The ABCs of Life
Former basketball standout Allan Silva today is a superstar guidance counselor who’s making a positive difference in the lives of countless teens
By Alice Keesing
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Keali‘iokekai Bertelmann: Mr. Silva
provides positive energy
you shoot the better you get. These are things that can be applied to the lives of every child. If you fall down, pick yourself up and keep on going.”
Silva, a Kailua High grad, says it all started with his own teachers and coaches.
“People ask me why I went into teaching,” he says. “Because I got mad. I wanted to make a difference. I had some real good teachers, but some of my teachers, I thought they could have been better.”
The Portuguese-Hawaiian Silva tells a story of how he came to be the first in his family to go to college. It started with a very uninspiring event in 10th grade when his teacher slapped down on his desk a test with a big D marked on it.
“She said, ‘You’ll never go to college with those kind of grades, Allan. Never.’ Like that, right in front of my peers,” Silva remembers.
But later in high school, a counselor helped him to believe in himself and opened his eyes to the opportunities that were there if he just applied himself. Despite being recruited to play basketball on the Mainland, Silva ended up staying in Hawaii and attending Chaminade University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in education and psychology and was a star on the college’s champion basketball team.
After graduating, Silva was flooded with offers to play professional basketball in Europe and the Philippines (the NBA was a long-shot, he says) but he chose to stay at home and work with the kids.
A sampling of the topics with which the peer education
program deals
When he started offering special motivation classes in the public schools, he would spend time talking story with the students. One day a principal told him the students wouldn’t go to their counselor because they’d rather talk with him. That same day, Silva drove up to the University of Hawaii and enrolled to earn his master’s in guidance counseling.
He became a student counselor in 1986 and the very next year was named secondary school counselor of the year by the Hawaii Counseling Association.
Saying that Silva has worked as a teacher, counselor and basketball coach really only scratches the surface of all that he has done and continues to do.
He has worked with the Kalihi-Palama Health Center, the YMCA, the Bobby Benson Center and Alu Like’s youth program ... the list goes on. And on. As Kubo jokes, you’d have to write a book to encompass all the things that Silva has done.
In 1988, Silva became director of a new health department program that came to be called the Peer Education Program. PEP is a class offered at select high schools that harnesses the power of students to teach other students. Silva calls it “one of the most powerful programs in the state.”
PEP students are trained to make presentations to their peers, promoting healthy choices in areas such as teen pregnancy prevention, drug prevention and sexual and violent abuse prevention.
Silva has since left the program, although he continues to work with PEP students as part of his overall mission to inspire kids to make the most of their lives. During a recent PEP education campaign on teen pregnancy at Castle High School, Silva was on hand to instill in PEP students the value of their efforts.
And it must warm his heart when students like Keali’iokekai Bertelmann talk about enrolling in the class so they can make a difference.
“I just like helping younger kids so they don’t make the same mistakes as others; so that they have a chance to make a difference,” says Bertelmann, who took the PEP class for four years at Castle.
In 1995, Silva started Positive Connections, a non-profit organization aimed at motivating students. It’s a program that he continues today as a resource teacher with the education department.
Michal Pane‘e: Mr. Silva
doesn’t talk down to
students
His presentations are lively affairs. Silva will have the students clapping and yelling and repeating words. (“I just don’t sing or dance,” he says seriously.)
“He has, like, an energy coming off him,” says Castle High senior Keali’iokekai Bertelmann. “A real positive energy.”
Bertelmann and fellow senior Michal Pane’e say they like Silva because he doesn’t talk down to them and because of the life lessons he shares.
Silva is an overflowing repository of buzzwords, games, stories and one-liners. In particular, he likes to play around with words. He has his ABCs of Life that he shares with students (and which he plans to make into a book some day soon). It starts with A (for attitude), goes on through L (live life every day) and ends up at Z (zero in on your target). He’s so enthusiastic about his mission that he can spend a whole lesson on just one letter.
His presentations cover areas such as drug prevention, sexual and violent abuse prevention, self-respect and the law of aloha.
The rewards of Silva’s career don’t come in his paychecks - but they do come from the students whose lives he has touched.
“Sometimes I’ll speak to 1,000 kids at a time,” Silva says. “I won’t reach them all. But imagine, if I reach one kid in that audience to not use drugs, to avoid an STD, to not get pregnant - or get their girlfriend pregnant - or to believe in themselves and go to college, my job ...” He lays a hand over his heart. ” ... you cannot put a price on it.”
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