FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Onofre Bejona spent his 34th birthday riding the bus alone, readying himself for the next three years of his life. It was Aug. 14, and the teacher had arrived in Broward only a few days before from his home in Malita, a city in the southern Philippines. School was starting soon, and he wanted to understand the Broward bus system enough not to get lost, because he would be using it multiple times a day.
Bejona couldn’t celebrate with his family like usual; he’d left his parents and two brothers in his homeland, 12 hours ahead in time. He had made at least one friend, though: Artie Marfori, the 48-year-old Filipino science teacher who now teaches next door to him at Westpine Middle.
Bejona and Marfori are among the 102 teachers Broward public schools hired from the Philippines as part of an effort to fill hundreds of vacant teaching positions this new school year. The two instructors recently spoke with the South Florida Sun Sentinel, recalling the highlights and challenges of their experience so far. Though they miss their families back home, they see this trip as a valuable opportunity.
“I instill in my students, you should value your education because you are lucky enough,” Bejona said.
After his third school day, his room was sparsely decorated, save for the white board, on which he had written his name, “Mr. Onofre Bejona Jr.,” “Movement: ask permission,” and “Voice level: 3.”
Marfori also had just arrived in Broward, but from Laguna, a northern province southeast of Manila, leaving behind his wife and two children. He and Bejona now share a one-bedroom apartment with two other teachers in order to afford South Florida’s steep housing costs.
“We crossed several rivers in order to be here,” Bejona said.
A journey to Florida
To find teachers, Broward school district’s human resources department worked with Foreign Cultural Exchange Consultants, a company that helps districts across the country hire teachers from the Philippines on J-1 visas as part of a “cultural exchange.” The initiative came at no cost to the district. The teachers must bear all the expenses themselves.
To get to Florida, they took out loans, went through an extensive hiring process, piles of paperwork, and a 19-hour flight.
Marfori and Bejona won’t see their families as usual, a big deal, because they’re so family-oriented. Now, the two are happy if they manage to get in a daily 30-minute video call. The 12-hour time difference means that their families are often on their way to bed when they’re waking up.
Broward isn’t the first district to outsource teachers from the Philippines, though it has hired the most of all the districts working with FCEC this year.
Ligaya Avenida, the founder and president of the company, has been bringing teachers from the Philippines to districts in Nevada, California, and Texas for 18 years. The teacher shortage, made worse by the pandemic, isn’t new, Avenida said.
A former administrator in the San Francisco district and a Filipino herself, Avenida describes her company as a sort of recruitment agency, finding and vetting candidates and sending them to the districts to review. School principals then conduct interviews with those candidates.
Back in the Philippines, Bejona and Marfori would interview with several principals in a night, often starting about 8 p.m. and going until 4 in the morning. They were rejected by several principals before Christopher Johnson, the principal of Westpine Middle, accepted them.
“We failed a lot,” Bejona said. “It was Mr. Johnson who trusted us.”
Most of the teachers hired by Broward will teach math, science, like Bejona and Marfori, or special education, the areas with some of the most vacancies.
“Every district wants math, science, special-ed in that order,” Avenida said.
The teachers arrived to teach in Florida at a contentious time. The district itself has faced upheaval over a string of issues on the state and local levels: Gov. DeSantis’ removal on Friday of four School Board members in the wake of a grand jury report; rising conflicts over parental rights issues; new rules over what students may learn about race, history and LGBTQ issues, as well as teachers and students leaving the district due to the pandemic, low salaries and rising housing costs.
A different perspective
When Bejona and Marfori look out at their classrooms, they see abundance compared to what they’re used to at home.
“When I saw my students here, they are so fortunate compared to my country,” Marfori said, describing their backpacks and smartphones.
When Bejona was a student himself, he said, he worked as a housekeeper and in a field, planting corn.
As a teacher in Malita, he said he taught high school music, art, physical education, and science, and served as a principal of an annex school attended by mostly indigenous students.
Meanwhile, Marfori taught seventh-grade science for 26 years in three different schools.
Salary-wise, the two teachers said they will make in a month in the U.S. what they would make in a year in the Philippines.
One of the major motivations for teachers is the money, Avenida said, even with the steep upfront costs. Altogether, most teachers spend upward of $10,000 to cover all the expenses, and many take out loans to afford them, she said.
Marfori said a close family friend loaned him the money.
Each month, he said, he will spend half his Broward teachers’ salary paying it back. Much of the remaining money will go to his family: his daughter, who is in third grade, and his 19-year-old son, who lives with disabilities after losing his legs to an infection.
Bejona also took out loans, but from a private company. He, too, will spend his salary supporting his family. He already helped put his younger brother through school.
On top of paying for their visas, loans, and sending money back home, the teachers had to quickly find housing and transportation. They lived in temporary hotels for the first 15 days, but after that, they were on their own.
The first week, when the school day ended, Marfori would Uber back to his temporary hotel in Fort Lauderdale, and Bejona would take the bus back to his hotel in Tamarac.
Often, the two would promptly go to bed. In the Philippines, Bejona explained, it would already be dark outside at 6 p.m. He would wake up at 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., make dinner, and then fall back asleep again until 4 a.m. He had to get used to mornings without his mother’s breakfast.
The two would spend their spare time looking for apartments as the end of their 15 days drew nearer, a somewhat Herculean task for non-citizens without credit scores, Social Security numbers, or reliable transportation.
Despite the uncertainty, Bejona said he remained positive.
“Most Filipinos are flexible, we know how to manage our stress,” he said. “Filipinos are always smiling.”
The two didn’t only come for higher salaries, but for the career opportunities as well. Teaching in the U.S gives them a chance to learn new teaching methods, use new technology, and bring some of that experience back to the Philippines.
“We do not have same kind of resources that the U.S. has,” Avenida said, citing the classroom materials and technology. In Broward specifically, she said, she was amazed by the effort the district put into welcoming the teachers, from having someone waiting for them at the airport to providing them with a bus when they go to apply for Social Security.
“That doesn’t usually happen in some of the districts,” she said.
Cultural differences
At schools in the Philippines, it’s typical to see 50 students in a classroom. In Broward, class sizes are much smaller, but that doesn’t mean fewer distractions.
“They have their gadgets, their headphones,” Marfori said.
Students in the Philippines, the two teachers agreed, felt lucky to be in the classroom. That wasn’t always the case now.
For an activity the first week of school, Bejona had students fill out a sheet of paper with questions about themselves, such as their fears and dreams. But when he asked some of them to discuss their answers with the class, to his surprise, they chose not to share.
“They’re very used to teaching children who are very obedient,” Avenida said. “Our culture there is, you stand up and say good morning. That’s different here. They have to transcend that.”
Bejona and Marfori compare notes about their days and share strategies they used. Bejona started telling students he would mark them absent if they weren’t sitting in their assigned seats, which proved effective, so Marfori started doing it, too.
Facing challenges
The language barrier doesn’t help. The two teachers said that sometimes they wouldn’t know the right word to use to instruct students. Even the other teachers would sometimes talk too fast for them to understand.
Avenida said she prepared teachers to face some level of prejudice as part of their training before they arrived.
“I’ve never heard of some outright backlash,” she said. “I think the teachers experience some subtle ones.”
The program has faced some setbacks through the years: Avenida said she had to suspend the program during the Trump administration after he cracked down on J-1 visas.
Most of the criticism she said she receives comes from people who see the program as taking away jobs from American citizens. But they’re filling jobs that otherwise would remain vacant, even with the urgent push to find candidates, she said.
“If you’re an HR person and working for the district and your job is to fill classrooms with teachers, what are you going to do?” she asked. “Colleges are not graduating teachers in huge numbers. They’re not, they’re just not.”
Reminders of home
Broward’s diversity has helped the teachers feel more comfortable. And Filipinos tend to form a close-knit group in the U.S., Bejona said, brought together by shared experiences far from home.
Marfori was excited to see a Filipino student in one of his classes. The first few days of their stay, Bejona and Marfori found a Filipino business and ended up getting dinner with the workers there.
“We hugged them,” Marfori said.
The Filipino teachers have a built-in community with one another. With days left in their temporary hotels, thanks to the help of a letter from the school district, Marfori and Bejona managed to sign a lease on an apartment, a one bedroom they now share with two other new teachers.
Money isn’t as important to the two teachers as education. “If you are educated, if you finish your degree, the thing is, you are in a higher class, you are what they call more successful,” Bejona said. “That’s how we value education. Not really the money.”
Strong family values
The teachers’ J-1 visas will expire in three years, with the option to renew for another two. They both said they plan to return home at the end of that time, though if an option to stay in the U.S. arose, Bejona said he would take it.
Some Filipino teachers bring their families after taking a year to get adjusted, Avenida said. But neither Marfori nor Bejona intend to do so, not only for financial reasons, but because they think American values might differ too much from Filipino ones when it comes to balancing work and family.
“I like close family values that are very strong,” Marfori added. “And even if you go to a far distant place, that’s it. They’re still strong.”
For at least three years, the two will have family time in texts and 30-minute calls. Marfori’s daughter will be in sixth grade by the time his initial visa is up.
The two put on a good face, but the longing is there.
“We must wear a facade,” Bejona said. Marfori added, “We don’t want them to worry too much.”
