Point Loma High School teacher Tchaiko Kwayana speaks up

Photo by Sam Hodgson

Q & A feature on Kwayana
Voice of San Diego
Emily Alpert
Mar 5, 2010.

Point Loma High School teacher Tchaiko Kwayana grew up in Georgia and has taught English classes in Nigeria, Guyana and on both coasts in the United States, earning the high qualification of National Board Certification in 1995. In San Diego, she has been a community activist and tried to get parents more engaged in school, helped bring the humanities to ordinary people and educated the African-American community about HIV/AIDS...

Randy Dotinga at Voice of San Diego
Weekend Report
March 6, 2010

Point Loma High School teacher Tchaiko Kwayana speaks up, speaks out and speaks often.

"I think I have the longest record of attempts at administrative transfers of any teacher in the San Diego City Schools," Kwayana says in this weekend's Q&A feature. "I question things. Not rudely. But we're not supposed to do that."

That's not all she does. For more than 20 years, Kwayana has told her students to tackle an Identity Project, in which they study their background, family and culture.

"I wanted them to know who they were," she says. "And I wanted the chance for parents to write so they could begin to talk about their students. The youngsters are so estranged; in some houses they had their own television sets in their own rooms and nobody ever spoke to anybody."...