Lessons Far From Home

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Lessons of an Imported Teacher

Prince George's County needed teachers. Mabel Ventura left the Philippines to fill the gap -- and earn a paycheck to help her family back in Manila.

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But just three parents, including a couple, showed up. Their children were among the best performers in the class. Mabel had spotted a few of her students and their parents in the auditorium, but they must have left after the free pizza was handed out.

Not everything in America, she was beginning to realize, was as perfect as it looked.

MABEL LEANED ON HER BALCONY, taking in the view of the trees and hills from the top floor of Lake Arbor Towers in Mitchellville. "We're in the penthouse," Mabel said with a giggle. She and her roommates liked how it sounded so glamorous.

Many Filipino teachers live in Lake Arbor or two other apartment complexes nearby. They are placed here by the Philippines-based recruiting agency, Arrowhead Manpower Resources. The Prince George's school system doesn't pay a fee for Arrowhead to send it potential candidates. The recruits, however, pay the agency about $12,000. In return, the agency sets up interviews with school officials and provides a package of services that includes filing visa applications, buying plane tickets, picking the teachers up from the airport, taking them on a tour of Washington and setting them up in furnished apartments. Mabel had used up her savings for half of the agency fee and had borrowed the rest from a sister who is a nurse in London.

Mabel was sharing a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with three other teachers from Assumption College in Manila, a campus that serves all grade levels through college. A large picture of Saint Marie Eugenie, the school's patron saint, hung in their living room. Rufina Alcanzo, nicknamed "Baby" because she is so petite and was the youngest in her family, taught six special education students at the H. Winship Wheatley Early Childhood Center in Capitol Heights. She'd taught elementary school in the Philippines, but not special ed. After she'd found out that special ed teachers were in particularly high demand in the United States, she got a master's degree in the subject. Her family, including her five children ranging from ages 4 to 17, needed her American salary.

Mabel and Alcanzo, 40, called themselves the "old married women" and shared a room with twin beds. Leah Mendoza and Georgie Henares were younger -- by how much they wouldn't say -- and single. They'd come to the United States for adventure and, of course, more money.

"She's looking for a husband," Mabel teased Mendoza, as the younger woman blushed.

Mendoza was assigned to Central High School in Capitol Heights, where she taught African and Latino immigrants in classes for English for Speakers of Other Languages. Henares, who once played basketball for the Filipino national women's team, taught gym at Gholson Middle School in Landover, where she'd learned some new words.

"Say what? Gotta. Ain't," Henares said, mimicking her students as her roommates laughed. "I don't understand them. They speak English differently."

Mabel had a different language problem with her young charges -- sometimes, they didn't understand her. She had been telling them to stand up whenever they had to "recite."

"They looked at me, 'Huh?' They didn't even know what recite was," Mabel said, not realizing that it was an old-fashioned term.

The first Filipino teachers, a group of 30, arrived in Prince George's in the summer of 2004. Last year, the school system employed about 400 Filipinos, including at least 30 who had transferred from other state school systems. They comprised less than 1 percent of the school system's teaching staff, but they had made a huge difference simply by staying. Just 11 Filipino teachers had quit. Usually, one-third of new teachers nationwide leave the profession within three years.

"They are determined to make this work," said Robert Gaskin, the school system's human resources director, who is married to Flora Gaskin. "You ask them, 'What are you doing this weekend?' They'll say, 'I'm preparing lessons.' "

He said he expects the county, which must fill hundreds of teacher vacancies every year and faces stiff competition from other school systems for a limited pool of local candidates, to continue recruiting from the Philippines. Teaching -- with its long hours, relatively low pay and lack of respect -- may be a profession shunned by many college graduates here, but in the Philippines, it is a well-regarded career. For all of its poverty and political instability, the Southeast Asian country is rich in good teachers. It's a legacy left over from its time as an American colony. In the early 1900s, shiploads of American teachers arrived in the Philippines to set up free primary schools and teacher training institutes.

Today, the tide has turned the other way. An estimated 10,000 foreign teachers are working here under visas, according to a 2003 study by the National Education Association. The current number is likely higher, but immigration officials do not keep precise statistics.

Most of the Filipino teachers are here on coveted H-1B visas, which can be renewed every three years and permit spouses and children to come to the United States. While Congress caps the number of H-1B visas for computer programmers, engineers and other professionals in short supply, that limit is waived for public school teachers.

As more foreign teachers are hired, some labor leaders worry that American education is on its way to being outsourced. Reg Weaver, president of the NEA, said there's a better solution for tens of thousands of teaching vacancies: Raise the pay and respect, he said, and see what happens.

"People will be banging on the doors to get in," Weaver argued. "Until you begin to correct the conditions that people have to work in, you're going to always have to go outside and get somebody."

In Prince George's, some principals have been reluctant to hire Filipino teachers. A.H. Sharif Salim, principal at Samuel Massie, said he has heard a few of his counterparts express preference for "native-born" teachers. He figures the other principals are losing out.

"I need all the help I can get," said Salim, who has shepherded Samuel Massie to double-digit jumps in test scores since arriving there in 2004. "I'm not looking at race, I'm not looking at religion, I'm not looking at culture. I'm looking at teachers who are highly qualified who can come in and teach."

Outside of the schools, Mabel and her compatriots had little contact with non-Filipinos. At Lake Arbor Towers, most of Mabel's neighbors were non-Filipinos; she was too shy to talk to them. If she was headed to the elevators at the same time that a non-Filipino was going that way, she turned around and lingered in the lobby. In the Philippines, she was bubbly and social. Here, she didn't know what to say to these Americans.

"They're so big and tall," she said. "I'm scared of them. I'm a foreigner in their country."

As a teacher, Mabel knew intimate details about the lives of American children, but when she wasn't in her classroom, she still felt like a stranger.

THE BOY WITH THE GAP-TOOTHED GRIN COULDN'T SIT STILL. With one hand, he used a stylus to point out pictures on the small LeapFrog computer screen. His other hand was free. So he poked the girl next to him.

"Stop."

Another poke.

The girl moved away and called out to Mabel, who was helping another group of students write letters to their best friends.

"Snitcher, snatcher, liar, liar," pouted the troublemaker. He'd been transferred from another school in October because of discipline problems. Soon after arriving at Samuel Massie, he'd stood up on a chair and unzipped his pants.

On this day, Mabel strode over and stood between him and the little girl. She sent the boy to a lone desk near the whiteboard. He ran the other way: "I gotta tell Eric something."

Mabel blocked him: "No. Excuse me. No."

It was only mid-morning, but her throat already felt sore. She was still surprised at how often she had to raise her voice.

Several of the American teachers had asked her how she could bear to come here, leaving her children so far away. She didn't understand why they thought it was so strange. American families divorced all the time. Parents neglected their kids even when they were living in the same house. She saw the results in her class.

Some students wore the same set of blue-pants-and-white-shirt uniforms day after day. One girl's nails grew so long that she was sent to the nurse's office to have them cut. When Mabel threatened to call the mother of one misbehaving boy, he told her to call his father instead. His parents were divorced. "I miss my dad," he said. "Call him. I want to play with him." When she called parents, they often didn't call back. Sometimes their phone numbers were disconnected.

At meetings with the other first-grade teachers, Mabel learned that her students were trailing the other three classes on reading tests. Her class even lagged in attendance, with a rate of 79 percent one month. She didn't think it was because she was Filipino. Two of the other classes were taught by Filipino women who'd arrived in 2006.

The Filipino teachers who'd been here longer told Mabel not to despair. Many had had much worse experiences their first year. Annie Arches, who teaches math at G. Gardner Shugart Middle School in Temple Hills, said her classroom was vandalized. She'd kept teaching, even though she was crying at night and desperately wanted to go home. By year's end, Arches's students had improved their math test scores and were behaving better. And they'd come to admire the persistence of their teacher. "You're still here," one girl had marveled to Arches, "after all we did to you."

Mabel continued to come to school more than an hour before the children arrived. She was usually tired by midday. But she thought that if she worked harder, something good would happen. And, slowly, it did.

A little girl who barely knew the alphabet at the beginning of the year was almost reading at grade level. Mabel heard her trying to help others in her reading group. "Sound it out," she'd say, echoing Mabel's advice. "Sound it out."

One misbehaving boy's father finally showed up to see Mabel. He gave her his cellphone number and told her to call anytime. Afterward, his son stopped throwing books.

Then there was the boy Mabel had written about in the August training seminar as the most negative experience of her first week. She'd learned that he had a chaotic family life. His mother had an abusive boyfriend, and a neighbor had told Mabel that she could hear the boy screaming one night, "Don't kill my mom."

In class, the boy got angry if he didn't get called to answer a question or if a classmate looked at him the wrong way. He'd already been suspended three times. But after the third suspension in February, his tantrums tapered off. Mabel wondered whether the boy was tired of getting into trouble or whether his family life had stabilized. Maybe it was something else altogether.

All year, Mabel and her teaching partner, Lee Ann Franco-Colon, had showered the boy with praise when he helped pass out papers or answered questions correctly. He started to respond and even look for the praise. "Did I do good today?" he'd ask Mabel.

One early spring day, the boy came back from recess and ran to Mabel. He held out a yellow flower. "I picked this for you," he said, and grinned, showing all his teeth. She returned the smile and, for a moment, forgot how tired she was.

SITTING AT THE DESK IN HER LIVING ROOM, Mabel scrolled through her e-mail. She wanted to look again at the electronic card that her chubby-cheeked daughter Liel had sent her for Valentine's Day. The card featured a pair of dice with blinking hearts, and Mabel read the message aloud: "I am lucky to have you in my life and luckier still to be loved by you."

"So sweet," Mabel said with a sigh. "I sent her one, too."

Her older daughter, Abbey, had sent her an e-birthday card in January. Mabel scrolled through a few pages of her Yahoo account to find it. She clicked on the link, but the card didn't appear. "Link not found," the screen read. "Oh, it doesn't keep," Mabel said in a soft voice. It's more than 30 days. I thought it would be here for a while."

If Mabel had been in the Philippines in January, her kids would have presented her with a large handmade birthday card. If she'd been there in December, she would have celebrated Christmas with her entire family at her mother's house. Instead, she and some of the other Filipino teachers had made do with a potluck and a karaoke singalong. Mabel chose a fitting song for her Christmas Day solo: "I Will Survive."

She sent her family instant messages every day. Because of the 12-hour time difference, they caught up with each other here and there in bursts. She didn't phone because she was worried about spending money, though phone cards to the Philippines cost just $5 for an hour of conversation. Yet even from afar, Mabel was included in mundane decisions. When Liel wanted permission to go to a classmate's party, her father told her to ask her mother. (She said yes.) Abbey e-mailed a term paper for Mabel to look over.

Still, it wasn't the same as being there. Mabel was grateful that her children hadn't gotten sick or had any major problems at school. But, using a webcam, she'd watched her husband grow thinner and slumped from stress. He was helping to take care of his brother, who was dying of throat cancer. Mabel could only send consoling messages. Gary was reserved, and Mabel fretted that he wasn't sharing all his burdens with her.

She comforted herself by remembering what she was sending home -- at least $500 each month, in addition to tuition for her children, tuition for two nieces, food and medicine for her mother and loan repayments to her sister. In December, she packed a suitcase full of presents for her family that her roommate Rufina Alcanzo would deliver when she visited the Philippines. Mabel recounted the cost of each item, all bought on sale: sleeveless blouses for Abbey (three for $18), pink camouflage-print ballet flats for Liel ($7.50), T-shirts for her husband and Roee (less than $10 each), and bags of Hershey's Kisses and chocolate chip cookies for nieces and nephews (99 cents each). Everything was much cheaper than it would have been in the Philippines. However, Mabel splurged on two items: an iPod Nano for Liel and a PlayStation video game console for Roee.

She lamented that she was spending too much money on gifts, but she couldn't help it. Liel was graduating from primary school in the spring, and Mabel felt guilty about not being able to attend. And Roee, well, he was her baby. On instant messenger and e-mail, he didn't talk as much as his sisters.

Mabel's daughters share their mother's long black hair, wide, curious eyes and easy smile. They told her often that they appreciated how hard she was working. Their mother's absence had prompted them to become more responsible at home, helping to care for their brother without being asked.

"We all miss Mommy," wrote Abbey, in an instant message. "She went to the U.S. to sacrifice for us. I mean, she wants us to have a good life and good education."

Mabel was already making plans to bring her family to Prince George's after completing her second year of teaching, as many other teachers have done. Abbey and Liel said they weren't sure they wanted to come. They'd watched too many episodes of American TV shows such as "The O.C." and "Gossip Girl" and didn't think America would be a friendly place. Gary was more enthusiastic, though he doesn't speak English and would have a long wait for a green card that would allow him to work.

Mabel brushed aside her daughters' doubts. She wasn't willing to let their separation be permanent. "My kids are growing," she said. "For their age, they need their mom." She often wondered how she would make it until the summer, when she planned to fly to the Philippines to visit.

More than in previous years, the Filipino teaching community had been talking about how to handle the stress of their new lives. In November 2007, a high school math teacher in Baltimore had hanged herself in her apartment. Irenea Apao, 41, had been in the United States since 2005, leaving her two children behind in the care of her sister. She was separated from her husband, and fellow teachers said she was struggling financially.

Apao was the second local Filipino teacher to commit suicide in six months. In May 2007, 26-year-old Fe Bolado had hanged herself. The Baltimore middle school math teacher had married the previous summer and brought her new husband here. Friends said their relationship had been falling apart. Word of the deaths spread rapidly, and the teachers took up a collection for the families.

A devout Catholic, Mabel called the suicides "sins." Each night, she and her roommates prayed with rosaries. They had become family, and Mabel questioned why the teachers in Baltimore hadn't turned to their friends for help. "Maybe some people are not strong enough to be in America," Mabel said. "You have to know why you are coming here."

Besides praying together, Mabel and her roommates teased each other and laughed a lot. When Alcanzo saw Mabel staring moodily at her computer screen, she told her to turn on the webcam. Maybe Mabel could undress in front of the camera and give her husband a show. Mabel liked to retort with her own "green" jokes, as Filipinos call off-color remarks. She warned Alcanzo that visiting the Philippines for Christmas might result in baby number six. One weekend, Alcanzo checked out a library DVD on belly dancing, and the roommates spent an afternoon swiveling their hips.

Mabel was starting to feel more confident in her new home. She was no longer afraid of getting on the elevators with her non-Filipino neighbors. She still didn't know them well, but she thought they were quite friendly.

As spring approached, Mabel found herself alone in the apartment more often. Mendoza and Henares were constantly on the go: Atlantic City, New York, Chicago, the outlet malls. Henares had bought a 1995 Ford station wagon, which set her apart from most of the new Filipino teachers, whose main source of transportation were the Filipinos who had been here longer and had bought cars. A few husbands who had joined their teaching wives ran carpools. The spouses had little else to do because they didn't have green cards or work visas. Mabel paid about $215 per month for rides to work and weekend shopping.

Alcanzo was planning to go home for spring break. "I don't care how much it costs," she said. She had already started looking into local schools and neighborhoods, to prepare for bringing her family over next spring. Even more than Mabel, Alcanzo felt pressure to have her family join her. When Alcanzo had visited the Philippines at Christmas, her 4-year-old daughter had declared in surprise that "Mommy isn't in a box." She was used to seeing Alcanzo on the webcam, not in person.

Mabel was too frugal to go out for fun. In April, she finally agreed to accompany her roommates to New York. They stayed the weekend at a friend's apartment in Queens. Mabel skipped the Broadway play because it was too expensive. But she loved touring Times Square -- so many tall buildings and such a diversity of people.

"I had been almost a year in Maryland, and I never went anyplace," she said. "Now, people cannot tell me, 'New York is like this and this.' I can say, 'I know. I saw it for myself.' "

"IT'S NOT PERSONAL," SALIM TOLD MABEL. He repeated it.

Mabel was recalling the conversation that she'd had with Salim in mid-May. That afternoon in his office, the principal had broken the bad news: She had to leave Samuel Massie because of budget cuts.

"It has nothing to do with performance," he assured her. He told her not to worry; another school would hire her. Even so, Mabel felt crushed. Where would she end up? When she got home, she burst into tears.

It was the second blow in a month. Earlier, Mendoza and Henares had announced that they wanted to get their own two-bedroom apartment. Just like the school decision, it was not personal. The younger roommates just wanted more space and to be closer to Henares's school. But for Mabel, that could mean shouldering half, rather than one-fourth, of the $1,615 monthly rent. She imagined her wallet draining.

And now, Mabel worried that the job placement decisions would be made while she was in the Philippines. She didn't want to teach a higher grade. She had been asking Salim before about getting a pre-K or kindergarten class, where she figured there might be fewer discipline problems. She e-mailed a few principals of other schools whom she had met and liked. Two invited her in for an interview. Meanwhile, she'd received a piece of good news. Two Filipino teachers who were among the more than 100 arriving for this school year had agreed to live in the apartment with Mabel and Alcanzo. Their frantic e-mails and calls to find new roommates had paid off.

Mabel marveled at how much she had changed in the past year. Before, she would have dwelled on her problems for days. Now, she said: "I have to take action. I'm in America. I can't wait for someone to help me. I have to help myself."

AS THE SCHOOL YEAR CAME TO AN END, Mabel explained to her students the route that she would take to the Philippines. First, she would fly to Chicago, then to Tokyo, and from there, to Manila. She was going to go home and be a mom to her kids.

One girl was confused. Why did Mabel have to go so far away to be a mother? "You're already a mom," she said.

Mabel explained that because she had spent the school year with her students, she hadn't been able to do things like cook or mend clothes for her own children.

Several kids wondered whether Mabel would stay in the Philippines. "Are you sure you're coming back? It's very far," one boy said, shaking his head.

Mabel assured them that she would return, although not to Samuel Massie. Glenridge Elementary in Landover Hills had asked her to teach kindergarten for the 2008-09 school year. The assignment would be difficult. The majority of Glenridge students come from low-income families, and many speak only Spanish. But the kids would be a year younger.

Mabel was determined that her second year of teaching would be more successful than the first. While many Filipino teachers flew home as soon as the school year ended, Mabel stayed to attend two teaching seminars. She wondered if she should brush up on her Spanish, which she had studied in college.

Meanwhile, her children had no idea she was coming home. She'd told them that she wouldn't be back for a visit until Christmas. When Liel had complained that December was too far away, Mabel had kept quiet. Mabel's June 30 flight would arrive around midnight, and she planned to greet the children when they woke up. "I want to see their faces when they see Mommy in the kitchen," she said, giggling.

In the end, though, she didn't stick to her plan. After Gary drove her home from the airport, she recalled later, she rushed into her daughters' room. Abbey woke up and thought she was seeing a ghost. Her scream woke up Liel. Mabel kept hugging the girls and telling them that, yes, she really was home.

The next morning, Mabel lay down next to her sleeping son, Roee, whispering in his ears, "Mommy is home." When he finally woke up, he too, had to be assured that she was real.

Now that she was finally back home, Mabel felt like the one who needed to be reminded that her presence wasn't a dream. Roee had grown so much taller. Liel and Abbey had matured and now cleaned up after themselves and didn't quarrel. Gary looked even skinnier in person than he had on the webcam, but he still had his sense of humor. He joked that there was nothing new for Mabel to tell them about her life in the United States because she'd already recounted so much by e-mail.

When Mabel ventured out, Manila's heat, traffic and crowds bothered her in a way that they hadn't before. She kept telling relatives and friends that in the United States, "you look out the window, and sometimes you don't see anyone. You can see trees."

In some ways, she said, returning to Prince George's wouldn't be so difficult. She was used to the weather and people. She was even more grateful for the good paycheck -- in the last year, prices for food and other basics had doubled in the Philippines.

But in other ways, the second year of teaching would be much harder. She dreaded leaving her family again. Previously, she'd only imagined how much she would miss her children. Now, she knew.

Phuong Ly is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. She can be reached at phuongyenly@gmail.com.