When Amador Valley High School math and science teacher Kevin Kiyoi first got out of college with a mining engineering degree, he knew he didn’t want to spend his life extracting and analyzing minerals.
“I worked in a gold mine for a summer,” he told the Weekly. “I gave it a try, but I just knew it just wasn’t for me.”
That’s why when Kiyoi was recently recognized as the 2023 Pleasanton Unified School District Teacher of the Year after 20 years at the district, he knew he was doing what he was meant to do in life.
“I’m very humbled by the nomination and by the fact that I work with such talented people at this school, in the school district,” he said. “I just feel fortunate and appreciative that somebody said, ‘Hey, look what he’s doing.'”
PUSD will be submitting Kiyoi’s name to be considered for the Alameda County Teacher of the Year Awards later this year.
Kiyoi’s educational career started when he went to University of California, Berkeley for mining engineering after one of his physics teachers told him it was the easiest way to get into the university’s engineering program.
He said that while poor guidance from a high school teacher led him to a field that he immediately hated due to the lack of interactions with other people, it did lead him to follow the career path of his father — teaching.
“Right around my junior year, I kind of said, ‘Why am I gonna wait?'” he said. “Why would I wait to do something that I would enjoy instead of settling for something for 20 years or something, and then going into teaching?”
So after finishing up his engineering degree, Kiyoi decided to volunteer at Alhambra High School — the school he attended in Martinez — given his interest in sports as a teen.
After eventually getting his teaching credential in math and spending time as the head wrestling and freshman football coach at Alhambra, Kiyoi received a phone call from Amador’s athletic department offering him a wrestling and math teacher job.
“I share that story with my students,” Kiyoi said. “A lot of times, it’s not going to be one direct path … You have to kind of figure some things out and try different things until you find the thing that you love.”
After some years, Kiyoi eventually got involved with the Amador career technology education (CTE) department in 2016 after the program started growing from the then-five computer classes, to what it is now.
He is now currently the lead teacher for Amador’s instructional and communication technology CTE pathway and helps lead CTE collaboration across the district.
“The more I got into it, the more I’m really finding that this is my niche … talking to kids about their career and about trying different things and trying different things in their careers,” he said. “I think that’s kind of been the emphasis of what I’ve been doing over the last few years, which is trying to reach as many different kids and say, ‘Hey, give this a try, maybe this is something you’d like.'”
He added that given his own experience with not knowing what he wanted to do careerwise, he felt like he could relate to students more and help them work through the struggles of finding out what they want to do in life.
“CTE has given me the opportunity to share my story, how it wasn’t a full linear path, but also to say, ‘OK, here’s what jobs are looking for, here’s what businesses are looking for,'” Kiyoi said. “Even if they choose not to do something in computer science, I think these lessons are important going forward.”
But helping students with their career pathways isn’t the only thing that Kiyoi does apart from teaching.
Kiyoi is not only on the district’s Equity Committee where they are currently looking at why a third of the African American students in Pleasanton are classified as special education, but he is also involved in getting more disenfranchised students interested in computer science.
From advising the Amador Girls Who Code Club, to hosting computer programming family events for Pleasanton’s African American and Latino students after school, Kiyoi has made it his mission to help all students realize their potential.
“Congratulations to Mr. Kiyoi on this well-deserved honor for his incredible work with students both inside and outside the classroom,” PUSD Superintendent David Haglund said in a press release. “His dedication to students is evident in the nationally recognized Girls Who Code chapter he’s helped lead, his work to reach under-represented groups in computer science and the individual achievements of the students that benefit from his pedagogy.”
Kiyoi said that he was especially proud of seeing an increase of students interested in computer science.
“I don’t have the numbers for next year, but this year 36% of the students are female,” he said after quoting how back in 2015, that number was 24%. “36% is nice, but it’s not good enough for me. But that’s kind of something I guess I’m proud of is that we’re building confidence in our females in that diversity piece.”
Another way he said he is getting more students interested in the topic is through hosting family coding nights every other month where he goes out in the community and focuses on bringing PUSD’s African American and Latinx students and their families together for pizza and lessons on programming.
“I don’t care what school they go to, they could go to Foothill, they can go to Dublin, they can come here,” Kiyoi said. “It’s not about me building my program, but more about me getting kids interested and excited and keeping them interested.”
Another thing that Kiyoi said he is proud of doing during his time at PUSD is leading efforts to introduce an advanced computer science class next year for students who are bored with the current curriculum and need more of a challenge.
And for Kiyoi, that is very important. Whether it’s in his own classroom, or outside of the school, he believes that keeping students engaged in these subjects will keep them interested in possibly pursuing these topics as careers.
“Walk into Kevin’s classroom and you are immediately struck by students’ engagement. Kevin has designed a space and a practice where students feel safe and comfortable engaging with the material and their peers in a way any teacher would be thrilled to see,” said fellow Amador teacher Tony Dennis. “This is a result of his constant examination of his practice and his search for ways to help and encourage all his students to do their best work and get the most out of their experience with him in class.”
Kiyoi also said that while he appreciates his district family and how much they care about him and his own family, including his three kids who all attend PUSD school, the most fulfilling moment from his teaching career was when he recently reconnected with two students while he was at a UC Berkeley open house for his son.
“It was really fulfilling … just to see that maybe I was a part of something that made them into the women that they’ve become,” Kiyoi said. “I was really proud to see them now as adults, and to see them loving what they’re doing, because again, I guess it always comes back to my message: You have to love your job, and if you don’t, then you kind of sacrifice a lot.”
