Dr. Jerome Ramirez, the new middle school language arts teacher at the Elgin School, began teaching his sixth, seventh and eighth grade students on January 3.
“My students are amazing and way beyond my expectations,” he said in a recent interview with the PRT. “It’s like heaven. There are no problems. They are well-behaved, respectful and have a thirst for knowledge.”
Dr. Ramirez is the last of the four international teachers at the Patagonia and Elgin Schools to arrive and assume teaching duties. Unable to find suitable candidates locally, the public schools in Elgin and Patagonia have filled teacher vacancies through international recruiting.
Dr. Ramirez has been teaching for 20 years, beginning in 2003. His most recent position was at the largest international school in Vietnam.
He was born and raised in Cebu City, an industrial city on the second largest of the Philippine Islands. He is the youngest of three children in a family whose members are mostly educators. His grandmother, prominent in the Department of Education, encouraged him to become a teacher. Ramirez was an academic scholar and received a tuition-free college education, earning a BA in English and a BS in education, before going on to earn a doctorate in education.
After two years of teaching at a private school, Dr. Ramirez was encouraged by his grandmother to move to public school teaching where, he said, “The work is stable, and you can rise through the ranks.” In 2016, he “topped out, being one of the top two out of 9,000 people who took the National Exam for School Principals. I studied hard, mostly at cafes at the malls.”
Dr. Ramirez became a vice principal, and by 2017, was the breadwinner for the family. He began to contemplate his future, thinking, “Something has to change. I have this dream that I want to buy my parents a house and a car. The only way to bring my dream to reality is to become an international teacher where the salary is higher than in the Philippines.”
Dr. Ramirez relocated to Myanmar to teach at the Horizon International School. After one year he returned to the Philippines for a few months, where he was certified as a principal.
He went back to Myanmar for three years, but the deteriorating political situation there compelled him to move. Friends and colleagues persuaded him to relocate to Vietnam, a beautiful country with a low cost of living. He contracted with the Bin School, the largest private school in Vietnam, as well as an English as a Second Language school.
“It has always been my dream to be in the U.S. ever since I was young,” Dr. Ramirez said. “While in Vietnam I began applying to American schools. At the same time, I applied for a visa and was given a J1, basically a teacher exchange visa. While I was offered positions in the U.S. I didn’t want to accept any until I got my H1 visa which would allow me to stay.”
Everything came together for Dr. Ramirez when both the offer from the Elgin School and the H1 visa solidified.
After completing his commitment in Vietnam in December, Dr. Ramirez flew to Hong Kong where he boarded a 14-hour flight to California and then flew on to Tucson. He was greeted at the airport by Elgin School Principal Mary Faley, who drove him directly to his apartment in Sierra Vista.
Dr. Ramirez said his experience with living in different settings and working with people of different nationalities has made the adjustment to living and working in southern Arizona easy.
“There has been no culture shock,” he said. “People here have been welcoming and supportive.”
Dr. Ramirez is presently sharing an apartment with his colleague Aisel Gaviola, splitting the bills and the cooking and sharing a “pre-loved” 2014 Honda CRV. He has obtained his driver’s license and has met other Philippine teachers living in Sierra Vista.
The only difficult moments were in the period before he got the Honda, when he and Gaviola were carpooling with a woman teaching in Nogales. He had to get up at 3:30am to be ready for his ride so that everyone could make it to work on time.
Dr. Ramirez is grateful to many people for his easy transition to living and teaching in our community. First and foremost, he thanks Principal Mary Foley for all her assistance and her trust and confidence in him. He also thanks the Board and parents who have been so welcoming and supportive, and the substitute teacher who taught his classes for the fall semester, who put name tags on all the desks so he could quickly learn his 50 students’ names.
To the community, he said, “Thank you for approving my position. For taking a leap of faith. I thank God, above all, for the opportunity. I prayed for this, and He allowed it to happen. I will do my best in my capacity to deliver the best education I can to my students. No child left behind.”
Dr. Ramirez’s long-term goals are to remain in the U.S., learn how things are done here, and eventually find a role in Arizona’s Department of Education. In a year or two, his family will come for a visit, and return home. He will visit them as his financial position improves.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ramirez is spending his free time expanding his networks, reading, and enjoying Netflix—especially Korean dramas.
And, he said, he would like to learn some sports from his students. Maybe football.