Calling Plays at Saint Louis
All-boys Saint Louis brought in Patricia Hamamoto to beef up academics and, boy oh boy, she’s done just that. With her (from left) are school VP Duke Aiona, students Richie Lonzaga and Tanner Oshiro, and school president Walter Kirimitsu
By Chad Pata
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academic heft on campus, The Crusaders’ won the recent statewide Math Bowl.
“If we see a young man who has a talent for drawing or painting, over the next two or three years we want to nurture him so he can come out ready to be a professional artist,” says Hamamoto. “Those are the kind of programs we want to grow.”
Beyond the new emphasis on class work, there is the old framework that alumni of the school refer to as being a “Saint Louis Man.”
“Being here, there is a whole different focus than being at other schools,” says Hamamoto, whose most recent stint as principal was at McKinley High School, “in the sense that the focus is on character development and ensuring that when they leave here there is a set of values and practices that become part of their everyday actions. I like that, growing leaders who are ethical, who are community-based and community-minded.”
Aiona echoes those sentiments as he recalls his experiences at the school.
“There is a spiritual side to you in regard to helping others, building community - a fellowship that you have with the fellow students in the school,” says Aiona, who graduated from Saint Louis in 1973. “Predominantly with your class, but also with anyone who is in the school or is a Saint Louis graduate. It means being a model in the community. You are standing on the shoulders of those who came before you and built this school to where it is now, and there is a certain responsibility with that.”
This fellowship, or Brotherhood, as the Marianists like to call it, can have its excluding side, and being the first female principal of Hawaii’s second-oldest school is not without its challenges.
“It was an interesting adjustment. There are situations where I am viewed more as a mother, and we have other guys here as leaders, the vice principal, so there has to be a balance,” says Hamamoto. “There are times when you need the man talking to the boys because they can connect, they can identify with them, and then there are times when the touch of a woman is what is needed.”
Despite any difficulties she faces with the single-gender format of the school, she has seen firsthand the bonuses that can come from not having girls in the classroom.
“At a single-gender school, at least for the boys, they can get into a lot of depth in the learning process,” says Hamamoto, who likes to sit in on classes to better evaluate her teachers’ performances.
“If there is a debate, they can get into a lot of question and answering; they are not embarrassed in front of girls to say a ‘stupid comment.’ The boys may laugh, but at the end of the day it’s fine. I watch, for example, their public speaking class and see how they develop over the year and what they are willing to do in front of the boys that I would not have seen in a co-ed school.”
This is Hamamoto’s first role at a private school in her illustrious career, one that began in October 1975 at Highlands Intermediate and has spanned both Oahu and Maui before eventually landing her in the state’s top spot as superintendent in October 2001.
There she oversaw the Department of Education through some troubled waters, culminating in the furloughing of Hawaii’s teachers in 2009.
She stepped down unexpectedly at the end of 2009, leaving many teachers feeling abandoned by their leader, but Hamamoto has no regrets.
“It was time to pass the torch; it was time to let others take it to the next level,” says Hamamoto, and cites a lesson she learned recently in Mass. “As the shepherd, you eventually have to turn over the flock because you have done all you can do and they have accomplished what they want in their achievements.
“So you turn over the flock in the best possible way, ‘cause you have done all that you can do, and you turn over something that is ready and is able to move on. I heard that sermon and I thought, yeah, I felt that way when I left the department. I did what I was asked to do, accomplished what we wanted to.”
In the new position, she is enjoying the speed with which she can get things done - going from running a program of 180,000 to one with 700 will lighten your load.
Rather than battling bureaucratic red tape wrapping hundreds of schools, she can walk either way down her hallway and get decisions made.
But even more than that, she is enjoying getting back to why she got into this business in the first place all those years ago.
“I’m back at school again, and for me that is the highlight, that is the piece that makes me feel very good about being an educator: being back at school,” says Hamamoto.
“It is about being around the students. I find it to be renewing, invigorating and energizing. I get to watch the boys grow and develop from young men to young adults, watching them make decisions, watching them progress and achieve good work.”
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