Amid a historic U.S. teacher shortage, a ‘Most Outstanding Teacher’ from the Philippines tries to help save a struggling school in rural Arizona

A succinct summary of many of the problems with American education through a bit of a human-interest story by the Washington Post. Facing a shortage of teachers willing to work in a high poverty district in rural Arizona for under $40,000 a year, an Arizona school district hires Filipino teachers, who have a tough time of it. While the article has an overly optimistic view of the Filipino educational system, which has its own problems, it's bad enough here that some are left wondering whether a salary eight times what they had before is worth it.

​

Discussion Points: Can schools really not pay better than Amazon delivery drivers? Is America facing a parent problem? Can children's behavior be fixed by making them cut sugarcane when they cut class? Beyond that, the mere fact of uprooting oneself and moving from one of the most impoverished areas in the Philippines [the sugar islands are really bad] to teach in a school on the other side of the planet is an interesting tale in of itself.

​

I was reminded of this recently by an acquaintance who's wrangling troublesome middle schoolers in Los Angeles [apparently a step up over dealing with homeless encampments], I hope this is okay to post here as I'm only an occasional browser of this subreddit and I thought you guys would appreciate it.