Justin Collado started his first full-time teaching year at McKinley High School. After finishing his student teaching last year at McKinley, Collado is ready to take on real teaching duties. Collado teaches trigonometry as well as business management. He said he is looking forward to growing as a teacher to become the best he can. 

“It’s my first year teaching [full time] so I’m looking forward to a lot of growth,” Collado said.

Collado was born and raised on Maui. He loves to visit his family there whenever he gets the chance. He graduated from UH Manoa on Oahu with a teaching degree. He said one reason he stayed on Oahu instead of teaching on Maui was there are  more teaching opportunities here. 

While at UH, he studied Hawaiian.

His grandmother grew up speaking Hawaiian, which she learned from her mom, but during World War II when everyone wanted to be American, his grandmother thought it wasn’t important for her kids to learn Hawaiian. 

His grandmother told him the story about how back then they said there was no sense in learning Hawaiian,.

Collado said she told them,  “It’s useless.” 

He said no other university in the world offers Hawaiian so he took it for four years straight (except his last semester at UH), and it turned out to be his favorite class. 

Collado recommends all students take a lot of elective classes in college to insure they have a fun time. 

“That’s what I highly recommend everyone do once they get to college, take a bunch of electives for fun,” Collado said.