Teachers can take real-world learning back to their classrooms, students
Posted: April 11, 2024
Five Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association members over spring break participated in the union’s revived teacher externship program, gaining valuable real-world experience to bring back to their classrooms.
The five HSTA members joined 10 other Hawaiʻi State Department of Education teachers to complete a five-day pilot externship at various Outrigger Hospitality locations, shadowing hotel staff on jobs like the reception desk, housekeeping, maintenance, human resources, and revenues and sales.
The program originally began in 2010 by the late Stacy Nishina, a public school teacher, longtime HSTA staff member, and tireless advocate for public education. The HSTA revived the program last fall to help partner teachers with local businesses so they can help their students become college and career-ready.
Grant coordinator for the program and HSTA Leeward Chapter UniServ Director Dana Shishido said of the hospitality pilot, “The amount or type of career opportunities are so vast. It’s our hope that the teachers can take this back and share it with their students, and share it with their colleagues.”
The five teachers who participated through HSTA will receive a $1,000 stipend for fulfilling the program’s requirements. The stipend is made possible through a grant-in-aid award to the Hawaiʻi Foundation for Educators, a 501(c)(3) organization that works in partnership with the HSTA to provide Hawaiʻi’s educators with the quality training and professional development they need to support our keiki.
About the experience
The pilot program, which included properties on Oʻahu for HSTA members, included two components: A one-night overnight hotel stay with orientation, and a five-day externship where teachers commuted to their assigned hotel property to shadow various departments.
Adrienne Brown, a special education student success manager and coach at DreamHouse ‘Ewa Beach public charter school, completed her externship at Outrigger Waikiki Beachcomber Resort.
“I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I knew that it would be hands-on and I would see life from a different perspective when it comes to providing for children’s needs and then going into a whole new world where we were fixated and focused on providing and servicing people for their wants.
“[The whole experience] just helped me change my mindset from an educator to customer service,” she said.
Her favorite department to shadow was marketing and sales, and she credits them as “the most entertaining” and saying it was the “most fun I had.”
Aliamanu Elementary 4th grade teacher Stephanie Hayashi worked for the week at the Outrigger Waikiki Beachcomber Resort. She said the spring break timing of the externship was perfect, as her school does a career fair in spring.
“It may be a bit more challenging to implement the externship ideas related to career during the first and second quarters since that is when teachers are trying to lay the groundwork and establish routines. During this time, we are also preparing students with the skills for testing. SInce we have our annual career day in the spring, it was logistically natural to link it to the externship program.”
Jeff Wagoner, president and chief executive officer at Outrigger Hospitality Group said, “We want to continue to do this with you all, and I’d love to be able to get some of our students across the state into the hotel environments they can feel it and experience it and find out that it really can make a career out of this.”
Shishido, the grant program coordinator, hopes that the program will expand in the future to allow for more teacher externships in other industries.
“We’re looking at everything trying to just build the entire community, and it’s so great to hear that the Outrigger made such a great impact on our teachers. Hopefully we are able to do this again in the future.”