Pinoy teachers as ‘Thomasites’ in America

New York – The irony is probably not lost on them. Their great grandparents were taught by American teachers called Thomasites, named after the USS Thomas, the American transport ship that brought in the largest single batch to America’s only colony.

Today there are over a thousand of these Pinoy great grandchildren living and working in New York alone. And they are not here to be taught by American teachers. On the contrary, it is they who are teaching Americans. Who knows how many of their pupils do turn out to be actual great grandchildren of those Thomasites?

During the last six days I have been in New York on our final leg of US book launches for “Pagsulay:  Churches of Bohol Before and After the 2013 Earthquake.” By a stroke of luck, what would have taken only two days of events here at the Philippine Consulate on plush Fifth Avenue (incidentally, the only consulate in this high end area of Manhattan) and at Payag Restaurant in Queens, has stretched to five days due to our return tickets to Cebu.

I therefore took the opportunity to meet with old friends and learn as much from them about life here in the Big Apple. There is Rufo Escabarte, a bright student of mine in undergraduate anthropology at the University of San Carlos. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, he taught for ten years in Cebu while taking up a Master’s degree in psychology. He was about to finish a doctorate in education when someone told him to try a Master’s degree in Special Education.

This became his ticket to America, and in 2005 he came to New York. He has not looked back since then, taking care of special children enrolled (and paid for by the government) in the New York public school system. There are challenges but his experience as a teacher in the Philippines helped. More trainings and graduate studies here in the US further honed him in handling autistic children.

In last week’s column I talked of Clarence Pesodas, who outsmarted other teachers at the high school she worked under in New York so much so that she was asked to prepare the curriculum for physical education for the entire district. If her teaching skills are to be measured, then she ranks on the top. For her son, Geronie, won Arizona’s state chemistry championship, besting hundreds of contestants in Phoenix. (Clarence, with loving husband Cocoy, moved to Arizona in 2007 where she is teaching at a Navajo-Hopi Reservation—a very challenging job, while Cocoy describes himself jokingly as a “data person”, short for “da tanan” while working as administrator of the local Catholic Parish.)

But not all is rosy here in America and more so in the Big Apple as New York is dotingly named. There are sad stories of human trafficking here, teachers who thought they would land in actual teaching jobs and join the likes of Clarence and Rufo, only to be given lesser paying jobs while their passports were taken away from them by illegal Filipino recruiters. This is the difference between the Thomasites of a century ago. Back then the Thomasites suffered from the tropical heat and diseases and often received their salaries late and devalued to the Mexican silver peso.

The suffering of Pinoys lured by offers of what would later turn out to be non-existent teaching jobs in the US is  being documented by Marivir Montebon for an upcoming book to be published by the USC Press. Marivir is no stranger to this phenomenon as a paralegal who has interviewed countless victims of these fellow Filipinos who prey on the innocence of their compatriots. Many of these victims sold all their properties back there in the Philippines in their dream of a better life in the US and now have to live in the worst nightmare of their life.

For a thousand success stories here, there are scores of sad and heart-rending lamentations. For the latter, the grass is not always greener here.