Editor’s note: In advance of National Teacher Appreciation Week and National Teacher Appreciation Day on Tuesday, the Star-Advertiser is spotlighting Kalani High School teacher Michael Ida, 2023 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year.
It was on an especially rotten day 27 years ago, one of those days when it felt like everything was going badly for then-student teacher Michael Ida, when he was compelled to reveal the visual disability he’d kept mostly hidden. The admission would change the trajectory of his work and life.
He was 26, trying to get his master’s degree in secondary education at Boston College, and at the end of that disastrous day Ida had to sit with his supervising teacher for an afterschool conference.
That was the moment when she said to him, “I notice that you hold the book kind of close to you when you read it.”
Ida’s heart sank. He believed that once he admitted his severe sight impairment, she would tell him to give up becoming a teacher. “I thought, OK, this is it. This is probably the nail in the coffin. My career is going to be over before it starts,” he said.
“But what she actually said to me was, ‘That’s OK, because kids need all kinds of role models.’ That was really affirming, that something that you thought would limit your potential actually isn’t.”
Evidently it hasn’t limited Ida.
Today he is a National Board-certified teacher who also holds doctorate and master’s degrees in applied mathematics among his degrees and serves his students and colleagues well beyond the classroom. Among his numerous accolades is recognition as the 2023 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year. The award is presented annually to a teacher selected from more than 12,500 educators within the state Department of Education.
Ida, 53, who teaches math and computer science at Kalani High School, said his disability actually has helped him find compassion for, and connection with, students who struggle for any reason.
“Because I have a visual impairment and I share that with kids … , showing my own vulnerability opens their eyes to, OK, you don’t have to be somebody perfect to be a teacher,” he explained in a DOE video interview. “Oftentimes that’ll open kind of the door to being able to … share things with kids, that helps establish those relationships.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has left students with “emotional scars that are not always visible when you look at them,” Ida added in a recent Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview. “They have these hidden disabilities or challenges. So it (the visual disability) helps me to be a bit more sensitive and compassionate.”
Ida was born blind as a result of rubella congenital syndrome. Multiple surgeries partially restored his vision, but he still struggled mightily through grade school, keeping his disability to himself, squinting hard at books and chalkboards. “I just roughed it,” he recalled.
His sight remains too impaired for driving. With 20/50 sight in his left eye and 20/200 in his right, he relies mainly on TheBus, and had to respectfully decline the one-year lease of a 2022 Ford Escape Titanium Hybrid SUV that was part of the prize package when he was named Teacher of the Year.
Still, Ida packs more into a day than do some fully sighted people, and his vision challenges don’t slow his momentum in the classroom.
Ida typically rises at 1 a.m., because it’s cool and quiet and he can focus, he said. Some professional reading and emails, some jump rope for exercise, a simple breakfast of dry granola, and he’s out the door and on the bus, arriving on the Waialae campus when it’s still dark, sunrise hours away, to continue preparing for the day’s classes.
By the 8 a.m. school bell, Ida is suited up in his signature uniform: white dress shirt, black slacks and shoes, and a colorful tie. Professional attire helps him feel sharp and conveys a high standard to his young charges, while the consistency “keeps things simple” for easy packing in the morning and lets him concentrate on the work ahead, he said.
And there’s no shortage of work for Ida. On top of teaching Advanced Placement calculus and computer science, Ida has advised the Computer Science Club and National Honor Society at Kalani, and coached the Falcons for student math competitions. He founded the school’s computer science program after watching students struggle with coding for robotics. The program started with two introductory sections and has since expanded to include two Advanced Placement classes and the affiliated club.
Ida also has worked to raise the teaching profession in multiple ways: He provides tech-related professional development sessions for his Kalani colleagues, and when the COVID-19 pandemic forced public schools into virtual learning in 2020, he helped lead Kalani’s educators through the difficult transition.
He also serves in DOE’s Hawaii Teacher Leader Academy, a leadership program designed to support highly qualified and effective teachers, and is an alumnus of the Hawaii State Teacher Fellows program, which aims to improve teacher practice to benefit students.
DOE has praised Ida for his “dedication to improving student learning and uplifting the teaching profession through advocacy and collaboration.”
Kalani Principal Mitchell Otani called Ida “one of the best that has ever taught at Kalani High School.”
Ida said he is still slightly bewildered by the top honor. The day in October when he was singled out in a ceremony at Washington Place, he said afterward that he had been so sure he was not going to be named the winner, he had already been thinking about his plans to go home after the ceremony to do laundry.
In his work, Ida said what he really lives for is the quiet day-to-day connections with his young people — the little jokes and laughter, the “aha!” moments when students light up with understanding during a lesson, the visions they share with him for their lives after graduation.
Taiki Kobayashi, one of Ida’s AP calculus students, said he appreciates Ida’s humble and gently humorous approach.
“I feel like even though he’s super smart, he says he is a person who also sometimes makes mistakes,” Kobayashi said. “And then it’s funny because you don’t expect him to make a mistake, because he’s such a smart person. But then he does and he just laughs — he admits it and laughs and we move on.”
Despite the long days, Ida said few things make him laugh more or feel more fulfilled than teaching young people. His students say he rarely stops smiling.
“It’s such a joyful profession,” Ida said. “I wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”
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At a glance
Michael Ida, 2023 Hawaii Teacher of the Year
Age: 53
>> Math and computer science teacher at Kalani High School; teaching in the same classroom, E-15, since he started his teaching career there in 1996
>> Computer Science Club adviser; coach for student math competitions
>> National Board-certified teacher; Hawaii Teacher Leader Academy member; Hawaii State Teacher Fellows alumnus; member of leadership teams of Hawaii Council of Teachers of Mathematics and Hawaii chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association
>> Master’s and doctorate degrees in applied mathematics from Northwestern University; master’s degree in secondary education from Boston College; undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from California Institute of Technology; ‘Iolani School graduate
