Decorations in Felix Lii Bullos’ classroom.
By Conrad Hamel and Lucinda Dorrance
Riverside has experienced an influx of Filipino culture this year. Four new Riverside teachers, Alvin De Leon, Michelle Famor, Brenan Luck Mejos, and Felix Lii Bullos recently moved to Durham from the Philippines.
One of the first things Brenan Luck Mejos noticed arriving in Durham was the diversity. “When I came here, from the airport itself, it’s a diverse city and it just really amazed me. I can really tell that America, or in Durham, it’s really diverse,” said Luck Mejos. “I love to see different kinds of people, and I also wanted to learn their cultures.”
In the Philippines Luck Mejos taught general mathematics for humanities and worked in a private bank for 10 years. Luck Mejos’s family has been in the field of teaching ever since her great, great, great, great grandmother; “It runs in our blood”.
Felix Lii Bullos taught in the Philippines for almost 30 years before moving to Durham. “When I hear[d] the news that I will be teaching [at] Riverside, without any second thought, I grabbed my phone,” said biology teacher Felix Lii Bullos. “I read a lot of good things about Riverside, and that’s why I’m still looking forward to something like student activities.”
In the Philippines, celebration is a large part of the school community and student life. “Every month we [would] have [these] celebrations. That’s one thing I miss,” said Bullos, “ We do not have that kind of celebration here in Riverside.”
“I [was] teaching physics, chemistry, I [was] teaching biology, I [was] also teaching earth and environmental science,” said Bullos. Teaching in the Philippines is a lot different than teaching in the United States. In the Philippines, educators use a general educator system. “Because we tend to teach everything in the Philippines, Filipino teachers are very flexible,” said Bullos, who previously worked as a generalized instructor in the Philippines before joining Riverside over this summer. Generalized teaching is exactly what it sounds like, it’s when instead of teaching a specific subject, teachers instruct students on a multitude of topics under the same subject.
The transition to North Carolina’s weather has been challenging for teachers that have moved abroad. “At first, it was really hard getting used to the weather,” said Mejos. “The first day was really hot, and I didn’t expect that would be the kind of weather.”. Mejos was initially a general mathematics teacher in the Philippines. Despite the tricky weather, when an opportunity to teach abroad arose, he jumped on it.
“It’s not Durham, actually, but it’s America,” he said. “It just so happened that Durham was the one who invited me for an interview, and luckily hired me immediately.”.
AVID coordinator Raymond Cordova was raised in the United states but has Filipino relatives on both sides of his family. He initially lived in Florida and worked as a lawyer with Dade County Bar Association, a non-profit for women who were victims of domestic violence before shifting careers and becoming a teacher.
Though he’s never lived in the Philippines, he has a deep understanding of both cultures, both of his parents are partially Filipino, his mom being half and his dad being three quarters.
When Cordova was asked about why he decided to switch from being a lawyer to a teacher, he said, “Familiarity breeds contempt, I didn’t want to be contemptuous with where or whom I worked.”.
Luck Mejos hasn’t seen all of Durham yet. “I know it’s going to be a huge transition, but I am looking forward [to it]. I know there are still a lot of wonderful things that I might experience here in Durham and I’ll be looking forward to that.”
