Keynote address included memories, wisdom, and advice to island educators
Posted: February 14, 2025
Three of the Hawai’i State Teachers Association’s early leaders, including its first president, gave this year’s Teacher Institute keynote address to teachers across Hawaiʻi this week.
Odetta Fujimori, Laverne Fernandes Moore, and Jean Dobashi recalled some of their struggles and triumphs while asking current educators to step out of their comfort zones to get involved in the HSTA and causes they support.
The early struggles and triumphs
Odetta Fujimori, HSTA’s first president, shared the role she played in helping form the union. Inspired by her father’s activism as a union organizer for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Fujimori jumped at the chance to get involved on behalf of teachers.
Fujimori, who was a special education teacher, became HSTA’s first president, leading the charge for collective bargaining rights for island educators.
She recalled one defining moment in her early years at HSTA, a protest in which teachers walked out of a Board of Education meeting, making their demands impossible to ignore.
“We decided to pick up our marbles and leave. And so we got up, and the teachers all followed me, and we walked out of the building, and we began to picket around the building. That really got the Board of Ed to wake up and take a look at us and know that we really meant business,” Fujimori said.
“It was a big deal for us to have a first protest and, you know, just picking up the signs, and the power that we felt when we were walking around that building,” she added.
Laverne Moore, a retired special education teacher and key union leader for over five decades, helped orchestrate the landmark 1972 teacher strike—the first by a public employee union in Hawaiʻi’s history—protesting low pay and inadequate working conditions.
“Would you believe we were the first public union that went on strike? Nobody expected that we had the guts to do it. I was so proud of my teachers that went against their culture and went out on those picket lines,” Moore said.
As a result of the strike, teachers earned better working conditions, including a duty-free lunch, teacher prep time, and not having to clean their own classrooms.
HSTA played pivotal role in protecting teachers’ rights
Jean Dobashi, a 34-year HIDOE veteran teacher, began her journey with HSTA when she faced legal challenges as a teacher at Kauaʻi Intermediate School.
After a complaint from a parent about one of her students, Dobashi turned to HSTA for the first time for legal help amidst a possible lawsuit after she had to meet with a parent and the parent’s lawyer who accused her of being to strict for a boy who was misbehaving in class.
“So HSTA found out, called me, or came to me and said, ‘We’re going to help you.’ So it was HSTA who came out and supported me, not my teacher friends, not my department, not the school, but it was HSTA, for which I’m eternally grateful,” Dobashi said.
“After that, when I found out what HSTA was all about, I made a personal promise that I will always give back help in whatever small way I can to thank HSTA,” she added.
The union’s support during her ordeal inspired her to become an advocate, ensuring that teachers have the protection they need in difficult situations.
A seat at the national table through the NEA
Throughout the years, HSTA’s influence extended to the national level through the National Education Association (NEA). Moore cited her most memorable moment with HSTA being when she and the union helped Fujimori, HSTA’s first president, get elected to serve on the NEA’s Executive Committee.
Moore said, “The importance of getting Odetta Fujimori elected to the NEA Executive Committee was to bring financial support to Hawaiʻi, was to put Hawaiʻi on the map.
Back in the 1970s, people on the mainland didn’t realize we were a state. They believed that we lived in grass skirts and grass shacks. They did not realize that Asians were broken down by ethnic groups. We were the ones, Hawaiʻi delegation were the ones that educated the leaders at the national level and the congressional team,” she said.
Moore wrote two resolutions and two new business items at the national convention to ensure the NEA was putting funds towards Asian and Pacific Islander programs and investing in multicultural education.
Dobashi participated in every NEA Representative Assembly on the continent except for two during her tenure. She revered the NEA’s forward-thinking stance of embracing leaders from different backgrounds and cultures.
“NEA was very aware that our leaders do not have to be white and they do not have to be a male. So we can get women in different colors, colors of skin, religion, and it’s awesome,” she said.
A call to get involved: ‘Just step out of your comfort zone’
All three retired leaders emphasized that the younger generation of teachers must stay active and involved in the union to preserve hard-won rights and ensure a thriving union and educational system in Hawaiʻi going forward.
Fujimori remarked that, “You need to step forward and work with HSTA, and HSTA can work with you in helping you to be a better classroom teacher, to be a better person politically, and be able to help others and help the classroom and and help the state to do a better job in working with young people.”
Moore warned educators, “You must get involved, or you’re going to lose all the rights that those who came before you fought so hard for.”
She reminded teachers that they don’t need to be an activist like her, but they could do little things like write letters to their legislators or support chapter events.
Dobashi, a self-described country girl from Kahuku, said if she could step up and get involved, anyone can.
“If you’re shy, you’re quiet, you don’t think you got it, just step out of your comfort zone…I’ve got a lot of scars on my back, but you get thick skin. You look them in the eye, you tell them what you feel, and they can feel it because it’s from your heart…You have the greatest responsibility to teach, but you need the HSTA to be there with you.”