Young Hawaii teachers took early, advanced paths to education

Apr. 1—At just 20 years old, Skye Yasuda is a fully certified sixth grade English and social studies teacher at Waipahu Elementary School, but she frequently gets mistaken for a kid at work.

At just 20 years old, Skye Yasuda is a fully certified sixth grade English and social studies teacher at Waipahu Elementary School, but she frequently gets mistaken for a kid at work.

"The adult supervisors during recess come up to me and they're like, 'I almost yelled at you to sit down, but then I remembered that you're not a student, '" Yasuda said with a laugh and shrug.

Blaise Babineck was just 18 when he started teaching science this school year at King Intermediate School in Windward Oahu. Already he has revived the long-defunct science fair at his school, and three of his students were winners at the district science fair.

"I love science and I love sharing it, " Babineck said via a state Department of Education news release.

Yasuda and Babineck are among the youngest full-time teachers in Hawaii's statewide public-school system of nearly 13, 000 teachers. They were able to get an unusual head start to their careers thanks in large part to the Early College program : Yasuda and Babineck began taking college-credit courses while still at their respective high schools, which helped them later earn their bachelor's degrees in a far shorter timeline than the traditional four years after high school graduation.

The DOE has no known record of any 18-or 19-year-old ever serving as a teacher before at a Hawaii public school. A department spokesperson was unable to determine how many DOE teachers are at age 20.

The average age of a Hawaii teacher is 42.7 years, and the median is 41.6 years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Only 15.7 % of Hawaii teachers are younger than 30, according to federal data.

When Yasuda told friends and family she wanted to become a teacher, "everyone was always worried about the pay, " she said in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview. "But this is the profession I wanted to go into—I knew that it's never about the money. How can you put a price on such an amazing reward of being able to see your kids prosper and develop ? ... My drive is really just being able to to see the kids grow."

Yasuda has been so sure since childhood that she wanted to be a teacher that she started volunteering as a summer fun leader every year while in middle school, and then at Waipahu High School she took Early College classes in the summers to reach her career goal sooner.

When she graduated in 2021 as a valedictorian, she held not only a high school diploma, but two associate's degrees—one in teaching and another in liberal arts—and a certificate of competence in culturally responsive teaching from Leeward Community College. She was the first high school student in the state to graduate with an associate of science in teaching from Leeward, according to the DOE.

Yasuda went next to the University of Hawaii-West Oahu on a Presidential Scholarship, which provides a full-tuition waiver for two years. The scholarship is "to support rising juniors at UH community colleges with a record of outstanding academic achievement, " according to the DOE release. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in elementary education in May 2023.

Yasuda hails from a family of educators and achievers, but she said her parents never forced her or her siblings in a specific direction, just encouraged them to explore their interests, which for her have included dance, travel, taekwondo, soccer, modeling and cooking.

"I think just my parents' love and their care, and their willingness to really encourage my siblings and I to work hard and always try our best, and to just put our 110 % into anything that we really want to go into—that's like my safety net, " Yasuda said.

Yasuda's mother, Monica, is the Early College coordinator at Nanakuli High & Intermediate School, and her father, Kris, was an English teacher and the student government advisor at Nanakuli before shifting into the energy sector. Skye Yasuda's younger brother, Maverick, served as the student representative on the state Board of Education in 2022-2023. And her sister, Lotus, a sophomore at Waipahu High, is vice chair for operations on the Hawai 'i State Student Council.

Yasuda said that while being such a young teacher has its ups and downs, she has felt only support from her colleagues, and appreciation from her students. Her youth helps her students feel that they can relate to her, and she to them. When they tell her she's the reason they come to school, and they leave sweet notes on her whiteboard such as "We'll really miss you !" it moves her, she said.

"I love my job. Not many people can say that, " Yasuda said. "Yes, I'm tired, and yes, I have my bad days—who doesn't ? ... But at the end of the day the only thing I can control is the stuff in my classroom and, yeah, I love what I do. I love my kids. I love my work environment. I love where I am. I love the people I work with. It's such a blessing."

A spark for science Little in Blaise Babineck's early childhood in Ewa Beach suggested he would become one of Hawaii's youngest-ever science teachers.

He didn't grow up in a science-oriented environment, and none of his relatives worked in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering or mathematics, the DOE release said.

But when Babineck was in the seventh grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ewa Beach, his teacher Pili Spencer sparked his love for science, and that year Babineck won the school's science fair, placed third overall in the district fair, and took second place at the state science fair.

As a Maryknoll School sophomore, Babineck took AP chemistry and later earned the maximum score of 5 on the AP chemistry exam. Another teacher, Derek Birkmire, helped lead him toward a career in science and teaching.

Babineck was only 16 when he graduated from high school, finishing early thanks to Maryknoll's Early College Program partnership with Hawai 'i Pacific University, and his AP credits. Babineck is one of only two Maryknoll students who graduated in less than four years, the school confirmed to the DOE.

At HPU he began with junior-and senior-level courses, worked as a teaching assistant for organic and general chemistry courses, and served as president of the university's chemistry club. He also worked as a peer mentor success coach, planned outreach events for the American Chemical Society and provided tutoring. When he graduated in 2023 from HPU with a bachelor's degree in chemistry as the undergraduate class valedictorian, he was only 18.

At King Intermediate, Babineck is considered an "emergency hire, " a term referring to educators hired to teach while they actively pursue their teacher license. About 660 DOE teachers work under emergency-hire permits.

Babineck was not available last week for an interview, a DOE spokesperson said. But Babineck, who is 19 now, said in the release : "I really wanted to support kids with a similar background to me. I really wanted to teach at a school similar to the schools I grew up in—with local students, who didn't have that much exposure to science."

And he wanted to teach eighth graders.

"It's the year before high school. It's the year that will influence what electives they take, what pathway they take, what academy they go into. It's really a decision point for students, " he said. "I felt like eighth grade was the perfect point where I could get students excited about science and get students motivated."