Dorotea, Rhea, Angel & Grace

On a flight to San Francisco four years ago, I found myself on a seat whose in-flight entertainment system was not working. When informed of my misfortune, the flight attendant told me the system couldn’t be fixed till we touched down, sorry. She said she would try to find another seat for me. The passenger on the window seat beside me in the Business Class section, a total stranger, then turned to me and offered his seat. “Are you sure you want to go through a 14-hour flight with no inflight movie at all?” I asked. He said he would just sleep, and again offered his seat to me. At that point the flight attendant arrived, saying an airline employee on holiday was willing to switch seats with me.

I looked at the kind man beside me and declined her offer.

“I think I already have the best seat in the house,” I told her. After all, it had been cushioned with kindness.

* * *

I had hardly looked at the stranger beside me as we were settling in our seats during takeoff. Now, I looked at him as a human being, a chivalrous Filipino. I was to learn that he is a teacher, and that he was going to the US on a contract to teach high school Math in Baltimore.

I was keenly aware of the exodus of skilled Filipino workers to the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. But the exodus of Filipino teachers to the US was something I had not been aware of. Getting a US visa is tough  the need for teachers must be pretty acute they were making it a breeze for certain teachers to get a visa.

With teachers like the passenger beside me  how lucky could some American students get! They weren’t only going to get Math lessons, they were going to get an education.

* * *

Passenger X and I didn’t exchange contact numbers, not even surnames. I don’t even remember his name anymore. But he was on my mind when I came to know of The Learning, a documentary by my Assumption High School classmate, Ramona “Monina” Diaz. She is an award-winning filmmaker best known for the documentary Imelda, released in 2003.

The Learning is the story of four teachers who were recruited from the Philippines to teach in Baltimore City, where Monina lives with her husband and daughter. Of the 6,000 teachers in Baltimore, 10 percent are Filipino.

“That’s the specific story, but it’s more about the social costs of immigration, what immigrants give up to come to this country to find a better life for their families,” Monina shared in an interview with POV (Points of View) published online. The Learning straddles two big stories, public education and immigration.

Monina came to know of the presence of several Filipino teachers in her own hometown when she read about one of them in The Baltimore Sun.

“It was amazing. I had no idea that US school districts were recruiting from abroad. It’s not only Baltimore City. As a matter of fact, Baltimore City was late into the game. Bigger school districts have done it  New York, Los Angeles, and Florida were doing it. It was interesting to me and that’s how I started down this road. I thought, ‘I’m going to shoot for one year and it’ll be done.’ But, it is never like that,” Monina said.

She started work on The Learning at the end of 2005. She flew to Manila with the recruiters on one of their trips. She started filming in 2006 and finished filming in 2008.

“I wanted to capture the journey of these teachers from the very beginning  from recruitment, through their first year in the system, to reuniting with their families in the Philippines.” She was to meet about 500 teachers who wanted to go to Baltimore to teach.

In her own words, Monina describes the four subjects of her documentary.

“Dorotea Godinez is a Science teacher. She teaches high school Science. She had been teaching in the Philippines for 27 years. She was leaving behind four children and a husband. Then, there was Rhea, who I actually discovered in Baltimore City. I did not meet her in the Philippines. Somehow, she didn’t pop up there, but she popped up in Baltimore. There was something about her that was so peculiar. I couldn’t put my finger on it. She had married young. She had older children. She intrigued me. She was also interested in self-help books and she talked in that self-help manner. Angel was single. She’s a middle school teacher. She teaches Math. She’s a great teacher. She’s in her early twenties, but by then had been teaching for four or five years. Then there’s Grace, who was leaving behind an infant child. She is a Math teacher. In Baltimore she ended up teaching at one of the highest ranked high schools in the state.”

Asked what it is about the teachers in the Philippines that is particularly attractive to US school systems, Monina explained, “English is the language of instruction. That is a legacy from the American colonial period. The Americans set up the public school system [in the Philippines] very much like the public school system in the United States. They mirror each other. Also, there are a lot of education graduates in the Philippines, which helped it become a recruitment hub.”

Monina looks up to Dorotea, Rhea, Angel and Grace. “I admire people who leave everything they know, everything that’s familiar to them, to go to another place where they have no ties. These teachers had no idea where Baltimore was. I like the idea that they are saving themselves. They’re not waiting for someone else to save them.”

She also shares how one of the teachers survives her new life in America  she looks at it as a dream come true.

“Angel and her Disney fairytale wonderland theme came as a surprise. I knew it existed, but I had no idea to what extent it existed. I forgot that whenever she was in her home, she wore a Disneyland sweatshirt. She was surrounded by Disney stuff in her classroom. That is all part of her vision of America  a vision of a wonderland. She goes to Florida and sees Disney World for herself and it’s validated  what she came to America for. She relates this to her students. She says, ‘I was poor, but now I’ve fulfilled my dream. Now I’m teaching here’.”

* * *

Centuries ago, Americans and Europeans came to our shores to teach and to spread Christianity. We were a fertile soil, for we are now not only sending priests and missionaries abroad to spread the faith that we got from them, we are now also playing a role in the education of their descendants.

It saddens me that we have to lose some of our best minds to other countries. But since we now live in a global village, where Baltimore cannot be isolated from Manila, where the good things that happen across the globe send back ripples to our shores, I feel proud. We are now the spring from which others in distant shores draw knowledge. And if all the Filipino teachers have the same values as Passenger X, we are now the spring from where they can learn kindness.

(The Assumption Convent San Lorenzo High School Batch 1979 will hold private screenings of the documentary The Learning on Aug. 14, Tuesday at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Powerplant Cinema 6. Proceeds from the screenings will benefit the Assumption Mission Schools. For ticket inquiries, call 0917-830-6883 (Makati), 0917-537-1103 (Pasig) or 0917-538-1920 (Alabang). Tickets are P500 each. Free seating.)

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)