Ku'u Lei Bernardino, youth development director at the Boys & Girls Club Hawaii's Spalding Club House, got a kiss and a hug Wednesday from Kristin Sugimoto at the afterschool learning center.
After school delight
Ku‘u Lei Bernardino has been
a key player at Boys & Girls Club for
28 years, but that’s not her only job
Ku'u Lei Bernardino actually has two jobs in which she helps youngsters with their education. She is youth development director for the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, at Washington Middle School in McCully, and an part-time teacher at the Detention Facility in Makiki, where juveniles offenders are held until their fates can be determined by the courts. At the Boys & Girls Club, Bernardino supervises after-school activities for children and teens. Bernardino, 52, is a graduate of St. Francis Convent (now St. Francis School) and the University of Hawaii, from which she earned a bachelor's degree in liberal studies/Hawaiian studies. She is single and lives in Pearl City.
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Who: Ku'u Lei Bernardino Title: Youth development director, Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii Job: Supervises afterschool activities for youth who belong to the Boys & Girls Club in McCully
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Answer: It's a youth organization that provides after-school programs for boy and girls ages 7 through 17.
Q: Is there just one club center in Hawaii?
A: I believe there are six in the state. There are four on this island and two on Kauai. I believe there's a program on the Big Island, but its not affiliated with us.
Q: How is it structured locally?
A: There is a board of directors, and we have an executive director, and it channels down to unit directors, and that's where I come under, so my official title is youth development director.
Q: How long have you been working there?
A: Twenty-eight years.
Q: How long have you been youth development director?
A: I would say about 25 years.
Afterschool activities at the Boys & Girls Club's Spalding Club House include cooking lessons. At right, Ku'u Lei Bernardino baked cookies on Wednesday with Loke Chong-Gum.
A: I was working in the office. I was the secretary to the executive director at that time. Our current director is David Nakada.
Q: How did you become the youth development director?
A: There was a gal in that position and she wanted to do other things, and I didn't want her to leave because she was sort of the magic in the club at that time, so we traded jobs. She did fund raising and the office management, and then I became a program staff person.
Q: What did you do before joining the Boys & Girls Club?
A: I was a part-time teacher at Maryknoll and Star of the Sea. I also worked for the Big Sisters program. The two programs hadn't merged yet (to become Big Brothers-Big Sisters). Big Brothers was it own entity.
Q: How many people do you work with?
A: We have a staff of about eight -- five full time and three part time.
Q: How many boys and girls are in the program?
A: Our annual membership is about 2,000, but on a daily basis I'd say between 250 and 300 come in. Out of those I work with between 60 to 100. My area is the learning center where the children come in to do their homework of if they need help with their research.
Q: What are some of the things do you do each day with the kids?
A: Homework -- always homework first. If the kids want to do something fun, but somebody still has homework to do, the area again becomes quiet again. We do tutoring. We do some cooking classes, because the kids do get hungry. The kids play quiet games. So if the kids want to challenge me to chess or Monopoly, we do that. We do some flower arranging. We did some floral arrangements this past Valentine's. We do power rallies.
Bernardino with some of her students from the after-school learning center.
A: A fun activity to celebrate that learning can be fun. So one of the things I might have the students do is come up and talk for a minute, or play Jeopardy games, or writing exercises. Tomorrow I plan on doing a newspaper scavenger hunt. The learning for that particular activity is how to read a headline, find the editorials, how to find the classifieds, like if you're looking for a car, and things like that.
Q: What are your hours?
A: I work from 12 noon to 8 o'clock at night. ... And would like to ask me what I do from 8 a.m. to noon?
Q: You sleep in? I don't know, what?
A: I work at the detention home, on Alder Street, the holding the holding tank for the kids until the courts decide what to do with them. I'm part of the DOE teaching team there. I've been there for about 18 years.
Q: Wow. That's two different kinds of kids.
A: (Laughter) Yes, they are.
Q: What kind of kids are they mostly at the detention facility?
A: They all have their own issues. Each one we need to work with a little bit differently because they come in with a lot of baggage on their shoulders. But once they begin to trust you, and realize your not going to pound nails into them, they begin to trust you and the respect becomes more apparent. Most of them don't go to school. They drop out or skip school. That's why they're in trouble.
Q: What kind of kids come to the Boys & Girls Club?
A: Regular, normal kids. Actually I used to work with more boys, but now it's evening out. More girls are coming, so now it's about 60-40. They're of all races, all ethnic groups.
The kids feed into us after school because were an afterschool program, like A+ for elementary. Some are here until their parents pick them up, others go home on their own. But they're not forced to come here. It's for the programs we offer. Some are in our basketball program.
Q: Is there a fee for the program.
A: It's $1 a year. We've got a special going on. (Laughter) We raised it to $10 for awhile, but we saw a drop off, so we dropped it back down.
Q: Ten dollars a year caused a drop off?
A: Well, for parents with multiple kids, yes.
A: So how many more years you figure you'll be doing this?
Q:Well, I'm due to retire in 2017.* (Laughter) I hope I can last that long, but I have no immediate plans to leave -- either job. I enjoy my jobs. Both jobs are fun. They challenge me and then, in return, it's a satisfaction to help somebody get somewhere.
CORRECTION
Thursday, April 21, 2005
» Ku'u Lei Bernardino, youth development director at the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii's Spalding Club House, plans to retire in 2017. A story on Page C1 Feb. 28 misstated the date as 2117.
Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.
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