Filipino Teachers to Arrive Friday

By Icess Fernandez, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

Aug. 12–From halfway around the world, the teachers that the Wichita school district needs are finally on their way.

They’ll be here Friday.

“It’s quite exciting,” said Ed Raymond, assistant superintendent for human resources.

Ten teachers from the Philippines are arriving and will be oriented as quickly as possible to prepare them for Wichita classrooms.

District officials traveled to the Philippines in March to recruit hard-to-find teachers in math, science and special education with more than three years of experience. They hired 32.

Through the remainder of last school year and the summer, the district has run into obstacles: Some of the Filipino teachers could not get Kansas teaching licenses. Some could not pass the English proficiency exam.

The process was expedited after the district sent a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Raymond said.

So far the district is expecting 20 Filipino teachers for this school year, Raymond said.

“We are not getting as many as we wanted, but that has been an issue all the way through,” he said.

Ten of them arrive Friday. The others may arrive in the next few weeks, Raymond said.

Substitutes have been put in their places until they arrive.

As soon as the teachers arrive they will be taken to apartments reserved for them. For the next two weeks, they will be acclimated to American culture, introduced to co-workers, bosses and students, and given a new-teacher orientation, Raymond said.

Once the teachers start to become familiar with American customs, they are in for a shock, said Marlene Obermeyer, who founded Culture Advantage, a company that conducts cultural awareness seminars.

Obermeyer, who is also Filipino, came to the country 20 years ago as a nurse. She knows firsthand what the teachers will face.

“You are educated and a professional and you know your stuff, but it’s a different culture and people think you don’t know what you’re doing because you don’t know the language,” she said. “English here is not the same as what we learned in the Philippines, and the cost of that is credibility.”

Obermeyer said what contributed to her culture shock was what she saw on television in her country. What she saw there and what was true weren’t the same.

“When I came here I thought I was a young modern woman,” she said. “I thought I knew about America because I watched TV.”

Obermeyer will give two sessions of culture training to the teachers.

“Most of the time they forget they are going to function in another cultural environment,” she said. “They have to be prepared for cultural shock. It effects you emotionally, physically and socially.”

To help them adjust, the teachers will spend one week with the substitutes to get the swing of things, Raymond said.

He hopes that some of the sightseeing they have planned will help them know more about the city before going into the classroom.

“We’ll drive them around and show them distinctive places like Cowtown,” he said. “We’ll show them the 155 square miles here in Wichita.”

Reach Icess Fernandez at 316-268-6544 or ifernandez@wichitaeagle.com [mailto:ifernandez@wichitaeagle.com].

—–

Copyright (c) 2006, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.