Roundabouts 101?
Roundabouts 101?
Since the new Pahoa roundabout is opening soon, I think an article informing the public about how to drive properly on a roundabout would be highly useful.
Since the whole idea of this new intersection is to cause less accidents, I think it would be useful for people to know how they work so we don’t end up with MORE accidents because of improper driving.
I know they had a meeting down in Pahoa last week, but how many people actually made it to this meeting, and what about the people who don’t live down there but might drive down there sometimes and might not know how it works?
Jessica Rego
Mountain View
More mentoring
A CBS network headline reads, “Hawaii looks to mainland to deal with big teacher shortage.”
Mentoring of new teachers is the greatest shortfall in the Hawaii school system.
In 2004, I convinced my daughter, then a newly graduated elementary school teacher, to begin her career in Hawaii from North Carolina. I knew Hawaii needed new blood and exceptional people for the future, and she is one of those people.
She interviewed with two principals and chose to work for the woman who showed her some warmth and personality; the other woman was too “business-like.”
Her experience could not have been worse.
She persevered for two years in the public sector. She even took summer courses to improve her classroom management abilities. In her third year, she was recruited to teach in a private school, and it, too, was lacking in the administrative capabilities. Not to mention the dysfunction of families and school personnel.
We later learned, by admission of some of her peers, that the veteran teachers and administration at her first school stacked the behavior problem children into her classroom. Felix Law be damned. She received no support and ran a gauntlet of being hazed. It was/is unconscionable.
Well, she left Hawaii, and the experience burned her out of the classroom.
While everyone cannot be a teacher, there are systems which mentor new teachers and offer the support in order to make a classroom successful.
Hawaii could take lessons from the Boston system, for one, where a first-year teacher is not left alone in the classroom.
John Begg
Pahoa