'This is where I want to be': How Manor ISD uses J-1 visas to help fill teacher shortages
Just a few weeks before school starts, Manor teacher Brenda Leonor Hopwood browses the school supplies section at Walmart.
It’s Hopwood’s 13th year of teaching, but only her third in the United States. Originally from the Philippines, Hopwood is one of about 90 teachers hired by the Manor school district in a unique approach to staffing shortages.
It's hard to be away from home, but the students make it worthwhile, she said.
"This is my place," Hopwood said. "This is where I want to be."
Manor has about 400 teachers; of those, almost a quarter — 89 this school year — are in the district as part of a foreign work program, most of them on the J-1 visa.
The program gives foreign teachers a chance to learn new techniques in the United States and brings a heightened level of cultural diversity to Manor students’ classroom experience. For district administrators, foreign teachers help fill gaps in the workforce amid record teacher shortages.
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Manor launched the program in 2021, said Alejandro Góngora, who oversees the district's foreign exchange program.
In the 2021-22 school year, the district hired only about 32 teachers through the program, but more have since signed on, he said.
“We’ve had to be very creative and innovative about how we ensure we have quality educators in our classrooms for our scholars,” said Góngora, the Manor district's chief academics officer.
The teachers, most of whom hail from the Philippines, Colombia, India or Spain, teach in all grade levels, in special education services and in bilingual education, he said.
“For us, this is a very important strategy in light of the teacher limitations and pool of teachers,” Góngora said.
Teacher attrition became a critical issue for many Texas school districts during the coronavirus pandemic.
Statewide, districts faced an average attrition rate of 11.6% in the 2021-22 school year and 13.4% in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency. Average attrition rates between 2011 and 2019 were between 10.1% and 10.6%.
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A J-1 visa is an exchange program for various jobs in the United States. The J-1 program brings in foreign college students to fill seasonal summer jobs, hires camp counselors or recruits workers for certain professions, such as teaching.
In Manor, the district helps those teachers with transportation and other living needs, Góngora said.
Hopwood teaches various high school English courses. She has taught in other Asian countries outside the Philippines and leaving home for a foreign land is always a risk, she said. Customs, and students, are different.
“In Asia, you don’t have to tell them what is discipline,” Hopwood said. “They know what the rules are.”
However, the need for teachers was clear to Hopwood the moment she arrived.
Because of paperwork issues, Hopwood didn’t arrive in Manor until almost halfway through the 2021-22 school year and immediately her students were skeptical of how long she’d stay.
“They didn’t have constant teachers,” Hopwood said. “They don’t want to trust you.”
By the second week of class, she had learned all her students' names. She was here to stay.
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The district works with companies specialized in recruiting J-1 workers, Góngora said.
The companies search for master teachers in several countries and handle the immigration paperwork. The potential employee pays the fees associated with obtaining the visa, he said.
Employees sign a three-year contract, with options to extend the contract by two years.
This school year is the third for teachers who came to Manor when the program launched in 2021.
Jaime Palacio, a sixth grade bilingual teacher at Blake Manor Elementary School, wants to extend his contract and eventually hopes to settle permanently in the United States.
Palacio, originally from Colombia, has been teaching for almost a decade and took a chance to come to Manor.
“I left behind my wife and 5-year-old daughter,” Palacio said. “It was definitely an uncertainty. Thank God I was able to bring them five months later.”
Palacio loves teaching in Manor. He fell in love with learning languages when he studied English in school in Colombia and wants to share that passion with students who have also immigrated to the United States, he said.
“The reason why I like to know so many things is not because I want to brag about it, but because I want to share with people who may not have the access,” Palacio said.
The district hasn’t yet had discussions about how and whether it could support teachers who want to seek a more permanent legal status in the U.S., Góngora said.
Hopwood also wants to stay in Manor longer than three years, she said. Her 15-year-old son is in the Philippines, but she’s thinking about bringing him to stay with her, she said.
“I’ve found a home away from home,” Hopwood said.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Manor, Texas looks to foreign countries to help fill teacher vacancies
