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MANY Filipino teachers have gone abroad for better-paying jobs. Are they happier where they are now? How are they coping with a new environment and the world financial crisis? Will they ever come back to the Philippines?
I got real answers to these questions when I and my daughter Mariel recently visited Washington D.C., for the Cherry Blossoms festival. We were invited by good teacher-friends Ben and Edna Sabino and spent the night at the new home of another teaching couple in Georges County, Maryland, Chax and Emily Chavez.
Chax and Emily, both former teachers in Naga City, refer to their home as “Bahay ni Kuya”—a name they got from watching a show of the same title on The Filipino Channel which is beamed to major cities in the United States. They rent their extra rooms to other overseas Filipino teachers and this helps them keep up amortizations on the house.
“There are quite a number of Filipino teachers here now,” says Emily, who joined the first batch of 30 Filipino teachers who arrived in Georges County in September 2004.
Filipino teachers arrive in the US in groups, she said. “Maryland is a good place for immigrants because it does not have a quota…Immigration is open,” she added. Some states limit the entry of immigrants to a certain number every year.
The growing number of Filipinos in Maryland has led to enterprises catering to their needs. Business-minded Filipinos have been bringing in Filipino food, seasonings, accessories, and other “old country” stuff to sell to them. Recently, concert producers brought in Filipino divas Pops Fernandez, Kuh Ledesma, Regine Velaquez, and Zsa Zsa Padilla. It was a big hit among the Filipino teachers.
Emily’s story
Emily recalled the first time she reported to Gwynn High School: “It was a difficult and awkward time. We came in the second quarter. We were literally gawked at. We looked different from the black and Caucasian teachers they were used to,” she said. Pretty and fair but petite, her students even called her names, like “Shorty” or “Tiny.”
“Tears would well in my eyes but I tried hard to hold them back. I did not want to show them any sign of weakness on my part,” she said. There were a lot of smart-alecky students and this was a big change from what she was used to in the Bicol region, where students looked at teachers with awe and respect. Emily admitted she was shocked when some students greeted her with the words, “Hi Shorty!”
Emily, who headed the English Department in her school back in Naga City, was selected to be part of the curriculum writing team on her second year of teaching in Gywnn High School. It was a recognition of her capabilities as an English teacher and it was all the more significant because she came from a country where English was just a second language.
Emily’s perseverance stems from her family. After all, they were the reason she decided to work overseas. When the opportunity to go to America came, she grabbed it. She wanted her daughter to live in a better environment and benefit from a Western education. Her husband Chax followed after six months. Daughter Peachy recently arrived with her maternal grandmother in tow.
In just four years, Emily and Chax have been able to buy themselves a house and a van. They are happy with what they have and are looking forward to a long stay in America. But Naga will always be in their hearts, they added. It will be a vacation place for them.
To cope with the financial crisis, they do not buy things on impulse. They plan their purchases well, said Emily. Like other teachers, she attends a lot of seminars where she not only learns new things but also gets paid extra for the hours spent attending these seminars.
Ben’s story
Staying with the Chavezes in their home is Ben Sabino, a Math teacher also at Gywnn High School. Ben is still amazed at how he got the job in Maryland. He was doing odd jobs in Jersey City. He needed a regular job to make his stay in the US legal. So he took the US test for teachers. Passing that, he went to a job fair in Maryland and passed the interview. All he needed was a school to take him in.
Ben cannot forget the stress (panic, actually)—and timely miracles—of the day he met the deadline for the filing of documents for a teaching job in Maryland.
He had boarded a Greyhound bus from Jersey City to Georges County. It was winter and the thick snow was slowing down the bus. He was praying and calling on all the saints to help get him to the school before the 3 p.m. cutoff.
But everything seemed to be going against him. He got down at the wrong bus stop and got lost. After asking for directions, he hopped on another bus. He was starting to panic. Just then his cell phone rang. It was a Filipino he had met at the job fair calling to find out where he was and reminding him that his appointment was just minutes away. The Filipino volunteered to meet him somewhere and drive him to where he was supposed to go. He made it just in the nick of time. While he was talking to the officer of the day, a school head came in saying a Math teacher was immediately needed at Gywnn High School. He was at the right place at the right time!
Ben felt that God was there beside him that day and that He had earlier sent all His angels to help him miraculously meet the 3 p.m. deadline. Because of this experience, Ben has become a man of strong faith.
Ben appreciates everything about what he believes is his “God-given” career. He had been warned about the tough kids but he takes it all in stride.
“If they call me names, I laugh with them. I do not think they really mean to insult me. I believe it is just the way they are.”
He also laughs at the fact he had to adjust the way he speaks English to be understood by his American students. The other Filipino teachers had to do the same thing, especially those who had regional accents. Filipino-English won’t do here, he said, laughing.
In a year’s time, Ben has gained a lot of self-confidence. “I did not come from an exclusive school or a state university but I made it here in America as a teacher,” he said. Back home, Ben taught in a public school in Antipolo and could hardly make both ends meet. In America, he has already bought himself a car. He hopes to buy a house next year. “When I have saved enough money, I still want to go back home and retire there,” he added.
