Leaving a teaching career to become an au pair looks, on paper, like a step in the wrong direction — a trained educator swapping her own classroom for someone else’s household. That is the move Joy Bautista made in 2015, when she left the Philippines for Norway to care for another family’s children. Eleven years later, it reads less like a detour than a first, deliberate step toward a bigger version of the life she already wanted.
The homeroom teacher from Mapandan, Pangasinan, did not stumble into that decision. She had been teaching Grade 4 full-time at a private school while running Saturday Math classes for around 50 students at Mapandan Central School — crowded rooms she still remembers fondly. “Even with crowded classrooms, I saw how eager the children were to learn,” she shares with TGFM. But a nephew who needed medical support made the arithmetic of her own life simple: her family needed help, and Norway offered a way to provide it while trying something new.
A profession she left to keep
The au pair years carried her from Norway to Denmark and back again, and along the way she gained two host families she still calls family, visiting whenever she can. “I will always be grateful for how they welcomed me and treated me like part of their family,” Joy says. When the arrangement ended, she stayed on to study for a year, taking part-time work as a substitute and assistant teacher at Haugesund International School.
That foot in the door became a career. Since 2019 she has worked full-time at the school — seven years and counting — now the PYP 2 homeroom teacher. The woman who once left the profession to support her family had, without quite planning it, walked all the way back into it.
When a Math lesson becomes a musical
Ask her what keeps her in the classroom and the answer has nothing to do with salary or status. “Service is my love language, both in life and in my work,” Joy says. Teaching, the way she describes it, is permission to bring her whole self to work — knowledge, creativity, and a serious weakness for singing. “I love music, especially singing, so sometimes I turn my lessons — even Math — into a little Broadway musical.”
The payoff, she says, is watching a child do something they couldn’t do the day before. That same instinct for service has spilled well past the school gates. Through her love of music, and alongside other Filipino bands, she organized “Icons of Music,” a concert for a cause that sent groceries to students in Talisay, Cebu after a typhoon and slippers to children across three schools in Oslob. Her earnings have reached home in quieter ways too — helping her mother, and bringing her eldest sister, also a teacher, to work beside her at the same school.
The words she refused to believe
None of it came easily, and Joy is candid about why. “Growing up poor in the Philippines meant that opportunities were limited,” she says. “Sadly, even expressing yourself could sometimes feel like a privilege.” She remembers being told she would not succeed because she was in a relationship while studying in college — a line she chose to treat as fuel rather than a verdict.
Faith carried her, and so did her sisters, who helped her find that first host family. But the person she credits most is her nephew, Theo — the same nephew whose medical needs first sent her abroad. “Whenever life felt difficult, I reminded myself that my struggles were small compared to what he was going through,” she says. “He gave me strength to keep moving forward, one step at a time.”
That phrase is practically her creed. Her mantra reads: “Take small steps beyond your comfort zone. Where you begin does not define where you will go.” Now she wants to hand it forward. Joy plans to make videos walking fellow au pairs and Filipinos through the practical steps of building a life in Norway, and to keep making music with a point — “not to become famous, but to use my talent with purpose.”
Her message to anyone standing where she once stood is short. “You are brave,” she tells them. “You are one step closer to your destination.”
