Densho Digital Archive - George Katagiri Interview (denshovh-kgeorge

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GK: So I start teaching biology in 1956. Well, in 1958, Russia sends up Sputnik, and the whole country is up in arms because the Russians are ahead of the United States in their space program, and so Congress wants to do something about it. And so they want every single state in the United States to put on a science specialist at the state level. And so they started to interview people, and I was one who was considered, and I was the only one that had elementary and secondary credentials and experience at both levels. And so for the State of Oregon, the State Department of Education in Salem hired me as the science specialist for the State of Oregon. And so I started a new career at the state level. Well, so far my educational experience has been great, you know. I love teaching elementary; I love teaching high school. And so I get up at the state level, and there's, no one has ever held this position before, and nobody knew what this person was supposed to do, so we're sitting there. We had new people in science, in math, and in foreign languages, so we're all sitting there. Well, what do you do at the state level, you know. Our one objective is to improve education in our field, and so we kind of fumbled around.

And after a few weeks, I came up with the idea that, gee, going around to school by school, you're not going to make much headway. And so I thought, gosh, maybe I can teach teachers how to teach science on television, and so I arranged that through the public broadcasting. And so in Oregon, way back in the early 1960s, I was one of the first educational television teachers. And up till that point, when you taught on television, you got in front of the camera, and you talked and talked and talked and talked. And I thought, well, I don't want to do that. And since I was teaching elementary teachers how to teach science, I could perform little tiny experiments on television, that should make it interesting. So I came up with a course of ten or twelve programs. It became a hit, and a lot of teachers around the State of Oregon were watching this program with this strange man teaching how to teach elementary science. I would go to these meetings, and some teachers would come up and point at me and said, "You're the guy," you know. Here, you don't know who they are, but they know who you are, and I suspect that many of them were disappointed because I was so short. [Laughs] But that's the way it went, and they ran that program, that series for several years, and it was a good experience for me. And after that, I had a whole bag of tricks in my back pocket of how to approach teachers, and I came up with a canned in-service program and a couple of lectures. And so I started to go around the different school districts and give these lectures and put on these demonstrations, and it became quite a hit especially when I was providing a service that the school district didn't have to pay for. Usually, when they have a college person come out, they have to pay honorary and things like this. But here comes a guy from the state department, and he puts on this dog and pony show. It's very entertaining, and the teachers like it, and they're inspired, and it's all for nothing. And so you hit one district, and you put on the show, and then the three districts around that first district find out about it. They want you to come out. And gosh, in a matter of a year or two, I was hitting just about every school district in this state, traveling in Eastern Oregon in the wintertime and in the springtime and fall, and it was a very effective program. In fact, it was so effective by 1969, I had covered most of the state and knew most of the superintendents of schools in the different districts. And somebody started a campaign to nominate me for the state employee of the year, not educator of the year, state employee of the year, and you can imagine how many state employees there are in the state of Oregon. Well, these volumes of recommendations came in. In 1969, I got this State Employee of the Year award from Governor McCall, and I had this beautiful big plaque, carved in the shape of the state of Oregon with Governor McCall's name in it. And that's probably the biggest little prize that I ever earned.

But then those were the years when the National Science Foundation poured millions of dollars into improving science education. So the different universities and the scientists and the professors got together, and they developed new curricular for the elementary school and for the high schools. And every time one of the new curriculum was developed, who should be the first to be invited but the state science supervisors, not the college professor but the state science supervisors. So we had a national organization, the Council of State Science Supervisors, and we went to all of these national meetings all over the United States. And over a period of time, I think I hit just about every state in the union. Not only that, I was invited out to see Apollo 7 go up in a spaceship. And so we were there at Cape Kennedy, and we're in this viewing stand for the VIPs, and I saw all these astronauts and World War I heroes, and we saw Apollo 7 go up. And it was a once in a lifetime experience especially when they took you into this huge building that went up for umpteen stories where they put the spaceship together. And then they had these huge doors on the side of the building and this platform on which this spaceship rolled out. And then they had this special road that the spaceship was moved to the launching pad. And so we saw all of that firsthand, and it was really a thrill. What I didn't realize is that during the countdown, during the countdown, they go 10, 9, 8, 7 and so on, and you think that they start the ignition when it gets down to 0, but they don't. Liftoff is at 0, but the ignition starts at about 4 or 5. And so it's coming down 6, 5, 4, and here's this blast down on the pad, and you know, I got all excited. My gosh, this thing's are going to blow up. It's too soon. And it just takes those two or three seconds before the liftoff actually takes place. And even once it gets going, you hear this big roar, and you can feel the vibrations through the air even though you're three miles away. And for some reason, I'm sitting there taking pictures, and I'm waiting for the spaceship to blow up. It's, I don't know what everybody else was thinking, but I thought, this can't happen perfectly, you know. But Apollo 7 went up without a hitch. And as the state science supervisor, we had these kinds of experiences. We went to the national meetings every year. I was the president of the organization for one year. It was a great experience for me. So my experience at the state education level was just as good as teaching high school or elementary school. I was blessed with choosing the right profession, you know.