When Tusi Mailo struggled through language arts and social studies classes as a student, one subject consistently kept him engaged: math.
“They say it is the universal language, and it spoke to me automatically,” he says
Now, at 44, he teaches math at Kanu o ka ʻĀina New Century Public Charter School in Hawai‘i, where he was born and raised, and where he challenges the idea that math isn’t a Pacific Islander “thing.”
“A lot of our students are weak in math. They think it’s a foreign subject,” Mailo says. “But we Hawaiians have been voyaging. We’ve been utilizing and optimizing our resources in the islands, and that’s all math. It’s living math, not textbook stuff.”
Having just begun his Master of Science in Data Science for Learning Applications, a joint program at USC Rossier and USC Viterbi, Mailo hopes to learn strategies to better serve students, particularly skills related to grant acquisition to direct more resources to them.
Kanu o ka ʻĀina, a Native Hawaiian-focused school, includes a farm, where Mailo envisions students applying their math skills to gauge how many inches deep to dig plants or how to maximize growing areas. They can also track how long plants take to grow and the amounts needed to feed groups of people.
Becoming an educator was a long journey for Mailo. After graduating from the famed Kahuku High and Intermediate School in 1999 as an all-state linebacker, he left Hawai‘i to study and play football at a California junior college, following a similar path to that of his older brother, Faaesea Mailo, who played football for USC while earning his Bachelor of Arts from USC Dornsife. But in May of 2021, just before turning 19, a swimming accident changed his life. While body surfing, he hit a sandbar, resulting in a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. During his hospital stay, he discovered Swim with Mike, the USC-based organization that supports former student-athletes who have experienced catastrophic injuries.
“I probably would have given up a couple of times if it wasn’t for their support,” Mailo says. He spent a year-and-a-half in rehab before returning home to Hawai‘i in 2002.
Mailo then enrolled in Brigham Young University’s Hawai‘i campus in 2003. Math’s place in his life was reinforced when a professor with fellow Polynesian heritage motivated him to make a difference through teaching. That instructor frequently spoke Hawaiian Pidgin, a creole dialect used widely by Native Hawaiians and the state’s multiethnic population. “He would always remind us how he came from the same community that we grew up in, and he was able to go on and do great things and succeed as a mathematician,” Mailo says. “I wanted to pay that back.”
As his health allowed, Mailo took classes off and on. Attending in person took a physical toll on his body that required him to take multiple breaks over the years. It wasn’t until 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, that he earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics. “Distance learning presented the opportunity for me to finally finish up,” he says.
In January 2022, Mailo began working at the nonprofit Kanu o ka ‘Āina Learning ʻOhana, where he handled grant reporting and data collection for the schools affiliated with the organization. By that summer, one of their partner schools needed a math teacher. “They knew I was a math major and said, ‘Hey, can you come help out?’” he says.
Now in his fifth year of teaching, Mailo works primarily with the school’s online program, which serves students across the state. Many of them experience social anxiety, are on the spectrum or struggle in traditional classrooms. “Our platform speaks better to them, or at least doesn’t overwhelm them as much,” he says.
Although some students feel intimidated by math, their confidence grows when they begin slowly grasping the subject. Mailo likes to remind them: “I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I went through calculus, so you guys have no excuse.”
Now that he’s at USC, his family is ecstatic. In addition to his brother, his sister and cousin are also Trojans.
“It was like we won the Super Bowl,” Mailo says of his admission. “They were super excited and happy for me.”
His brother, Faaesea Mailo, ultimately became an accountant—a sign that ease with numbers runs in the family. For Mailo, math offers more than one way to reach a solution, a parallel he sees with his own life.
“I haven’t necessarily been able to do the things I wanted the way I originally planned,” he says. “But I’ve still been able to reach my education goals. I just took a different route.”
