Looking Abroad For A Few Good Teachers

By Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates / Baltimore

Like most Kindergarten classrooms, Carol Espiritu's is decorated with cheerfully colored posters illustrating the months and seasons, stacks of picture books and imaginative drawings. Espiritu's tiny students, like all the kids at the Dr. Bernard Harris Sr. Elementary School in Baltimore, Md., are neatly dressed in the official school uniform--white shirts and blue pants for the boys, white blouses and blue skirts for the girls. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary in Room 122 this fall is Espiritu. She is one of three new teachers at the school recruited from the Philippines to help fill Baltimore's yawning teacher shortage. "I had to get out of my comfort zone," says Espiritu, who taught for 14 years at an exclusive private school in Manila. "I had to try something new."

The Baltimore school system needed to try something new too. Each year administrators scramble to fill some 800 teacher vacancies. Statewide, Maryland requires 6,000 new teachers annually, but its colleges and universities produce just 2,500, and only the most altruistic of them choose to work in urban schools, where the challenges range from trying to raise low test scores to tending to students who are homeless or whose parents are on drugs. The No Child Left Behind Act, which requires schools to meet certain standards or risk losing federal funding, has intensified the need for good teachers in poor schools.

To find them, Baltimore and other school districts--in California, Florida and New York--have begun looking abroad for teachers to do the jobs they can't get enough locals to take on. After watching a presentation, at an education conference, on Filipino teachers working in other U.S. school districts, George Duque, human-resources manager for the Baltimore public schools, decided to give that approach a try. "We've always had difficulty getting teachers in math, science and special education," he says. "We would go on recruiting trips, and we could count on one hand the number of available teachers. And they were at a premium, so they could pick and choose. We thought that this might be a better source."

Duque was further encouraged by the success others had experienced with foreign teachers. New York City has recruited teachers from such countries as Austria, Canada and Spain for years. Three years ago, it began recruiting in the Philippines. Administrators in the city say only 10% of those recruits have left and 530 Filipino teachers are currently working in the city's schools. So last fall Duque took an 18-hour flight to Manila, courtesy of Avenida International Consultants (AIC), an agency that specializes in connecting U.S. schools with Filipino teachers. AIC put him up in a five-star hotel for five days and introduced him to a stream of experienced teachers eager to work in the U.S.

As with most immigrant workers, the financial incentive looms large for Filipino teachers who opt for the U.S. According to Ligaya Avenida, AIC's founder, a Filipino teacher earns from $9,000 to $12,000 a year. In Baltimore the average Filipino recruit makes $45,000 a year. Many Filipino teachers seeking to practice their craft in the U.S. shell out as much as $10,000 to recruiting agencies like AIC to secure interviews with American administrators and receive help with visas and other immigration documents. With some agencies, however, the teachers don't always get what they pay for. In fact, last year school officials in Texas, along with recruiters from a local agency, were charged with bilking Filipino hopefuls of cash and failing to find them jobs.

Still, Filipino teachers continue to clamor for positions in the U.S., and they're attractive candidates: they're highly educated--many have advanced degrees--they have tons of classroom experience and most are fluent in English. "We mainly had to make sure their English was intelligible to our kids," says Duque. "So I'd ask them about their favorite movie or their favorite actor. I tried to give them questions they didn't expect." In the end, Duque hired 109 new teachers.

But coming to the U.S. can be a culture shock for people who have worked in countries where educators are accorded great respect. Despite their country's poverty, teachers in the Philippines seldom have to deal with the discipline problems that plague many inner-city public schools in the U.S. In the Philippines students are ritually deferential to teachers and stand to address them. U.S. school districts try to smooth the transition. Tasha Franklin, director of training and teacher development for Baltimore's teaching residency program, led a four-hour workshop in October for the teachers Duque had hired in Manila.

After putting them at ease with softball questions about what inspired them to teach and how they responded to challenges, she asked them how classes in Baltimore compared with ones the teachers had had in the Philippines. Franklin, like most of Baltimore's students, is black, and the Filipino teachers were hesitant to respond at first, fearing they might offend her. "Back home it's so different. It's all obedience and respect," said one. "Here the students are, um, very direct, very bold." Franklin nodded but pushed for more. "Please don't be polite," she urged. Shyly at first but then with increasing frankness, the teachers spoke up:

"They get free lunches, and yet you hear them complain that they don't get anything from the government. In our country poverty means nothing--no food, nothing."

"They're loud."

"They're intimidating."

After calmly recording each observation on a blackboard, Franklin turned to her audience. "Being an urban teacher is a lot like being a cardiologist or a dermatologist," she explained. "You may be a doctor, but that doesn't mean you know the heart, or the skin as an organ. It's the same thing with the urban teacher. You have a set of skills that make you a good teacher. But here you need a new set of skills."

Espiritu has adjusted fairly easily. But Roliza Aguilar, who is teaching sixth, seventh and eighth grades at Dickey Hill Elementary and Middle School in Baltimore, has had a more difficult time. "Everyone needs a lot of attention," she says. "If you asked me to tell you how many of them are disciplined, I could count them on five fingers. In the Philippines we only had mild behavior problems, and they're easily addressed because of the culture, the family and value given to adults." In addition, she taught only two periods a day in the Philippines, and she now has to teach six. "It's been rough," she says. "The only two things helping me are my prayers and the support that the principal and teachers give me."

Aguilar's principal, Joyce Hughes, says that the transition has been rough but typical. "With any new teacher," says Hughes, "whether you're from the Philippines or whatever, the kids will try you. She's really done a fantastic job."

Teachers' unions are divided over the newcomers. "All we are concerned about is getting highly qualified teachers," says Richelle Patterson, a senior associate with the Association of Federated Teachers, one of two national teachers' unions. "To date, the Filipino teachers have been highly qualified. We haven't heard any complaints." But local unions remain skeptical about bringing in teachers from abroad, even though many of the foreigners have become union members. "I think that [school officials] did not seek out American teachers," says Marrietta English, who heads the Baltimore Teachers Union. "The problem the urban teachers have is retention. Last year we were losing 40 teachers a month. No one is looking at ways to retain the teachers we hire. They don't offer the teachers the support they need, and they don't treat them like professionals."

But Baltimore officials are pleased with the early feedback they're getting on the Filipino teachers. At the end of this month a recruiting team will return to Manila for four days of interviewing. They hope to bring back 50 new teachers.