The Best P.E. Teacher In America

Instead of emphasizing team sports, Gregg Agena teaches Mililani Middle School kids about fun and fitness. No wonder P.E. classes are packed

Wednesday - May 10, 2006
By Chad Pata
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Gregg Agena with, from left, Mari
Miyashiro, Hannah Hargis and Justyn
Houser in the weight room

You might think a middle school P.E. class would be a funny place to find Japanese philosophy, but for Gregg Agena of Mililani Middle School, it has led him to national recognition.

He was recently named the national middle school teacher of the year by the National Association for Sports and Physical Education. This 20,000-member group has been giving out the award since 1986, and this is the first national honor for a teacher from the Islands.

“It has been an overwhelming two weeks for me,” says Agena, who was recognized along with his mentor Kay Bicoy, who won the regional award at the high school level for Pearl City. “We are now ambassadors for physical education to the nation.”

The ideal that Agena applies to his program is the Kaizen philosophy developed in Japan after World War II. It states that you can always “do it better, make it better, improve it even if it ain’t broke, because if we don’t, we can’t compete with those who do.”

Usually it is used by major corporations like Canon and Toyota, saying that every-one’s ideas, from the president to the assembly line worker, have merit. Agena uses it to keep an open dialogue among all his teachers.

“We have got a lot of minds contributing to the program,” says Agena, who has three full-time instructors and 27 part-timers. “We have a large program in which everyone is willing to try, and no one is really negative.”

Having that many positive teachers is a feat, but his mentor Bicoy believes it is his humble local approach that allows him to have his success.

“The way he respects others and his humility are the ways he gets others to help him,” says Bicoy, who helped mold him as a student teacher out of the UH program. “His Kaizen philosophy allows everyone to buy into the mission.”

She especially noticed that on their recent trip to Salt Lake City for the NASPE convention. While they were there to be recognized for their achievements, what the others noticed more was his attitude.

“He has a local humility that we take for granted sometimes in Hawaii,” says Bicoy, who will also be accompanying Agena in June to Reston, Va., to advocate for physical fitness to members of the U.S. Senate.

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