This one is from the LA Times dated August 26, 2009.
Philippine workers abroad: The boon has a price
Remittances from Filipinos abroad are higher despite the global financial crisis. The $1 billion sent back monthly alleviates the effects of poverty and joblessness. But the exodus takes a toll.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-remittances26-2009aug26,0,3339063,full.story
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Cory Aquino, 1933-2009
"You know, when Ninoy was in prison, I used to think all of us have a quota for suffering and when Ninoy was assassinated, I supposed I'd filled up my quota of suffering. But that isn't so, and when we think of Jesus Christ who did not do anybody any wrong, He was goodness Himself, and yet He was prepared to make all of these sacrifices and His suffering did not end until he died. So I suppose, each of us, while we are in this world, while we are here in the Philippines, must think of what it is that we can still offer to make life better for our fellow Filipinos."
FAEALA joins the Philippine nation and Filipino people around the world in mourning the death of former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. Maraming salamat Tita Cory...
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
FAEALA to present at FAEAC Conference.
CONFERENCE UPDATE... FAEAC Conference is now a one day symposium!
The Steering Committee for the 2009 Filipino American Educators Association of California (FAEAC) Statewide Conference is cognizant of the fact that our current economy has greatly impacted our abilities to participate in conferences and to travel. Thus, we were not surprised by the limited number of individuals who are able to commit to attending the Conference.
To accommodate the needs of our membership, we are reorganizing the event into a one-day Symposium scheduled for Saturday July 18th, from 8:30am – 2:00pm. The location remains the same at Ross Elementary School (7470 Bagdad Street, San Diego, CA 92111).
The format will mirror the 2006 FAEAC Statewide Leadership Symposium. Instead of addressing both the Statewide Conference theme and incorporating additional workshops of professional and personal interest to K-12 and higher education professionals (e.g. Classroom Management, Ethical Leadership, Individual Wellness), the Symposium will be composed of two sessions: Incidences of Suicide & Exploitation: The Recruitment & Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines; and the FAEAC General Body Meeting.
Included in the Symposium registration rate of $12.00 are breakfast and lunch. You may continue to register online at genevieveesmende@filameda.org. Registration payment can be made on site.
For additional information, please contact Eleonor G. Castillo at 619.417.2892 or leonorcastillo.faeac@gmail.com.
We look forward to your participation and thank you for your continued support.
8:30 – 9:00 Registration and Breakfast
9:00 – 9:10 Welcome and Symposium Overview
9:10 – 11:40 Plenary Session: Incidences of Suicide & Exploitation: The Recruitment & Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines
11:40 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 2:00 FAEAC General Body Meeting
See you in San Diego!
FAEAC stands for Filipino American Educators Association of California (http://www.faeac.org) which is the umbrella organization for our association with chapters in Northern and Southern California. This year, FAEAC will hold its annual conference in San Diego, California on Friday, July 17-19, 2009.
The theme of the conference is "Incidences of Suicide and Exploitation: The Recruitment and Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines." This topic is very familiar to us having been witnesses to many accounts, challenges as well as solutions. Due to our depth of experience and recent exposure in the media, the organizers of the conference FILAMEDA (http://www.filameda.org) have extended a special invitation to FAEALA members to participate. To date, several teachers have have answered the call. They have committed to attend and will serve as panel speakers during the event.
For those of you with inquiries about presenting or attending, please contact us at faeala@gmail.com so that we may organize our delegates. Additional information about the conference is available at: http://faeac.org/conference.html.
The Steering Committee for the 2009 Filipino American Educators Association of California (FAEAC) Statewide Conference is cognizant of the fact that our current economy has greatly impacted our abilities to participate in conferences and to travel. Thus, we were not surprised by the limited number of individuals who are able to commit to attending the Conference.
To accommodate the needs of our membership, we are reorganizing the event into a one-day Symposium scheduled for Saturday July 18th, from 8:30am – 2:00pm. The location remains the same at Ross Elementary School (7470 Bagdad Street, San Diego, CA 92111).
The format will mirror the 2006 FAEAC Statewide Leadership Symposium. Instead of addressing both the Statewide Conference theme and incorporating additional workshops of professional and personal interest to K-12 and higher education professionals (e.g. Classroom Management, Ethical Leadership, Individual Wellness), the Symposium will be composed of two sessions: Incidences of Suicide & Exploitation: The Recruitment & Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines; and the FAEAC General Body Meeting.
Included in the Symposium registration rate of $12.00 are breakfast and lunch. You may continue to register online at genevieveesmende@filameda.org. Registration payment can be made on site.
For additional information, please contact Eleonor G. Castillo at 619.417.2892 or leonorcastillo.faeac@gmail.com.
We look forward to your participation and thank you for your continued support.
8:30 – 9:00 Registration and Breakfast
9:00 – 9:10 Welcome and Symposium Overview
9:10 – 11:40 Plenary Session: Incidences of Suicide & Exploitation: The Recruitment & Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines
11:40 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 2:00 FAEAC General Body Meeting
See you in San Diego!
FAEAC stands for Filipino American Educators Association of California (http://www.faeac.org) which is the umbrella organization for our association with chapters in Northern and Southern California. This year, FAEAC will hold its annual conference in San Diego, California on Friday, July 17-19, 2009.The theme of the conference is "Incidences of Suicide and Exploitation: The Recruitment and Retention of Educators to the United States from the Philippines." This topic is very familiar to us having been witnesses to many accounts, challenges as well as solutions. Due to our depth of experience and recent exposure in the media, the organizers of the conference FILAMEDA (http://www.filameda.org) have extended a special invitation to FAEALA members to participate. To date, several teachers have have answered the call. They have committed to attend and will serve as panel speakers during the event.
For those of you with inquiries about presenting or attending, please contact us at faeala@gmail.com so that we may organize our delegates. Additional information about the conference is available at: http://faeac.org/conference.html.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Happy 111th Birthday Bayan!
Last Saturday (June 12, 2009), FAEALA members joined other Pinoys in celebrating the Philippines' 111th Independence from Spain. It was a gala event for about 2,000 people at the Westin Boneventure featuring a cultural show, dancing, eating and gawking. Dignitaries from the Philippines along with the who's who in the Filipino community in Los Angeles were in attendance. The picture above was taken at the red carpet, mabuhay!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
FAEALA Meets with FVR
(Two Presidents. Former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos with current FAEALA President Daniel Gumarang.)
Former President of the Republic of The Philippines Fidel V. Ramos was recently in Los Angeles, and met with leaders of the Filipino American community to promote opportunities of common interests. Mr. Ramos invited all Filipinos from all over the globe to join him in his efforts to serve as "a catalyst of constructive change, a medium for fostering unity, stability and progress and a force for mutual understanding" through the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation. FAEALA shares this vision and looks forward to forming a partnership through educational exchange and leadership development.
"In order to move the Philippines forward, we must address and remedy every gap: education, health, economic... as especially- tangGAP!" -FVR
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Is there a Manong Philip in you?
Philip V. Vera Cruz
In celebration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month (May) FOX Network is producing Americans in Focus (www.americansinfocus.org) featuring short vignettes of individuals "who have excelled in life and professions that initially were considered outside the realm of possibility for a person of color."
Although the Filipino American community is the second largest Asian American group in the United States, it is noteworthy that in this list of notables there is only ONE pinoy, Philip Vera Cruz! He was of the Manong generation of Filipino immigrants who came during the early half of the 20th century. Later in life, he became a key farm labor organizer and was instrumental in the creation what eventually came to being as the United Farm Workers union. There are Filipinos all over the world who certainly fit this description and we are charged with sharing those stories, our stories.
The series, celebrates the diversity by highlighting the achievements of short features are now being shown globally across the FOX Network and in the Internet. FAEALA is honored to be a part of this project.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Pinoy Teachers featured in the LA Times
(Watanabe, Teresa. "Filipino teachers exchange homeland for jobs in America." Los Angeles Times 15 Mar. 1995)
Filipino teachers exchange homeland for jobs in America
More than 100 school districts, including at least 20 in California, are recruiting in the Philippines to fill teacher shortages in math, science and special education. 
Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens.
It got worse. In training sessions about American classrooms he received in the Philippines, he was told his students might not be quite as polite and respectful as those in his homeland. Nothing, however, prepared him for the furious brawl that broke out in one of his Los Angeles classrooms, where two girls rolled around on the floor clawing at each other while the other students jumped on the desks and cheered.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has hired 250 to 300 teachers from the Philippines -- the largest contingent among more than 600 foreign exchange teachers overall, a district official said.
The statewide budget crisis and impending layoffs, however, have prompted L.A. Unified to suspend its foreign recruitment this year, said Deborah Ignagni, a district human resources administrator.
Pay is an incentive
Ignagni said the L.A. district first began recruiting foreign exchange teachers in the 1980s from Mexico and Spain to help with bilingual elementary education. But it shifted to the Philippines and Canada for math, science and special education teachers in the last four years, she said.
L.A. school officials have tapped the Philippines for several reasons, Ignagni said. The higher education system is similar, so credits are easily transferable for U.S. teaching credentials.
The Philippines has an abundance of teachers, which allows U.S. recruiters to avoid perceptions that they are taking educational resources needed by Filipinos, Ignagni said.
And most Filipinos speak English and can understand some Spanish, which is embedded in the Filipino language as a result of Spain's 300-year colonization of the islands.
Many of the teachers themselves say they jumped at the chance to work in the United States, lured primarily by far better pay. Most teachers in the Philippines earn $300 to $400 a month, less than one-tenth what they can pull down in Los Angeles.
But high processing fees from recruitment and visa sponsoring agencies have strapped many with debts of $10,000 or more.
Some, such as Gelacio Aguilar, sold land in the Philippines to finance their ventures. Others scraped up money from family and friends; still others took out loans.
To be hired in L.A. Unified, the teachers must pass basic skills exams and interviews, fulfill the requirements for a California teaching credential and have three to five years of successful teaching experience in public schools.
The teachers had hoped for work visas that would potentially lead to green cards. But L.A. Unified brings them in on three-year teacher exchange visas known as J-1s because they are easier to obtain, Ignagni said. The district is now applying for work visas for some teachers whose exchange visas have expired.
Rocky beginnings
Once the teachers arrive in Los Angeles, school officials give them a two-week orientation and offer job fairs to connect them with schools. But many describe a rocky start: loneliness, befuddlement over bus routes, apartment hunting, dealing with U.S. currency, American-style resume-writing. And, once in the classroom, utter shock.
Asked to describe his first year, Garcia leaned back in his chair, covered his face with his hands and murmured, "Oh, God."
His ninth-graders' average math skills were sixth-grade level. While he was trying to teach, students roamed the classroom, applied makeup, chatted with one other, tuned out with iPods. A hallway fight started spilling into his class, and when he tried to push the brawlers back out, he said, he was reprimanded for touching them.
During a recent evening interview at his Washington Boulevard apartment, Nelson de la Cruz pulled up his shirt to reveal a black and blue bruise. He got it, he said, after a student threw a book at him. Another teacher suffered injuries after a chair was thrown at her, said Daniel Gumarang of the Filipino American Educators Assn. of Los Angeles, which is aiding the teachers.
Some teachers have given up and headed back to the Philippines, but Ignagni estimated them at "less than a handful."
Nakila, for instance, said he learned something every day about how to handle his students. One lesson: be sensitive to their backgrounds. Aiming to inspire them, he presented Latino success stories and asked students to write about their own heroes, but the reaction was negative, even angry. When he told them about his own heroic father and asked them to describe their own, Nakila said one lashed out, "I don't even know his name, and I don't want to know."
Now he avoids lessons that might cause them to feel inadequacies in their own families.
He keeps cookies in the classroom to feed students who come to school without breakfast, a situation he said he never imagined he would find in wealthy America. He calls parents to ask why they're giving their children Kool-Aid rather than something more nutritious. He tells students he will never give up on them, even if they show their worst.
"I used to wake up thinking 'Oh, my God, let me survive this day,' " Nakila said. "Now I wake up excited, eager to meet my students."
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-filipino18-2009mar18,0,1449843.story
Filipino teachers exchange homeland for jobs in America
More than 100 school districts, including at least 20 in California, are recruiting in the Philippines to fill teacher shortages in math, science and special education.
Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens.It got worse. In training sessions about American classrooms he received in the Philippines, he was told his students might not be quite as polite and respectful as those in his homeland. Nothing, however, prepared him for the furious brawl that broke out in one of his Los Angeles classrooms, where two girls rolled around on the floor clawing at each other while the other students jumped on the desks and cheered.
But Nakila said his American sojourn has transformed him into a far better educator than when he arrived in August 2007. In the Philippines, he was imperious and demanding, throwing students out of his classroom for inadequate preparation with little thought of their plight.
In Los Angeles, his daily encounters with students struggling to learn despite shattered homes, sexual abuse, physical violence or hunger have humbled him into a new vision of teaching.
"I realize we are servants and teaching is more about touching lives and helping students own their own learning," said Nakila, 38, a special education teacher in English at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles.
Nakila is part of a recent wave of foreign exchange teachers from the Philippines, who are primarily being recruited to fill chronic teacher shortages in math, science and special education throughout the United States. More than 100 school districts, including at least 20 in California, are recruiting from the Philippines, said Los Angeles immigration attorney Carl Shusterman.In Los Angeles, his daily encounters with students struggling to learn despite shattered homes, sexual abuse, physical violence or hunger have humbled him into a new vision of teaching.
"I realize we are servants and teaching is more about touching lives and helping students own their own learning," said Nakila, 38, a special education teacher in English at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has hired 250 to 300 teachers from the Philippines -- the largest contingent among more than 600 foreign exchange teachers overall, a district official said.
The statewide budget crisis and impending layoffs, however, have prompted L.A. Unified to suspend its foreign recruitment this year, said Deborah Ignagni, a district human resources administrator.
Pay is an incentive
Ignagni said the L.A. district first began recruiting foreign exchange teachers in the 1980s from Mexico and Spain to help with bilingual elementary education. But it shifted to the Philippines and Canada for math, science and special education teachers in the last four years, she said.
L.A. school officials have tapped the Philippines for several reasons, Ignagni said. The higher education system is similar, so credits are easily transferable for U.S. teaching credentials.
The Philippines has an abundance of teachers, which allows U.S. recruiters to avoid perceptions that they are taking educational resources needed by Filipinos, Ignagni said.
And most Filipinos speak English and can understand some Spanish, which is embedded in the Filipino language as a result of Spain's 300-year colonization of the islands.
Many of the teachers themselves say they jumped at the chance to work in the United States, lured primarily by far better pay. Most teachers in the Philippines earn $300 to $400 a month, less than one-tenth what they can pull down in Los Angeles.
But high processing fees from recruitment and visa sponsoring agencies have strapped many with debts of $10,000 or more.
Some, such as Gelacio Aguilar, sold land in the Philippines to finance their ventures. Others scraped up money from family and friends; still others took out loans.
To be hired in L.A. Unified, the teachers must pass basic skills exams and interviews, fulfill the requirements for a California teaching credential and have three to five years of successful teaching experience in public schools.
The teachers had hoped for work visas that would potentially lead to green cards. But L.A. Unified brings them in on three-year teacher exchange visas known as J-1s because they are easier to obtain, Ignagni said. The district is now applying for work visas for some teachers whose exchange visas have expired.
Rocky beginnings
Once the teachers arrive in Los Angeles, school officials give them a two-week orientation and offer job fairs to connect them with schools. But many describe a rocky start: loneliness, befuddlement over bus routes, apartment hunting, dealing with U.S. currency, American-style resume-writing. And, once in the classroom, utter shock.
Asked to describe his first year, Garcia leaned back in his chair, covered his face with his hands and murmured, "Oh, God."
His ninth-graders' average math skills were sixth-grade level. While he was trying to teach, students roamed the classroom, applied makeup, chatted with one other, tuned out with iPods. A hallway fight started spilling into his class, and when he tried to push the brawlers back out, he said, he was reprimanded for touching them.
During a recent evening interview at his Washington Boulevard apartment, Nelson de la Cruz pulled up his shirt to reveal a black and blue bruise. He got it, he said, after a student threw a book at him. Another teacher suffered injuries after a chair was thrown at her, said Daniel Gumarang of the Filipino American Educators Assn. of Los Angeles, which is aiding the teachers.
Some teachers have given up and headed back to the Philippines, but Ignagni estimated them at "less than a handful."
Nakila, for instance, said he learned something every day about how to handle his students. One lesson: be sensitive to their backgrounds. Aiming to inspire them, he presented Latino success stories and asked students to write about their own heroes, but the reaction was negative, even angry. When he told them about his own heroic father and asked them to describe their own, Nakila said one lashed out, "I don't even know his name, and I don't want to know."
Now he avoids lessons that might cause them to feel inadequacies in their own families.
He keeps cookies in the classroom to feed students who come to school without breakfast, a situation he said he never imagined he would find in wealthy America. He calls parents to ask why they're giving their children Kool-Aid rather than something more nutritious. He tells students he will never give up on them, even if they show their worst.
"I used to wake up thinking 'Oh, my God, let me survive this day,' " Nakila said. "Now I wake up excited, eager to meet my students."
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-filipino18-2009mar18,0,1449843.story
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