. But I still wanted to stay in the early childhood area. And then I still kept taking classes. [Laughs] And I took all those physics classes from Chris McDermott on how to teach science, the hands-on approach.

AI: So when did you, now I think you mentioned in your other interview, that you were teaching at Martin Luther King Elementary. Was that your first school that you taught at?

AK: Yes.

AI: And how long were you there?

AK: And I was only there a year, because of this riffing, so I would go... uh-huh. And then I got transferred over the Laurelhurst. And that was the HEW mandate, where no minority teacher could teach in a minority-impacted school. And so I was shipped out to Laurelhurst to teach in a all-white school, well, the staff was all-white also.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.