Column
Rod Maghsoudlou says he wants to give scholarships to 50 kids before he retires. He’s about halfway there.
By Lee Cataluna
April 27, 2025 · 8 min read
Lee Cataluna
Rod Maghsoudlou says he wants to give scholarships to 50 kids before he retires. He’s about halfway there.
Teacher Rod Maghsoudlou is taking a walk with a student when I get to Keʻelikōlani Middle School in downtown Honolulu at 7:15 a.m.
He does this every morning with a different student. They stroll around the campus, past the methodone clinic next door and sometimes past homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk or drug paraphrenalia littering the street outside the fence. For 15 uninterrupted minutes, the two will talk about anything and everything, what’s going well, what’s falling apart, whatever is in the student’s heart.
Some of the students have difficult home lives. Some live in cramped apartments in Mayor Wright public housing where sometimes there’s no hot water. Some have to take responsibility for younger siblings or older relatives. Some sleep at the foot of their parents’ bed on what is essentially a Costco dog bed. 
Mr. Rod, as the students call him, is someone who has been through hard times himself, someone who will say it straight when they’re messing up, but will always end the conversation with “I love you” and mean it. “I want to talk to the soul of them,” he says. 
When he has finished his perambulation for the morning, Mr. Rod meets me in a quiet classroom and shows me his list, handwritten on a legal-sized yellow tablet.
There are 27 names on the list, all former students of his, children he met when he used to teach at Kailua Intermediate or at Keʻelikōlani, where he has been for the last four years. These are students who have met his rigorous standards for academics and personal character but, as he puts it, “are in tough situations and did not win the lottery in life.”
Each one of those students has earned a college scholarship from him. After this school year, seven more names will be added.
When I first wrote about Mr. Rod in 2017, he had just given his first college scholarship to Harley Gagnon, a student he knew had the work ethic and drive but not the means to go to college.
“I met her when she was in the seventh grade at Kailua. She looked at me with big old eyes and asked, ‘Do you think I can make it out of Special Ed?’”
Mr. Rod told her that with hard work, she could do anything, and he helped her set goals for herself. He told her that when she graduated from high school, if she kept her grades up, he would give her a scholarship to go to college. She took him up on the deal and ended up getting her undergraduate degree at UNLV and her master’s degree at Georgetown.
Another one of his scholarship students, Danee Garcia, was in a terrible car crash when she was in middle school. Mr. Rod remembers going to see her during her darkest hours. She asked him how she looked. Always honest, he replied, “Not good, love. You’ve had better days.”
He was a supporter and mentor as she recovered. He challenged her to keep her grades up. Garcia will graduate next year from Chaminade with her doctorate in clinical psychology. 
He has given eight scholarships over the years. His students have gone on to the University of Hawaiʻi, Chapman, Cal State Fullerton, California Baptist and UCSD. Five have graduated from college, three are in their third year of college. Four of the students have gone on to advanced degrees.
Rod Maghsoudlou, 53, was born in Iran and tells his students his childhood was beautiful until the war started. After that, it was brutal and terrifying. He can tell stories of seeing things no child should see. He was able to come to America at 14 to live with his uncle in Georgia, which saved his life but brought the challenges of being an immigrant who didn’t speak English.
He eventually graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in political science, got a master’s in international business at St. Mary’s in Texas, and got his teaching credentials at BYU Hawaiʻi. He teaches part-time at Keʻelikōlani  and also at Aikahi and coaches soccer at both schools.
He was recruited by the principals of both schools because his approach to things like discipline, absenteeism and motivating students is so different and so effective. He is an intense person to talk to, focused like he’s on a crucial mission, keenly observant and full of strong opinions. Yet he has a warm, natural way with students.
I watch as he greets a boy with a worried look in his eyes walking down a hallway. Mr. Rod put an arm around the boy and said, “Love you, man” and the boy’s face softened into a smile as he rested his chin for the briefest moment on Mr. Rod’s shoulder.
The scholarship money comes out of his own pocket. Each student gets $1,000, which is significant for a part-time DOE teacher who used to limit himself to one $5 Subway sandwich as his meal for the day. At the same time, it’s not much for tuition, even in a junior college.
“But if they do what I’m asking them to do, they’ll get a full-ride scholarship somewhere,” he says with confidence.
I ask if there’s an official name for this scholarship, like the Maghsoudlou Fund or something like that, and he immediately rejects this idea. “Oh absolutely not. People say I should make a nonprofit 501c3 and raise money for the scholarship, but I don’t want to do that. It means so much more to these students that their teacher is doing this for them and that their teacher is with them every step of the way.”
There are many other students in his orbit that do not qualify for his scholarship award. No one is written off. His students know they can reach out to him at any time no matter what. His students have come to him for avuncular things like his opinion on a potential marriage partner and to talk through their first big heartbreak. Whatever they need, he’s there to listen. 
When he had to tell one student that he would no longer be considered for the scholarship because he had let his grades slip, the student responded by saying, “I’d say your advice is more valuable than a million dollars. Thanks for keeping me.”
One of his passions is teaching financial literacy to middle schoolers. He teaches want-versus-need, taxes, saving and investment. He tells the students that if they spend $5 every day after school on chips and Mountain Dew, multiplied by five days a week, multiplied by how many more weeks they have until they graduate high school, that’s thousands of dollars they could have saved and invested. He does the math on vaping and it’s even more eye-opening.
One eighth grader who had been held back a year silenced his classmates during the lecture, saying, “Shut up! I need to hear this! I want to know how to have money!”
Mr. Rod has set his goal of giving scholarships to 50 students before he retires. His brother, who is an attorney, has a copy of the list of names and instructions to continue the program and fulfill the promises made to every one of those students no matter what. 
When he talks about why he lives simply, doesn’t own a car, eschews luxury, preaches financial literacy and then gives his money to students, he thinks back to escaping the horrors of war in Iran and how an American education saved his life.
“For me, if I don’t do this, it’s a sin. If I don’t pay it back, how selfish of me.”
But also, he loves the students. He tells them that every chance he gets.
Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.
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Lee Cataluna
Lee Cataluna is a columnist for Civil Beat. You can reach her by email at lcataluna@civilbeat.org
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