When Howze’s father died his family insisted he return home to Kern County and thus began his 28-year career teaching high school, mostly at McFarland High but also at the alternative school San Joaquin High.
Business and English continued to be his forte, but Howze wore all kinds of hats in education, chairing departments, setting up journalism, creative writing and independent studies programs, and developing curriculum.
“He just made learning fun and went above and beyond,” said Sonia Silva, CSUB’s director of International Students and Programs and a student of Howze’s at McFarland High and CSUB.
To generate excitement around writing assignments, Silva said, Howze bound them into little yearbooks so the students felt they had been “published.”
He figured out how individual students learned best, and taught them that way, she said. For Silva, it was remaining patient as she asked lots of questions to really understand why things worked the way they did.
And she suspects Howze pulled strings to get her accepted into CSUB’s Career Beginnings program between her junior and senior years of high school when she couldn’t provide requisite tax information because her mother had passed away and her father was out of the picture.
“He said, ‘Fill out what you can and give it to me,’” she said, choking up at the memory. “I don’t know what happened, but I was selected for Career Beginnings. He went and talked to somebody.”
The program provides career and college preparation, work experience and other supportive services to disadvantaged students. For Silva, it led to an internship in then-Congressman Bill Thomas’ office, something else she suspects Howze had a hand in her getting.
ALL KINDS OF CLASSROOMS
During his teaching career, Howze earned his master’s degrees in business administration and in educational administration. He believes that like doctors, teachers should keep up their skills and model life-long learning.
“If I had anything to say about education, I’d say all teachers would be involved in school somehow,” he said.
And by school Howze doesn’t just mean class. He was curious about firefighting, and so worked as a seasonal firefighter in Cuyama one summer. Trips proved to inspire and inform his instruction, and so he’s seen the world.
“When you come back to the classroom you’re fresh,” Howze said of post-travel. “And you have stories to tell.”