From Bangkok, Thailand, to Margaret Pollard High School, Francis Salmazan has seen a lot in his time as an international teacher.
He is entering his fifth year as an 8th grade science teacher at Pollard and says teaching there has been almost like a dream come true.
“Before I left college, I knew that working in the US was something I always wanted to do,” he said.
Salmazan grew up in Tarlac, Philippines, before spending 10 years as a teacher in Bangkok. He says he enjoys seeing the world through young people’s eyes, exploring the culture and teaching students about his home.
In Chatham County Schools, Salmazan is one of 53 international teachers. It is a figure that continues to grow year after year. In fact, North Carolina leads the nation in terms of international teachers, and the number has quadrupled in the past decade. The boom in international teachers could be a solution to workforce shortages that have plagued the county and state.
According to an analysis by WRAL-TV, North Carolina has allocated $121.4 million in this year’s budget to pay international teachers, six times more than a decade ago. This funding is why international teachers now make up more than 2% of the total teachers in the state and 8.5% in CCS.
Salmazan is able to teach at CCS through a J-1 visa, which allows exchange visitor programs between countries. The visa lasts three years, but is often extended by two years if teachers meet performance targets.
At the end of this school year, Salmazan will have to return to the Philippines because his visa will expire.
He ended up finding Pollard through an international teacher company based in North Carolina called Educational Partners International (EPI). The company helps teachers file for visas, find housing and other basic needs at their new schools, and help identify jobs for which they are qualified.
EPI is one of several programs used by CCS. Others include the Chapel Hill-based company, Participate Learning, which is how Siler City second-grade teacher Sandra Rincon ended up at CCS.
“We came here to teach the students, but it’s more fulfilling than I could have imagined,” Rincon said.
Rincon is from Colombia and teaches at a bilingual school, meaning half of the education is in Spanish. She said bringing her culture into the classroom has helped students grow.
“I have a student who entered second grade who didn’t know any Spanish, even though her family is Hispanic,” she said. “At the end of the year, her mother called me and said she was finally able to talk to her grandmother – that’s more important than any lesson I can teach, because it will last forever.”
Rincon said especially at her school, which has a high Hispanic population, she can be an asset because she connects students with their cultural roots in Latin America. She said international teachers are given the freedom to incorporate their home cultures into lesson plans through dances, presentations and parties.
“We offer a unique mindset,” Rincon said. “We can teach culture as part of the curriculum or teach the curriculum as part of culture.”
This kind of cultural influence and awareness is something CCS sees as a huge benefit to its students, and it’s why the district continues to bring in international teachers. JoAnna Massoth is an international teacher trainer with CCS. She has seen firsthand the benefits of increasing international teachers in the district.
“I started doing this work in 2018 and I had 10 teachers of two languages,” said Massoth. “Last year I had 46 international and dual language teachers and there are more in the county.”
Massoth helps fill the role of companies by helping with housing and helping international teachers adapt to the specific cultural challenges at CCS.
While the growth of international teachers has generally been successful, it is not without challenges. These challenges have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and rapid growth in the county. Massoth and teachers said helping teachers find housing and transportation became much more difficult this year due to rising costs in both markets.
“Last year, it was a nightmare to find a car or make the necessary appointments for the documents we needed,” Rincon said. “It was not easy for us.”
Massoth said these challenges are likely to be short-term and caused by the immediate fallout from COVID-19. Overall, she believes the district will be able to continue to grow its international teacher program, and the state supports them in doing so.
CCS recently announced it was adding three more international teachers from Colombia ahead of the new school year to help out at Jordan-Matthews Middle School. The district is able to support international teachers through Massoth and an additional coach, which most districts do not have.
North Carolina had the most new J-1 visas last year, with 830 new teacher visas. Each year, North Carolina receives about one in five to six of the new visas issued.
With fewer people graduating from NC college teaching programs, the state is looking for international teachers to help fill the need. According to federal data, 4,228 students completed a degree program in North Carolina in 2020, down 36% from 2012.
“As an international teacher, you are already different from others,” Massoth said. “We want to support the creation of a community here for them to thrive. When we do that, we really help the district, these teachers, and more importantly the students to be better prepared to be global citizens.”
Reporter Ben Rappaport can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @b_rappaport.
