A teacher’s shortage is sweeping the country — forcing districts to look farther afield for educators.
John Carlo Chan, a special education teacher from the Philippines, with the help of speech pathologist Natalie Harper instructs Rachel Lee at Oceano High School in Pacifica, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Chan is among the growing number of international teachers helping California fill its teacher shortage. He’d been educating 30 kids on the autism spectrum in his native Philippines. But when a friend mentioned the demand for teachers on the other side of the ocean, Chan decided to apply.
“It came out of having a real lack of candidates,” said Diego Ochoa, superintendent of the San Mateo-Foster City School District. Ochoa said that last year, his team realized that special education students would be starting the 2023-24 academic year without a permanent teacher in the classroom.This year, nine out of 10 public schools across the country struggled to hire teachers, according to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Michelle Elliott, the assistant manager of human resources at San Jose Unified, said when she first joined the district in 2013, they were hiring around five teachers from abroad per year. A decade later, that number has jumped to as high as 30 annually — and today, the district employs 95 staff members from 19 countries, including Belize, Cameroon, Peru and India.
Teacher and advisor Joseph Alvarico works with students in the robotics program at Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. Alvarico is originally from the Philippines and just won a California Teacher of the Year award. Have Bay Area students recovered from pandemic learning losses? Here’s what state test scores show
His father took out a loan for his visa and documentation costs. His family put up their home as collateral. He said goodbye to his fiancé. Then, he hopped on a plane — and nearly two decades later, Alvarico still hasn’t left. He now teaches engineering, leads the Ygnacio Valley robotics team, and spearheads a STEM club for female students, among a number of other activities.
Still, that hasn’t always been easy. Alvarico remembers the culture shock of his first Mt. Diablo placement, where he taught biology at a school where nearly one in 10 students is suspended every day. The behavior issues were unlike anything he’d ever seen in Manila, and he and the other Filipino teachers would regularly have days where they’d break down into tears.
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