A former student of St. Theresa’s Catholic School, Mary Jean Buza-Sims was inspired to a career in education and after a 20-year career on the Mainland, she returned to become principal of the school seven years ago.
TGI: What is your family background?
Jean Buza-Sims: I was born and raised in Kekaha and am the eldest of six children. I am a sugar plantation girl. My dad, Juanito Buza, was one of the “Sakadas,” the last wave of Filipino workers to be recruited in 1946. He was 18 years old when his group arrived in Lanai and then he moved to Koloa, and then to Kekaha.
My mother, Poinciana Contrades-Garren, was Hawaiian, Spanish, and Mexican Indian. She was the youngest of nine children and was adopted by the Ritas, a Portuguese family on the Westside.
My great grandfather was a paniolo who came from Mexico via the Big Island at a time when the Kamehamehas wanted Mexican cowboys to teach the Hawaiians how to ranch.
My grandmother came directly from Spain. My grandpa was Mexican Indian and Hawaiian and is of the Contrades family. He married a Hawaiian woman and they had children. My grandpa is half Hawaiian and half-Mexican Indian and was part of the Contrades family.
TGI: When did you want to become a teacher?
JBS: I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was 4 years old. My dad brought home an old slate blackboard and set it up in the garage. I would bring in the neighborhood children and would play teacher. I even had a pointer.
I didn’t have many Hawaiian or Filipino role models in the community at the time. I really looked up to Connie Cuaresma, who was an elementary school teacher at Kaumakani who was very active in the Filipino community. I always looked up to her and said someday I am going to be a teacher like her. I think she had her own challenges and suffered with polio as a youth. She is no longer with us.
I attended St. Theresa’s until the eighth grade in 1964. I told my mom that I wanted to go to college and to send me to Honolulu and not to Waimea High School. At the time I didn’t see a lot of children of my background being encouraged to attend college.
St Theresa’s was completely staffed by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. They advocated for me to their sister order that ran St. Francis High School in Honolulu which was run as a convent school at the time.
I graduated in 1968 and was accepted to attend the University of San Francisco, Boston University, and Seattle University. They are Jesuit schools that recruited heavily at Catholic high schools in Hawaii, and I chose Seattle University.
I received my bachelor’s in education but it was a bad time to look for teaching jobs. A friend encouraged me to get my master’s degree in social work and I was fortunate to get accepted into the MSW program at the University of Washington. They were recruiting Asian American students.
It was quite a change and the transition was difficult. I went from a small downtown campus of 3,500 students, to a university of 45,000. I survived and graduated two years later with an MSW. Once again, no one was hiring and I turned back to my first passion — education.
TGI: How did your career begin?
JBS: In 1974 I became a teacher trainer in multicultural education for Seattle Public Schools. It was a pioneering program at a time when Seattle was preparing to desegregate schools and bus the students. They had to prepare mainstream staff and teachers and our multiethnic training team was tasked to conduct 40-hour cultural awareness workshops.
The team included white, black, Mexican American, Native American and Asian American consultants. I was under the Asian American umbrella as the Filipino and Pacific Islander trainer because of my background.
We trained ourselves and it was an interesting process for me. The history and social studies that I was taught had omitted a lot of information about ethnic people.
We had to learn about ourselves and the history of our ethnic groups so that we could teach other people. We shared across cultures with other members of the team and it was an awakening for us because we didn’t hear about each other in history.
For example, I never knew that the Japanese here went to concentration camps. The younger generation didn’t either, and thought it was like a summer camp. It was a very closed topic and never talked about.
TGI: When did you decide to return to Kauai?
JBS: I felt it was time to move on after 11 years at St. Paul’s. My mother was also suffering from cancer and I cared for her until she told me to go back to work.
I became director of educational programs for Metro Center YMCA. It was a great program with wonderful people and I stayed for five years. I loved it because we addressed the needs of high school dropouts who wanted to get credit retrieval or their GED. It was staffed by Americorp students and case managers who mentored and provided job training.
In 2006, I got the call from St. Theresa about an open principal position. I was home for a wedding the previous year and introduced myself to the sisters.
I had lived in Seattle for 40 years at that point. My mom passed in 2006 and my husband had retired from teaching. My kids said to go back home and I gifted the bakery to them under a new name, Cakes of Paradise.
My Dad was still alive and I was looking forward to spending time with him. He went into ICU the day I arrived and died the next day. I was just so sad. He was very active in the community.
TGI: Was going back home again difficult?
JBS: In the seven years I have been here it has been a wonderful experience. I am loving it and I am happy. The sunshine, the people and the lifestyle.
I was also happy to be returning to my alma mater. The sisters helped me to be what I am today. I felt like I was giving back to a gracious community that gave me the opportunity to get a college degree. I received these gifts from people all throughout my life and career and so I felt it was time to give back.
The biggest thing was realizing that I had to learn to appreciate my culture. Coming back made me appreciate what I had before I left and I learned to utilize all of my skills and my manao.
Small schools face many challenges and I felt my task was to find ways to keep the beacon of hope alive as one of only two Catholic schools still open on the island. We survive on subsidies from the parishes along with alumni and Friends of St. Theresa donations for scholarships and operational costs.
TGI: How is the school performing?
JBS: Our comprehensive goals are to develop the spiritual, academic, physical, and service to our community aspects of the students.
Three years ago, the school received an accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. This required the staff and faculty to conduct an in-depth self-study with defined goals of improvements to include all stakeholders. A second accreditation from the Western Catholic Education Association ensures that the school is achieving religious benchmarks.
A parent helped us to look at moving into 21st century technology classrooms. We developed a plan to not just have computers but to utilize them as technological tools that assist teacher instruction and student learning.
A grant from the Renaissance Lighthouse Program provides technology tools for improving student learning in math, reading, writing and math facts in a flash. The belief is that if students practice they will accelerate in their learning of math and reading so that student achievement will improve.
Each grade level has benchmarks they have to meet in each grade level.
TGI: Are the changes in pre-school birthday cutoffs difficult?
JBS: St. Theresa’s is not going to follow suit with the DOE. Students entering kindergarten can be age 5 as late as Dec. 31 of the year they are entering. We are not going to do a cut off for kindergarten because parents are having a difficult time adjusting to the idea that they may have an extra year of preschool.
TGI: What are your plans for the future?
JBS: I think seven years is a long time and I feel, personally and professionally, that my goal now is to train the upcoming leaders to assume the responsibilities and move St. Theresa’s into the future. I know that I have my limits and am not as young as I used to be.
The people are so wonderful here and they can lead, but you have to have trained leadership and promote it for people who want to assume that role.
We want to continue with the Lighthouse Program. We already purchased the tools and since we leased the computers, we can now look at writing a grant to buy or lease tablets and next generation technology that furthers learning.
Our school started this year with 70 students and now we have 80. Our goal is to surpass that next year with 100 students from preschool through eighth grade.
TGI: What else are you doing in the community?
JBS: I am chair of the E Ola Mau Na Leo O Kekaha and am involved with community issues such as the landfill and tearing down the old mill.
The plantations had a mechanism to fund community activities and programs for families and keiki. It was a vibrant and thriving community when I left. I didn’t see that when I returned seven years ago except for the existence of youth and sports programs.
The organization focus is community revitalization by providing education, cultural, ohana and economic opportunities for the citizens of Kekaha.
