Some people spend their whole lives chasing a plane ticket out of the Philippines. She was never one of them. Normelina Dizon Deitz had a classroom in Bulacan, a choir to coach, school events to host, and no intention of leaving any of it behind. What moved her was arithmetic of a different kind — a teacher’s salary that could not stretch across a family of six.
“Unlike other Filipinos, I never dreamed of leaving our country and working abroad,” Normelina shares with TGFM. “I can say that circumstances and fate have brought me here.”
In 2004, she joined 16 other Filipino teachers hired to teach mathematics at Middle School 226 in Queens, New York, arriving on an H-1B visa and earning her certification only after passing three required examinations. Twenty-two years later, Normelina is still in New York — now teaching math in a special education classroom at the George Junior Republic Union Free School District in Freeville, a district built for students who need someone in their corner.
The math teacher who became a home
Before America, there were twelve years at Calumpit Institute in Bulacan, where teaching was only half the job. Normelina hosted programs, coached choirs, drilled cheering squads, and — depending on the year — taught Technology and Home Economics, Filipino literature down to Noli Me Tangere, Social Studies, and Values Education. She was, in every sense, the teacher who did everything.
That range prepared her for a harder truth about her current work: the lessons are not always the point.
“They might not remember all the lessons I taught, but for sure they would remember that I once touched their lives inside our classroom,” Normelina says of her students. Making them feel important, letting them know someone is there for them — that, more than any equation, is what she counts as the work. “It has never been easy and will never be easy,” the former Bulacan teacher admits, though she credits strong support from her administration.
Everything that broke, and didn’t
The first years in New York asked more of her than certification exams. There was the culture shock, the language barrier, the vertigo of a faster clock. And there was a life that kept rearranging itself: Normelina became a single mother of four during her first year teaching in Queens, her own mother stepping in to raise the children until her visa let her bring them over. A second marriage, to an American, did not last.
Through all of it, she kept studying. Normelina had already earned a BS in Mathematics from Bulacan State University — a degree she returned to college for after working five years out of high school. In the U.S., she added certifications in Mathematics 7–12 and Students with Disabilities 7–12, then a master’s in Special Education from Grand Canyon University, on top of earlier graduate units at PNU.
Faith held the rest together. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Normelina leaned on her congregation and the Manhattan temple through the hardest stretches. “Self-determination and believing in myself that I can do it,” she says, describing what carried her — that, and the love and support of her church family.
The next chapter is already written
Most people slow down at 59. Normelina is speeding up. This summer she plans to train as a certified life coach, and she is eyeing a PhD if a scholarship comes through. Retirement, in her telling, is not an ending but a launch: she has already written 50 children’s books for ages five to eight, many drawn from her own farm childhood, all waiting to be published. Normelina wants to speak at schools and to fellow OFWs, carrying an advocacy that fuses spiritual health with mental health.
Her advice to kababayans abroad reflects a woman who learned it the hard way. “Strengthen their love and faith in God, whatever their religion,” Normelina says. And in relationships: set boundaries, and put yourself first before others.
For someone who never wanted to leave, she has built a remarkable life away — one classroom, one certification, one story at a time.
