Teacher vacancies in public schools are increasing in all states nationwide.
According to online news organization NewsNationNow.com, “there are 36,000 teacher vacancies, from kindergarten through high school, and another 163,000 teachers aren’t qualified for their jobs, according to data collected by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University.”
The situation is so dire that some schools have implemented “untraditional” concepts such as switching to a shorter school week—from five to four days.
The situation is similar in Hawai’i.
According to the Hawai’i State Teachers Association, as noted in the same article “more than 60,000 children are not taught by a Hawai’i-qualified teachers each year, and that the number of educators leaving Hawai’i has increased by more than 70% since 2012.”
The Hawai’i Department of Education (DOE) has resorted to recruiting teachers from the Philippines under the J-1 visa classification since 2020.
In school year 2023-2024, a group of 74 Filipino teachers arrived in Hawai’i with the majority fielded in Maui County. Another 100 are expected to join the roster of J-1 teachers in the school year 2024-2025.
Because of my involvement as one of the advocates for the J-1 teachers here, I was intrigued by this book by Mike Henrich—a career educator and first-time author—and the terms he describes himself on the back cover.
To be an effective advocate, it is necessary to understand the conditions and issues that our public school teachers go through daily—and in describing that—this book delivers.
This memoir is the story of his education over the last 40 years—as both a student of the public schools, and eventually one of its teachers.
Born in the late 1970s to parents who served as US Peace Corps Volunteers, Mike Henrich was born in the Philippines and spent his first few years in Dagupan City, a coastal area in the Philippines.
He was the youngest guest at our wedding—at a month old—where his father served as the best man.
On his second visit to Hawai’i, he had just completed his stint as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific, where he taught in the island’s public schools.
During his short visit to Hawai’i, he was invited to be a guest lecturer at King Intermediate School in Kaneohe, where his skills in establishing rapport with young people were already evident.
A multi-awarded educator, his inclination for the profession was probably influenced by his parents, particularly his dad who also is a retired public school teacher in Virginia.
The book “illustrates the potential to serve or fail families” in his various roles as an educator—as a substitute teacher, after-school tutor, middle and high school classroom teacher, and behavioral interventionist in the richest and poorest parts of the world.
In the early 2000s, he married an immigrant from Cebu, and a few years later returned with her to the Philippines to finish his master’s degree and complete his thesis on Filipino education and history.
In that chapter, his keen observations on the differences between the American and Filipino educational systems are thought-provoking.
In one private school, he marveled as the teacher’s 50 students “stood reverently to greet her in unison…in their neat uniforms, the moment she entered the classroom.”
But when he introduced himself to other teachers in the staff room hoping to learn something for his research—they waved off his research questions and asked him to find them work in the USA instead!
The most intriguing segment for me was the chapter called “Teacher Inactivist.”
He relates how many of his students felt directly threatened by then-President Trump’s rhetoric and dismayed by the terms “Muslim Ban” and “Build the Wall.”
His internal monologue on what to do when one of his American-born students called a Muslim classmate a “terrorist” was unforgettable, as with the incident when another student had her hijab removed by a fellow teacher.
His experiences in dealing with gender neutrality and the use of proper pronouns, or using “preferred names” versus “dead names” were thought-provoking, and his relief was that his students responded with “Oh, hell no” if they wanted their teachers to be issued guns.
He found comfort in the fact that his students provided a daily reminder that the country’s political and social divisions weren’t as gloomy—illustrating it by the day-to-day process of getting along with one another and not taking themselves too seriously!
At the end of the book, he notes that “dedication to what you love is worth it even if just barely…” and to be a teacher is to be a student—forever.
The book is not only a journey into the complexities of our education system, but also a window to how a GenXer brought up in a family with progressive views would assess the world during the past half-century.
It is a heartfelt testament to his parents for producing an awesome teacher with multiple awards to his name, but more importantly—an outstanding human being.
For those considering teaching as a lifelong profession, this is certainly a book to read and cherish.
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ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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