Clotilda Shikanda braced herself for a 14-hour flight from Kenya to America. It was only her second time on a plane and the longest flight she’d ever been on.
“If it happens, at least I’ll die in a flight,” she remembers thinking.
She bid a tearful goodbye to her family, then embraced the journey. Her ultimate destination: Baltimore City Public Schools.
Shikanda is part of the city’s largest-ever cohort of teachers from overseas, a program designed to combat the local teacher shortage and reflect the growing population of students born outside the U.S. The 117 teachers leave their families in Ghana, India, Jamaica and more to hone their craft and share their culture with students.
“We really wanted to bring teachers in that brought cultural awareness at a much more global level and also mirrored a lot of where our children are from,” said Cera Doering, the city schools official in charge of the program.
Recruiting internationally started over 20 years ago. Teachers were primarily recruited from the Philippines, Doering said, about 25 to 30 at the time. It slowed down for a time, thanks to politics and finances, then ramped back up three years ago.
The teachers are on H-1B visas that can be renewed for up to six years, and there’s potential for permanent residency, Doering said.
Shikanda came to the States to teach students who are deaf and hard of hearing at Waverly Elementary/Middle School. It’s her passion, but she said she’s been doing the same thing the same way for 25 years. She’s looking forward to learning more American Sign Language in the U.S.
She landed in New York July 30 and took a charter bus to Baltimore with 36 other teachers. Among them was James Kariuki, who came from Kenya to teach math at Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School. At home, he’s used to seeing students struggle with math because they don’t have calculators. He wants to know what’s holding back Americans.
Brisa Zamarron took a different flight from San Antonio, Texas, after her family drove her there from Mexico. Now she’s teaching English Language Development to multilingual learners at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School. Throughout her career she’s taught in 10 different schools, including one in America about 15 years ago. Her experience, she said, has made her the teacher she is today.
Clotilda Kwasire Shikanda, left, James Kamau Kariuki and Brisa Gabriela Alvarado Zamarron are three of the 117 educators Baltimore City Public Schools recruited from overseas to teach in local schools. (Kristen Griffith)
All three teachers said they want to stay in the U.S. for a while. On Shikanda’s family phone calls, she often jokes she’s not coming back. The world opened up for her when she landed in New York. She saw things she’d only seen on TV; it felt like she was living the movie “Coming to America” with Eddie Murphy, she said. The homes, “streamlined alongside the road,” looked like something from a cartoon. The trees outnumbered those ones in Nairobi, her country’s capital.
In an attempt to blend in, she had to up her fashion game. Women are used to covering themselves back home, Shikanda said, but she felt out of place wearing her long Kenyan dress when she attended St. Anthony of Padua, a Catholic Church on Frankford Avenue. After that, she went to the mall to buy trousers. People soon stopped staring at her.
Shikanda said she intended to slim down when she got to the U.S., but her weight loss journey was put on hold after she tried her first burger.
Ordering food was a hurdle for Kariuki. He and a couple other teachers, who are fluent in English but have thick accents, found themselves having to point at what they wanted from menus.
Kariuki said he’s been impressed by the organization and order in the U.S., where people stand in line and wait their turn. He’s learned that stop signs are for cars, not people; in Kenya, he’s used to more foot traffic.
Zamarron is adjusting to speaking English all day, which can be draining for a non-native speaker. It also doesn’t help that Americans constantly use slang. When she tried talking to school system staff about housing, she found it easier to communicate via email.
The city pays long-standing international teachers to act as ambassadors, said Doering. They help answer questions about things like housing and bank accounts.
It’s taken nearly a year to get this point. City schools partner with visa sponsors and recruiting agencies to find teacher candidates overseas. This year, 125 people applied. Teachers had to demonstrate their skills in a 15-minute lesson. Some taught virtually, but Doering and her team traveled to Kenya last November to watch some of the African educators teach in person.
Staff identified the “top-tier” teachers to principals and department heads, who would later virtually interview the candidates. Once selected, school officials made sure the new teachers received their Maryland teaching licenses.
Doering’s presence in Kenya brought a new level of legitimacy to the job, according to Shikanda. Friends and family warned her of being conned when she started the application process.
“But when Dr. Cera [Doering] landed with her team, I’m telling you, people respected us,” said Shikanda.
The teachers are excited for the school year and the challenges ahead. Shikanda, who’d been using Kenyan Sign Language, will need to take a refresher course to get better at American Sign Language. And it’s her hope to teach the students about her culture through dance and drama.
Kariuki, who taught math for 20 years, is expecting the students to be resistant to the subject, but it’s not going to stop him. It hasn’t in the past.
Although Zamarron had a moment or two of feeling homesick, she felt encouraged by a note she wrote herself before leaving home: “God sometimes sends us difficult and inexplicable and surprising tests, which later we understand that everything good and not so good is in His divine plan.”
About the Education Hub
This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.
