The math on it never quite works. Two public school teachers from Tarlac, a country away from any coastline they knew, somehow end up in a village in rural Alaska where dinner might depend on the day’s catch and winter swallows the sun for weeks. Roxane G. Manguera and her husband, Mar Chan G. Manguera, made that leap anyway, trading the familiar rhythms of Philippine classrooms for a place most Filipinos will only ever see in photographs.
The decision did not come lightly. Roxane had spent a decade teaching at home, carrying her family as the breadwinner, when a dream she had held since childhood finally came within reach. “I had been teaching in the Philippines for 10 years, but even when I was young, I always dreamed of working in the United States,” she shares with TGFM. “I wanted a better future, not only for myself but also for my family.”
Arriving alone in the cold
She went first, ahead of everyone. That detail matters, because the first year tested her in ways the paperwork never warned her about. Coming from the tropics to one of the coldest inhabited places on earth was jarring enough. Doing it without her husband and daughter beside her made it heavier.
“The first year in Alaska was one of the hardest seasons of my life,” the Filipina teacher recalls. “I had to leave ahead of my husband and daughter, so I was dealing with homesickness while trying to adapt to a completely different environment. The freezing weather, the long winters, and the isolation were all challenging.”
What eased the loneliness was not the landscape but the people already there. The Alaska Native community folded the newcomer in before her own family could arrive. “They were warm, caring, and generous, and they made us feel that we truly belonged,” she says. Months later, Mar Chan and their daughter, Atarah, joined her, and the sacrifices started to feel worth it. The three of them began building a life in a place none of them had imagined calling home.
A love story that started with teasing
Long before Alaska, there was a college classroom in Tarlac. Roxane grew up in Tarlac City; Mar Chan came from Bamban. They met as classmates working toward their bachelor’s degrees, then found themselves studying side by side again through their master’s and doctoral programs.
The romance, by their own account, arrived by way of a nosy professor. “One of our professors kept teasing us whenever we were together,” Roxane says. “At first, we just laughed it off, but eventually we got to know each other better, and the friendship naturally grew into something more.” The teasing turned out to be a prediction. Today they are spouses and teaching partners, sharing the same students and the same conviction about why the work matters.
That shared faith carried them through the harder stretches. “Life in rural Alaska wasn’t always easy,” Mar Chan says. “There were long, dark winters, freezing temperatures, and we were far from our families. But those experiences taught us resilience, gratitude, and faith.”
What the village taught them
Life in an Alaska Native village runs on subsistence — fishing, hunting, berry picking, harvesting what the land and water provide. For the couple, these were not novelties to sample but a way of living to learn. What stayed with Roxane, though, was not the harvest itself but what the community did with it.
“People willingly shared their harvest, checked on their neighbors, and always made sure no one was left behind,” she says. “That spirit of generosity and unity reminded me that happiness isn’t measured by how much you have, but by how much you’re willing to share.” It was a lesson that would eventually reshape their plans for home.
Their work did not go unnoticed. Both were named the School Board’s Teachers of the Month, and in May they received the International Service Award in Education in New York, an honor recognizing Filipino educators making a mark abroad. Roxane treats the recognition with characteristic deflection. “They were never the goal,” she says. “We accepted those awards not just for ourselves, but for every Filipino teacher who works tirelessly, often without expecting recognition in return.”
The same trip to New York let them present their graduate research alongside educators from across the country. For the former Tarlac teacher, the takeaway was less about the stage than the humility it demanded. “No matter how many years you’ve been teaching, there’s always something new to discover and someone you can learn from,” she says.
Turning blessings back toward Tarlac
The village’s ethic of sharing eventually pointed the couple back to where they started. This August, drawing on Roxane’s own memory of finishing college only because scholarships and kind strangers made it possible, they launched a scholarship program for students in Tarlac City. It already supports 25 college students.
“When God blesses you with more than enough, those blessings are meant to be shared,” she says. “You can’t enjoy them by yourself.” Her husband frames their whole story in the same terms. “Everything we have today is because of God’s faithfulness,” Mar Chan says. “Our prayer is that our story will encourage others to trust His plan, never give up on their dreams, and use every blessing to become a blessing to others.”
For anyone weighing a similar leap, Roxane keeps her advice plain. “Never stop dreaming,” she says. “Always stay humble, never forget where you came from, and when you’re finally blessed, remember to help others too.”
