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Lyhra Leonardo and Canali Pit-Oy started teaching at Pipestone Area Schools last month. They are from the Philippines and are here as part of a cultural exchange program. Photo by Kyle Kuphal
Canali Pit-Oy and Lyhra Leonardo started teaching at Pipestone Area Schools (PAS) in early October. Leonardo teaches middle and high school math and Pit-Oy teaches special education in the middle and high school.
The two women are from the Philippines and came to PAS through Global Educational Concepts (GEC). According to its website at gecexchanges.com, GEC is a designated sponsor of the U.S. Department of State’s cultural exchange programs.
Leonardo and Pit-Oy said they’re in the United States on J-1 visas. According to the U.S. State Department, the J-1 Visa provides opportunities for foreign nationals to teach, study, conduct research, demonstrate special skills or receive on the job training in the U.S. for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years. Pit-Oy and Leonardo are expected to be at PAS for three years. They said there’s a potential opportunity to extend that for another two years for a total of five.
PAS Superintendent Klint Willert said this is the first time PAS has hired International teachers.
“We learned about this from talking to other districts in the region that were struggling to fill positions due to the significant teacher shortage in the state and region and country,” he said. “We had vacancies in math and special education and had no applicants. The opportunity to pursue international teachers presented itself and we accessed this opportunity to ensure we appropriately staff our buildings and serve student needs.”
Middle and High School Principal Sonja Ortman said she and Willert reviewed applications and videos from potential teachers, interviewed some, and offered the positions to Pit-Oy and Leonardo.
Both of the women are from rural areas of the Philippines and are public school teachers there. Pit-Oy is from Cordillera and Leonardo is from Tarlac Province. Pit-Oy has taught for 10 years and Leonardo has taught for 15 years.
This is the first time either of them has taught in another country. They said they were interested in teaching in the U.S. for both professional and personal reasons. Professionally, they said they were interested in learning about curriculum, the educational system and teaching strategies.
“Special education services there are not yet fixed and properly implemented well,” Pit-Oy said. “That’s why I thought that I’d like to try applying here in the U.S., because the special education services here are good, so I’d like to learn their procedures and the curriculum that they implement.”
The women said there are many differences between schools in the Philippines and the U.S. Students in the Philippines, for example, don’t have the technology that U.S. students do. Pit-Oy and Leonardo said teachers in the Philippines have to provide their own technology and instructional materials, and students have to clean their classrooms. They said class sizes in the Philippines are also much larger at around 40 to 60 students to a classroom. Sometimes that means they have class outside or in other parts of the school building, or have to make other adjustments.
“That’s why the students here are blessed,” Pit-Oy said.
They said the U.S. also takes better care of its teachers by providing higher salaries and professional development opportunities. As part of the arrangement through which they came to the United States, Pit-Oy and Leonardo will share their experiences and what they’ve learned when they return to the Philippines.
From a more personal perspective, the women said they were interested in traveling and experiencing different cultures. Pit-Oy said she dreams of traveling around the world. Leonardo said she was interested in experiencing the four seasons.
“Back in the Philippines we only have two seasons — the dry season and the wet season,” she said.
Leonardo is hopeful that her husband, Philip, and their children, Lhyca, 7, and Noah, 3, will be able to join her here sometime next year, and that their children will get to experience snow.
“In the Philippines, most of the children there wish that they had snow,” Pit-Oy said.
She and Leonardo said that the pictures they’ve seen of snow make it look beautiful. They also both said that they’ve already found Minnesota’s fall weather to be cold.
“We are freezing,” Leonardo said.
After one month teaching at PAS, Pit-Oy and Leonardo said the experience is going well. They said school staff members have been kind, generous and supportive, and the students have mostly been well-behaved and respectful.
Leonardo and Pit-Oy did not know each other before beginning this experience, but they now share an apartment in Pipestone. They said their impression of the community is that the people are friendly, warm and generous, and that the community is quiet and peaceful.