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

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.

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.

By Teresa Watanabe
March 18, 2009

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.

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

"We are the only group that multiply by division"

Last night, I attended a meeting where Greg Macabenta shared his vision for a national organization that would advocate for Filipino and Filipino American interest in the United States. Greg is the newly-installed National Chair of The National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA). For those of us out of the loop, NaFFAA is a group whose main mission is to bring us Pinoys into the loop on a national level.

Filipinos, Pilipinos, Pinoys, Fil-Ams, (whatever we want to call ourselves)- WE are the second largest Asian subgroup in America. There are about 4 million of us in the US. 1.5% of the United States population does not seem much but I urge you to look around. You cannot go to a hospital without hearing Tagalog being spoken in the hallways. Have you been at a cafeteria of any Los Angeles City or County facility lately? Who is cooking the President's food in the White House? Name an industry (be it entertainment, business, fashion, labor, sports, etc.) and it would not be too hard to name Pinoys who have made significant contributions to this country. Now, we are increasingly at every school in LAUSD, teaching. LAUSD, being the second largest school district in America has over 800 schools! Nationally, there are Pinoy education groups all over the place, yet we don’t know about them and they don’t know about us.

Given our numbers and positions in key areas, how successful have we been as a group in influencing local, state and national agendas? What about in our own school districts?

Consider this... when policy makers such as board members, civic and business leaders, Senators, etc., want to engage a particular group there is always a group that they can call on. Here are a few examples, think of NAACP for Blacks and La Raza for Hispanics, and OCA for the Chinese. These groups have organizations available to them (often in multiples) through which their specific agendas are carried and their interests protected. When someone like the President wants to talk about issues that pertain to Filipinos and Filipino Americans, who or what group would he turn to? We are here yet we are invisible to them and as a result, we along with our interests are marginalized. Like leaves floating on water, we go with the flow. Most of often than not, the result is to our own detriment.

FAEALA welcomes the opportunities that the National Federation of Filipino American Associations presents. Education is high on the priority list and no other group knows more about teaching and learning than the educators themselves. FAEALA looks forward to a future where we can make a significant contribution to this effort and intends to be an affiliate member. We believe that together with other Pinoy groups, organization and associations out there, we can be a force to be reckoned with. We cannot be the only group that multiplies by division.

Filipino Teachers in Los Angeles and FAEALA

Balitang America (ABS-CBN) reports on the initial experiences of Filipino teachers recruited to fill shortages in teaching positions in Los Angeles. This segment originally aired on October 7, 2008. Yong B. Chavez reporting.

US schools tap Pinoy teachers

Philstar News Service article describing how American school districts are addressing teacher shortages with Filipino teachers. Read more.

"Children, Meet Your Teachers"

Browsing the seemingly endless variety of Filipino newspapers available here in Southern California, I came across one that captured my interest. The top story in the mid-August edition of Philippine News is a photo entitled, "Children, Meet Your Teachers." Pictured are 93 newly-arrived teachers from the Philippines being welcomed by Philippine Ambassador to the United States Willy C. Gaa on August 11, in front of the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. The report goes on to describe that the Philippine Embassy offers services including orientation seminars designed to ease the teachers' transition into American classrooms.

It looks like the Philippine Embassy is doing what FAEALA is doing. Or, is it the other way around? Whatever the case may be, action is taking place and invaluable services are provided. It is a wonderful thing. Perhaps there is an opportunity here for collaboration and partnership among groups that ultimately share the same vision. Whether it is the Philippine Embassy, FAEALA, churches, businesses or individuals, that welcomes and support our fellow 'Kababayans,' the spirit of 'Bayanihan' is alive and well. Might there be others out there?