Filipino Teachers

American Public School System in the Philippines

American school teacher in his classroom possibly taken in 1901
Moro School, Zamboanga, Mindanao, P.I.

In 1901, the United States of America established a public school system to be implemented throughout the entire Philippine archipelago.

They shipped in American teachers and dispersed them to the different provinces that make up the Philippine Islands. These teachers taught Filipino students the same curriculum as in the U.S., in the English language. The teachers came by way of a US Army Transport boat called "Thomas", the first batch came August 1901. Hence, these teachers got the nickname "Thomasites".

By 1903, Americans started sending selected Filipino students to the United States to actually study in U.S. high schools, colleges and universities. This practice lasted until the start of World War 2.

All if not most of these students came back to the Philippines with their diplomas and all the learning and the experience they received in the U.S. mainland. And some of them became the country's next teachers and educators themselves.

100 Years Later

Fast forward to 1999, numerous U.S. school districts in major cities in many states are having problems with the hiring of qualified teachers, some with having no applicants at all.

It got from bad to worse and school districts had to  "import" teachers from a handful of countries. And you guessed it, many came from the Philippines -- talk about coming full circle.

Export: Teachers

The teaching profession have always flourished in the Philippines since the post war era. We can say the same thing about professions involving accounting and its allied courses, nursing and other health careers, care giving, domestic work and related fields, sea faring, blue collar,skilled and entertainment jobs as well as call center, business processing and IT consulting -- which basically make up the bulk of Filipino workers who are being contracted to work overseas.

The Learning

In 2011 PBS aired a documentary titled "The Learning". This was about the face of this imported teachers phenomenon and it followed the story of four Filipino teachers who left their careers and their families to teach in Baltimore, Maryland.

What the casual reader might be missing here is that even though these teachers might be receiving salaries which are 10 times more than what they would receive in the Philippines (which is probably the only reason why they would be doing this in the first place), is that they were sacrificing a lot by leaving their careers, their pensions, their homes and their families to travel and live half-way around the world. And to come teach children in a country where they couldn't find anybody local to do it themselves.

Filipino students protesting the lost of their teachers

Sacrifices

This is very similar to the sacrifices the "Thomasites" had to go through when they sailed from the United States in the early 1900's, leaving their American lives, their comfortable homes and their friends and families to teach people in another country where everything is very much different from what they were used to.

This old saying is is true, you reap what you sow.

Today Filipino teachers are repaying those brave, naive and idealistic American teachers who taught their grandparents by going to the U.S. and teaching their grand children.

And they themselves are enduring sacrifices which those American teachers had to go through.

Respect

To these pioneering teachers, we salute you for your service and for helping educate the next generation of people who will come after us.

Many Filipino teachers across the U.S. right now have been receiving awards and recognition and they are proving that they deserve to be teaching American school children today and for years to come.

Award Winning Filipino Teacher in New York

A Filipina Teacher is the Top Teacher in California

News Links:

Arizona Teacher Shortage Forces Schools to Go International

In Attempt To Lure New Teachers California Pulls Out All The Stops

Bringing in Educators from the Philippines is Helping Some Cities Solve their Hiring Problems

Recruiters are Tapping the Philippines to Help Fill a Void in American Classrooms

Vietnam Hires Filipino Teachers Despite Concerns

The World's "Budget English Teacher" found in the Philippines, BBC News

Poem written by E. Schneider (an American teacher)  while he was on the first boat to the Philippine Islands in 1901

TO THE PHILIPPINE TEACHERS

O'er boundless seas and to a foreign land 

A chosen and devoted band you go; 

And those of you upon whose heads the snow 
Of age has fallen labor hand in hand 
With those who still in youth's prime vigor stand 

The selfsame task to carry out, to sow 

The seeds of truth and culture; and you know 
This is a noble duty, wisely planned. 

So let no fear of failure fill your hearts, 

Or dash your courage, or your spirits grieve; 
And let no petty doubts becloud your brain, 
Remember, while you try to do your parts, 
That, if one single spark of light you leave 
Behind, your work will not have been in vain. 

E. E. Schneider. 


May our Filipino teachers abroad be guided with the same sentiments.


Philippine Trivia

The First English Public School Teacher Was A Filipina, Not A Thomasite


Photo Credits:
George Percival Scriven, library.duke.edu
JHU, gmanetwork.com/news

Manila Men: The First Filipino Overseas Workers

OFWS: Overseas Filipino Workers 

Filipinos have been a major source of human resources for countries in every continent for over 50  years. In fact at any given time up to 15% of the Filipino population are abroad on a work visa and more than a million leave yearly for this specific purpose. This number do not include the undocumented ones.

Most people would think this brain drain is a recent phenomenon, but history tells us this is not so.

The very first OFWs were probably the Manila men -- a band of sailors who jumped ship during the Spanish Galleon Trade Era (1500s to 1800s) and found a safe haven in the marshlands of Louisiana, USA.

Though these men weren't the first Filipinos who set foot in the US Mainland, they were the first "documented" who permanently settled in the New World.

The first Filipinos who set foot in the US were Captain Unamuno and his Filipino crew , the "Luzones Indios". They landed and did some expeditions some where in the coasts of California on October 18, 1587. They left a few days later.

Filipinos In Louisiana (circa 1760s)

For close to 300 years, nothing had been written about these early globe trotting Filipinos. Not until the 1800s when word about a secret and isolated people finally piqued the interests of the media. Noted Greek-Irish journalist Lafcadio Hearn was commissioned by New Orleans to check up on the existence of a secluded community of Filipinos living in the remote swamp lands of the area.

Hearn went there with an artist who drew several sketches of scenes of everyday life and fantastic houses sticking out of the water on wooden stilts. These unique houses have covered balconies in the front and open-air gardens to the rear, very similar to the houses of the Badjao tribes of Southern Philippines.

Manila Men

On March 31,1883, Harper Weekly published their eyewitness account. In “St. Malo: A Lacustrine Village in Louisiana”, Hearn wrote of an unusual Filipino village of 100 or so "cinnamon-colored" Manila Men (or Manilamen, no women) who lived by fishing and catching alligators.

They spoke Spanish and a Philippine language and he referred to them as “Tagalas” from the Philippine Islands. These men sent money back to their families in the Philippines whenever possible, with the profits they made from their fishing. Thus making them the very first OFWS.

The Manila Men of Saint Malo were also credited with starting the dried shrimp industry in Louisiana, employing methods commonly used in the Philippines.

St. Malo

When Hearn interviewed Padre Carpio in 1882, the oldest Manilaman of Saint Malo at that time, he learned that his village had been in existence for a little more than 50 years (about the 1820s).

In case if you are wondering,  Saint Malo was only one of seven Filipino settlements in that region.

The other communities were the Manila Village (on Barataria Bay in the Mississippi Delta by the Gulf of Mexico); Alombro Canal and Camp Dewey (in Plaquemines Parish); and Leon Rojas, Bayou Cholas, and Bassa Bassa (in Jefferson Parish), all in Louisiana.

Saint Malo was destroyed by the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915, while Manila Village, the last of seven Filipino villages, was washed away by Hurricane Betsy, which is still one of the deadliest and costliest storms in United States history, in 1965.

Manila Village

Manila Village was considered to be the largest and most popular, Saint Malo, however, was the oldest.

Saint Malo: Oldest Continuous Asian American Settler Community in North America

Saint Malo used to be situated on a waterway 5 miles east of the fishing village of Shell Beach.

Some accounts state that the Saint Malo settlement was established as early as the 1700s by Filipinos who deserted Spanish ships during the Manila Galleon Trade (1565-1815).

Filipino sailors sailed on galleons plying the Manila-Acapulco trade route routinely  jumped ship in the New World. Eventually they made their way across the Gulf into the Louisiana’s bayou, as far away as possible from the Spaniards and settled in a remote area. This community in essence with at least eight generations should be the oldest continuous Asian American settler community in North America.

Other accounts do suggest that the community was established sometime after 1812 (or sometime towards the end of the trade, just as the old man Padre Carpio have said).

Tagalas

Whatever year they did arrive, they  settled in the bayous and we're referred to Manilamen. Later on they were called the Tagalas. People from Manila speak Spanish and their local dialect, Tagalog.

They governed themselves and kept their existence a secret from mainstream society for at least over a hundred years until the arrival of Hearn, whose article is the first known written piece about Filipinos in the United States.

Hearn and his companion were able to visit the village, and their account provided a very detailed account about the Manilamen.

This isolated community lived in houses made from wooden planks which would have been shipped from other places as these kind of wood do not grow in the swamp lands.

There was no furniture and no bed in any of the dwellings. Instead the fishermen slept among barrels of flour, folded sails and smoked fish.

Their diet was mainly fish and surprisingly they rarely ate rice, which was a staple of Filipinos for centuries.

Like in the Philippines,  the Manilamen were predominantly Roman Catholics. They have no specific address, no mail and didn't appear on the census records. They paid no taxes and had no policemen. They had their own set of laws much like they have back home.  In case of disputes, the oldest man living in the settlement will mediate between the contending parties.

There were no females in the village when Hearn visited it and it was understandable as no sane woman would want to live in such harsh conditions. And since there were no Filipino women, the Manila men intermarried with Cajun, Indian and other native women. Their descendants still survive until this day.


Selected Sources:

The Other Spirit of St. Louis

A Century of Filipinos in America

Global Filipinos