Growing up in Makaha in the 1960s, Candy Suiso was most inspired by the teachers who took their students outside of the traditional classroom setting and showed them that learning could be not only fun, but relevant to their lives.
One of those teachers was Sandy Pimental, Candy’s seventh grade English teacher at Waianae Intermediate School.
“We would do mock juries where everybody had to play a role and actually act things out. We would do plays like West Side Story. And we would sing songs and we would dance,” Suiso said.
“The kids were actively doing projects, they were actively discussing with each other, and they were talking with each other and collaborating,” she said. “And so, that’s the type of teacher I became.”
Suiso modeled much of her education philosophy after Mrs. Pimental, her own mother (and one-time sixth grade teacher) Julia Malapit Smith, and home economics teacher Mrs. Texeira.
Suiso, who was recognized in 1999 with the National Educator Award from the Milken Family Foundation, said those teachers not only made learning fun, they taught her and her classmates that they could achieve anything once they set their minds to it.
She began her life as an educator teaching Spanish and social studies at Waianae High School, her alma mater. She learned that video could be used as a valuable tool for the students. Searider Productions began a few years later, in 1993, with two teachers and 85 students. Today, the program boasts five teachers and 250 students.
Among the thousands of students who have been part of the program are a number who have gone on to successful careers in the video production and creative media industries, as well as education. John Allen, a class of 1997 graduate, now leads the program. Two other former students also teach there.
Suiso retired from her job as Searider Productions’ program director in June 2020 and is now executive director of the nonprofit Searider Productions Foundation.
A lifelong Makaha resident, Suiso said that skeptics doubted that Searider Productions would succeed and they would go through the litany of stereotypes about teenagers growing up along the Waianae Coast – that they aren’t smart enough, would steal the equipment or that concepts would be too difficult for them to learn.
That’s when she heard the voices of Mrs. Pimental, Mrs. Texeira and her mother reminding her of what they taught their students.
“We have to, as educators, continue to give them hope, make them believe in themselves,” Suiso said. “Make them realize that anything is possible. And that ‘if anybody tells you no can, you tell yourself can. And you find a way to can.’”