Skip to main content
B Nakamoto » About Brien Nakamoto

About Brien Nakamoto

  • Elementary/Middle Schools: Hawai'i School for the Deaf and the Blind
  • High School: South Hills High, West Covina, CA (2003)
  • B.A.: Graphic Design, Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. (2008)
  • B.A.: Digital Media with specialization in Multimedia, Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. (2008)
  • M.Ed.: Educational Technology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI (2011)
  • Post-Baccalaureate Certification: Deaf Education, PILI (Pacific Islanders Learning Initiative) Program with University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI (2016)
Brien Nakamoto is a native of Honolulu, Hawai'i, born to a multigenerational deaf family. His mother is Deaf and his father is a CODA and a fluent American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter. He also has two of his maternal aunts who are deaf, his maternal second-cousin is Deaf, his paternal grandparents were Deaf, and his parental grand-aunt is Deaf. One of his maternal aunts and his paternal grandfather, both graduated here at HSDB. In contrast, both his paternal grandmother and grand-aunt attended CSD Berkeley and then moved to and graduated from CSD Riverside.
 
He spent nearly a decade outside Hawai'i for his high school and college years. As a student, he left HSDB at the end of the spring semester in 1999 and finally returned at the beginning of the fall semester in 2011 as a staff.
 
At the beginning of his long (and first) career here at HSDB, he started as a substitute educational assistant which lasted for only one month before he was offered to become a long-term substitute teacher for high school mathematics which eventually led him to his current position. He was a substitute teacher for 5 years from 2011 to 2016 while working toward his post-baccalaureate program in Deaf education in collaboration with the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa, from which he obtained the certificate at the end of 2016. In 2017, he was promoted to a full-fledged teacher. Nonetheless, he has been in the same position as a high school math teacher at HSDB for more than 10 years.
 
He is always grateful to be able to return to his alma mater and have the HSDB staff as his 'ohana, especially since there are a few staff at HSDB that has been around since he was a student at that time!
 
In his life outside of work, he enjoys traveling, reading books, going to the beach, seldomly cooking/baking, playing games on his iPad and iMac at home, visiting his dog Yoshi at his parents' place in Pearl City on weekends, and taking care of his two male cats, Mako and Kona, with his partner.