MARYLAND SCHOOLS BOW TO PINOY TEACHERS DEMAND

Filipino teachers in Prince George’s public schools scored a major victory after school authorities decided to scrap an earlier directive classifying essential and non-critical teaching positions and promised to renew work visas for deserving mentors.

The new order is contained in a letter dated May 5 and signed by lawyer Synthia J. Shilling, chief human resources officer of the Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) that was obtained by the Manila Mail.

The Manila Mail has been reporting on the plight of Filipino teachers in PG county since this issue surfaced two months ago.

“Effective immediately, PGCPS will make decisions regarding H-1B renewal without regard to teaching assignment in critical and non-critical areas. As a result, PGCPS is rescinding any decision based on non-critical area assignment.

“Further, PGCPS will process renewal petitions on behalf of all tenured H-1B teachers who meet the other requirements outlined in AP 4117 notwithstanding prior notice issued to the contrary,” Shilling announced.




The Pilipino Educators Network (PEN) which represents about 800 Filipino teachers in Maryland had protested provisions of Administrative Procedure 4117 that was foisted on the county’s foreign teachers without warning or consultation. The school directive created for the first time the distinction between “critical” and “non-critical” teaching positions that Filipino teachers’ group labeled as “discriminatory”.

Dr. Carlo Parapara, PEN president, said that if PGCPS has to lay-off teachers due to the $155 million cut in the school system’s budget this year, it has to be based on seniority, performance and tenure of individual teachers, not on their nationality.

“If it is a reduction in force, it has to cover everyone,” he said.

Many of the Filipino teachers are assigned to subjects that were classified as “non-critical”. The fact that even some listed in “critical” positions were given pink slips merely added to the initial confusion in the weeks after AP 4117 was implemented by the PGCPS.

“We dread this kind of uncertainty,” Parapara wrote the Prince George’s County policy-making Board of Education.

Filipino teachers are present in nearly all 197 public schools in PG County. Many are months away from obtaining their “green card” or about to begin the process of acquiring one. More than the pain of losing their jobs, the Filipino mentors see the loss of this opportunity to gain legal permanent status as more disheartening.

Shilling’s letter added that “Until further notice, those small number of employees who recently received a denial of continued sponsorship based on not teaching in a critical area will have those notices rescinded and will be approved for continued sponsorship, assuming all other requirements of AP 4117 have been met.”

“Those who are awaiting determinations for continued sponsorship based on upcoming (2011) visa expirations will receive approval, if they meet all other requirements of AP 4117,” she declared.

PEN officials had stressed that they were ready to work with the PGCPS from the outset to resolve this problem and had sought dialogues with county and state education authorities.

“Our biggest concern has always been the school children whom we’ve grown to love, and how we can do our job better for their benefit,” Parapara said.

APODCAA: SERVICE IS END IN ITSELF

Service, declared Vic de Leon, is an end in itself. “Doing service is gratification enough,” he said.

De Leon is president of the Alpha Phi Omega alumni association in Metro DC (APODCAA) and on this weekend, dozens of members and their friends fanned out across the capital to help re-paint and beautify schools as part of DC’s Hands-on Community Service program.

They’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. “It was among the first projects that we adopted,” he explained.




The APODCAA is one of the most active Fil-Am organizations in the region. They have about 60 active members in the Metro DC region although De Leon believes they have many more “brods” and “sis” living in the area who still have to make their presence felt.

On April 30, about a dozen APO men and women helped paint the Peabody Elementary School on C Street NE. Some 147 students go there and they include a few Asian-Americans; over 40 percent of students belong to low-income families.





The group was composed of De Leon, Di Aquino, Soan Velasquez, Sherwin Landicho, Nenette Malapitan, Jesse Dayrit, Bodgie Oasan, Dennis Gawat, Santi and Lulu Sipino, and Axi and Pol Alvarez, and their children.

Pauline Sipin, the youngest daughter of one APO officer, saw there were enough “warm bodies” at Peabody so she organized friends and classmates to complete a mural for the C.W. Harris Elementary School.




She led an online sign-up of the Student Architect Club of Montgomery College in Rockville, MD and even managed to get the school to provide them with T-shirts and materials for the mural.

Her group was composed of Pauline, Julie Latos, Sonia Carbajal, Alireza Pirjahanideh, Ashley Beeks, Brian Alfaro, Damian Seals, Daniel Salgado, Diana Lopez, Ismael Barry, Johany Botero, Markus Hongmanivanh, Medard Masangu, Mojgan Estiyagh, professor Randy Steiner, Riham Osman and Zahra Naserdehghan

De Leon has posited that public service is contagious, noting that their activities have often become family affairs involving even their young children. “I think they’ve grown to enjoying seeing their parents giving back to the community,” he explained.




The APO actually grew out of the United States. Its first overseas chapter was established at the Far Eastern University in Manila in 1950. Within three years, the Manila chapter had expanded to most of the metropolis and in the Visayas and was registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission as a non-profit, non-stock organization.

The APODCAA was formed in 2001 in Rockville, MD as a family support and community service alumni organization, committed to “doing a good turn daily.” While they’re also geared towards helping the Philippines, recently shipping scores of dialysis machines to Bicol and Mindanao, the group is immersed in the communities of their adopted home.

They participate in feeding activities for homeless Washingtonians, joined Habitat for Humanity projects and even help out the yearly Marine Corps Marathon.

De Leon said they only give what they have: their time, energy and friendship. “We don’t have money but that doesn’t stop us,” he declared, “we don’t choose who we help, for as long as we can help, we will do it because service is our core value.”

At the end of their work at Peabody Elementary School, they spread out their “baon” for an impromptu family picnic. They invited the school’s principal and maintenance people to a Filipino feast. “They were so happy to taste our puto and pancit,” De Leon mused, “watching them enjoying gave us a really warm feeling.”

FALLS CHURCH LAD JOINS 'AZKALS'

DC United Academy midfielder Jose “OJ” Porteria will be playing for the “Azkals”, the Philippine national soccer team.

OJ is the 16-year-old son of Manila Mail columnist and realtor Jocelyn Porteria and Elmer Lomat. He is a member of the DC United Academy, the 2nd team of the national capital’s premier soccer club.

Azkals team captain Aly Borromeo and regular Anton del Rosario held try-outs last month in Daly City, CA. for possible reinforcements and spotted Porteria and fellow Fil-Am James Rochilitz.

The Azkals are fighting for a slot in the Asian Football Confederation Championship after beating regional powerhouse Vietnam in the AFF Suzuki Cup and winning a qualifying match against Bangladesh. Their next international match pits them against Sri Lanka in June.

Another prize in their sights is the coming Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) in Indonesia later this year. The Azkals are building an under-23 squad that could finally net the country’s first soccer gold in the biennial event.




Azkals coach Michael Weiss also scouted players with Filipino roots at the Nagold Blitz Football Tournament in Germany. He spotted at least three players who’ll be invited to join the Azkals camp.

Porteria is a junior at Falls Church High School where he is the captain of the school’s Jaguars soccer team. “OJ is a very entertaining player. It seems almost from the time he could walk he has been in love with the soccer ball,” Team America coach Larry Dunn described his ward. Porteria also plays for Team America.

“He never stops running,” said DC United coach Roberto DaSilva. “He will intimidate the defender by pressuring the ball at all cost. I can see him scoring many goals,” he added.

OJ has some international experience as well. DC United Academy represented the under-16 US team at the 2010 Future Champions Tournament in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

The Pinoy Factor

Something to take note of as our community prepares for month-long festivities this summer to promote Philippine culture in the context of a changing America.

In his book, “Real American Ethics: Taking Responsibility for Our Country,” author Albert Borgmann says that “ours is a decent country,” but one with troubling features, particularly its “waning support for values of equality, dignity and justice, and for traditional American concerns for the poor and the environment.” Generosity and resourcefulness, he contends, are “the virtues that distinguish U.S. history when we have been at our best.”

In helping reshape America’s political landscape – and perhaps provide some antidote – Filipinos have a lot to contribute. Such as reclaiming what Filipino author Gilda Cordero-Fernando calls “the cultures of the table and the art and virtue of the household. We love to create space and readiness for recognizing and engaging the sacred in our midst.”

Spirituality, after all, is a special gift we bring to America. We center our lives in our homes, among family, friends and neighbors. We love to gather in our mother’s kitchen to catch up on the latest tsismis. We look forward to family reunions with siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces and grandparents.

We have that Pinoy factor. As Cordero-Fernando aptly puts it, albeit tongue-in-cheek, the Filipino is “a citizen of the world. He’s in all the villages and capitals, colonizing the West, bringing his guitar and his bagoong, his walis na tingting, his tabo, his lolo and lola. Filipinos like to yakap, akbay, hawak, kalong, kalabit.

We sleep side by side, siping-siping, we go out kabit kabit. There’s lots of us to go around.” Our yayas, she goes on to say, teach American kids to pray so they become more gentle and more obedient.

“The Pinoy finds time to be nice, to be kind, to apologize, to be there when you’re depressed, to help you with your utang and your wedding dress. The Filipino is a giver, never mind what it does to his liver, never mind what it takes. Hardships of the Third World don’t dry up his blood, they just make him more compassionate, more feeling, of the other guy’s lot.”

We celebrate tayo (us) instead of sila (them), says Filipino author and sociologist Melba Padilla Maggay. She calls it our strength – “a sense of the kapwa tao,” or a shared sense of identity and consciousness of the “other.” The Filipino family, she adds, has “every potential to expand beyond the boundaries of kinship and enlarge the sense of one’s sakop to the proportions of a nation.”

And that is truly what we bring – special gifts that may yet transform this hostile landscape into the decent country that it is: Our rich and vibrant cultural values and heritage.

Everyone knows that we get along with just about anybody regardless of color, creed, gender or hair-do. As Borgmann argues, “once we have gathered at the dinner table, wisdom and friendship can be ours, and they in turn can give us the courage to join with our neighbors in the design of a public realm that encourages celebration.

Perhaps we can draw from common celebrations the generosity and resourcefulness to meet our obligations of justice and stewardship. Thus the United States may become the country of grace that the people who came here have searched for and worked for.”

The summer months provide opportunities to engage the American public and energize our mutual encounters not only with our food, songs and dances, but with the vitality and vibrancy of our human spirit.

Who knows, this might just soften the hard edges of those gray and granite structures that Borgmann has written about. Our built environment, he says, is infused with moral content that shapes who we are and how we live. The urgent moral task, he suggests, is to recognize this relationship, take responsibility for it and ask what kind of life expresses our deepest shared values.

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