DIAZ. Her acclaimed film premieres on Sept. 20. www.pbs.org
TORONTO – “The Learning,” Ramona Diaz’s documentary on four Filipino teachers recruited to teach in Baltimore, premieres in the US on September 20, on PBS.
“The Learning” has the honor of being shown as part of PBS’ POV (Point-of-View) series of acclaimed documentary films. On its website, the network describes the film as “a surprising tale of immigration, globalization and America’s shifting position in the 21st century. In recent years, there has been a trend of Filipino teachers seeking a better life by braving America’s urban schools and their poor, often troubled students. In Baltimore, 600 Filipinos account for 10 percent of the teaching force.
“‘The Learning’ is the story of four Filipino women facing their first year in Baltimore’s schools, where learning is a two-way street marked with disappointment and inspiring breakthroughs.
“In documenting a special year in the lives of educators, Dorotea Godinez, Angel Alim, Grace Amper and Rhea Espedido, ‘The Learning’ captures these women’s individual experiences, their hopes and their daily classroom struggles, while also exposing the issues that plague many American public schools. Declining school funding, urban poverty and crime have given these teachers a golden opportunity – and delivered rude shocks as the women are thrust into the heart of America’s educational crisis.
Opportunity
“The women share the sorrow of leaving their homes and families, as well as a giddy sense of possibility.
“In Baltimore, the women meet welcoming, beleaguered colleagues at the schools they’re assigned. They also find disorderly classrooms jammed with mostly African-American students, many behind in their studies and barely motivated to learn. One of the provocative subtexts of ‘The Learning’ is the way poverty has such different effects on young people in the two countries. In Baltimore, kids test the teachers with outrageous behavior, so different from the mannered orderliness of Filipino schoolchildren. The teachers alternate their familial skills and emotional appeals to the students’ better nature with attempts at stern discipline. They find themselves stymied by culturally different classroom rules—in Baltimore, they are not allowed to hug the students freely!
“One might expect disaster from such a disparate combination of teachers and students. Yet, slowly, the students’ curiosity gets the better of them, and they begin to be impressed by these foreign women who are so determined to teach them. Indeed, the very unfamiliarity of these not-quite-identifiable Asian women helps the black students open up. For the Filipinas, a window also opens: They let go of their cultural expectations and begin to work with the students on American terms.
Hero’s welcome
“The story moves back to the Philippines, where the teachers return for the summer holidays to a hero’s welcome. As they regale their former colleagues with stories of life in America, they see how their year abroad has changed their families and themselves. Will teachers imported from a poor country prove to be part of the long-term solution to the struggling US educational system? That remains to be seen. And, just outside the frame of the film lingers another question: How will the migration of some of the best and brightest teachers out of the Philippines affect the future of education there?”
A review of “The Learning” by Variety’s Dennis Harvey echoes the praise heaped on Ramona’s latest docu. Harvey wrote: “Few real-life narratives
can be more involving or inspiring than a teacher’s impact on students. Ramona S. Diaz’s ‘The Learning’ compounds that impact by adopting the perspective of several women from the Philippines, who leave children, husbands and native culture behind to fill posts far from home at Baltimore public schools.
“Despite various family crises back home in the Philippines, ‘The Learning’ offers potent uplift on several fronts – not least for reminding that few things are more valuable, yet undervalued, than a truly devoted school-teacher!”
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