By Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV
Over the recent years, many public schools in the United States have preferred to recruit teachers from the Philippines for hard-to-fill posts.
According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, public schools in Alabama have always preferred to hire Filipino teachers because they always “seem to work out well."
“Our experience was that they were very, very good educators," said Tim Wilhite, a spokesman for the Baldwin County, Alabama Public Schools.
In Wilhite’s county alone, a dozen Filipino teachers were hired in 2007.
“If we had the need for additional teachers, and couldn't fill the positions locally, we’d consider recruiting from the Philippines again," he said.
Likewise, 16 Filipino teachers were recruited from the Philippines to teach mathematics, science and special education – where certified teachers are reportedly often hard to find – at the Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Kentucky.
The report said that recruiters from the Fayette schools went to the Philippines in late 2007 to interview several dozen job applicants – all of whom have had teaching experience in the country.
From that pool, they selected 16 to teach in Lexington schools for the school year 2008-2009. They are all working on visas sponsored by the county schools that will allow them to stay in the United States for up to three years.
Fayette County School Superintendent Stu Silberman also said that they have master’s degrees and are qualified to teach in Kentucky.
Shortage of American teachers
However, public school officials were quick to defend that they are hiring a lot of foreign teachers, specifically Filipinos, because there is a relatively small number of prospective graduates from US colleges with training in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects.
“We’ve had some very serious shortage areas where we just can’t find people in these particular certifications," said Silberman. - source: GMA News
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