Filipinos ‘good fit’ for vacant teacher posts abroad - report

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino teachers have been dubbed to be a “good fit" for vacant teaching positions abroad, especially in the United States, a popular US newspaper has reported. The report posted on USA Today on Wednesday quoted an official of the Baltimore City public schools in Maryland state as saying that Filipino teachers are a “good fit" because English is one of the Philippine’s official languages and its academic system is similar to the USA’s. “Retention has been excellent. We've only had 20, max, who have not been renewed or who have chosen to leave," staffing director George Duque told USA Today. The report said out 7,000 teachers of Baltimore public schools, 593 are imported from Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. Prince George’s County public schools in Maryland have a teaching staff of 10,000, of which 556 are Filipinos, while Wichita public schools in Kansas have 43 foreign teachers, all Filipino, out of its 4,000 educators. Said the report, this trend of school districts hiring teachers from foreign countries to fill shortages in math, science and special education is most evident in poor urban and rural districts. Segun Eubanks, director at the National Education Association, the USA’s largest teachers union, said in the report that many of these districts have trouble keeping teachers because of low pay, disruptive students, and a lack of books and materials. “American workers are not willing to do the work for the conditions and pay we offer…so we're recruiting them for the same reasons we recruit farm workers and day laborers," he was quoted as saying. The report also said that the American Federation of Teachers Union estimated that at least 18,000 of the USA’s 3.7 million teachers were hired from other countries. Kate Walsh, National Council on Teacher Quality president, said foreign teachers can enrich students’ education by exposing them to other cultures. However, the report also said that Duque acknowledges that there can be clashes over teachers’ accents and cultural differences. As an example, he said that Filipino culture “reveres" teachers. “When they come here, they have to learn about our culture and the urban culture and the culture of poverty and the challenges our children have," he told USA Today. - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV