Fifty students in a single high school science class sounds less like a lesson plan than a crowd-control problem. Most teachers would call it unmanageable. Aris A. Bantoc calls it Tuesday—and, more surprisingly, calls it opportunity.
The 38-year-old from Mauban, Quezon Province, teaches Geoscience and Chemistry at Sunrise Mountain High School in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Nevada, where his classes can swell to fifty students at a time, each one carrying a different culture, language, and story into the room. It is a long way from the fishing town where his mother once sold her catch from the back of a tricycle. The distance between those two places—measured not in miles but in the years of stubborn effort it took to cross them—is the real subject of his story.
The math that didn’t add up
Before the visa and the international conferences, there was a number that refused to shrink: 1.4 million pesos. That was the loan Aris carried out of his fifteen years with the Department of Education, and it framed the decision that would reroute his life.
“The main reason I pursued employment abroad was to achieve financial freedom,” he shares with TGFM. As the family breadwinner, his Master Teacher salary—respectable by DepEd standards—simply couldn’t stretch far enough. There were aging parents to support, siblings who never finished their studies, and a debt that grew heavier the longer he looked at it.
So in 2024, at the age of thirty-six, he boarded an airplane for the first time in his life and flew to a country he had only seen on screens. “Uprooting myself from the Philippines for my very first overseas job—and my first airplane ride—was both exhilarating and daunting,” he recalls. “My heart was filled with fear and excitement, but above all, I knew I had to take this risk for the people I cherish most.”
What he asked of the nephews and niece whose education he was funding tells you something about the man. “Once you graduate,” he told them, “I won’t ask for anything in return—just help your parents, and strive to improve your lives.”
A classroom that fought back
America did not roll out a welcome mat. It handed him a test.
His first assignment under the J1 cultural exchange program placed him in a behavioral-focused school—a setting far removed from any classroom he had known in Quezon. The disrespect was daily. The disruptions were constant. And the homesickness, with no family or relatives anywhere on the continent, pressed down hardest of all.
“When I first set foot in America, I was both awestruck and overwhelmed,” the former Master Teacher says. “It felt surreal to finally reach a place I’d only seen in movies, but deep inside, I felt like an outsider—almost like an alien landing on another planet.” Ordinary tasks—finding a market, getting to church—became small daily trials. And the students, he admits, made him question the whole endeavor. “Each day brought new surprises and, at times, I questioned if I had made the right decision coming here.”
Rather than retreat, he built something. He launched Project BEHAVE, a classroom management system rooted in what he describes as care and structure—an attempt to meet chaos not with control alone but with empathy. The school was intense, the work draining, but the lessons stuck. “It taught me invaluable lessons about patience, adaptability, and the universal need for guidance and hope,” he says.
He also learned where to find footing when the ground felt unfamiliar. His churchmates at the Locale Congregation of West Las Vegas took him in, supplying food, household necessities, and something harder to itemize. His Filipino colleagues offered guidance through that punishing first year. And when the difficulty peaked, he reached across the ocean. “Whenever things became too difficult, I reached out to my family in the Philippines,” he says. “Their love, encouragement, and prayers gave me the strength to persevere.”
What kept him from booking a flight home was, fittingly, arithmetic again. “I reminded myself that if I went home, the same hardships would await, and that here, at least, I had a chance to build a better future.”
From locally funded to internationally recognized
To understand why he refused to fold, it helps to know where he started—and how far back the pattern of grinding forward really goes.
His teaching career began in July 2009 at Liwayway National High School in Mauban, a locally funded position paying P7,000 a month. He poured himself into it anyway. Two years later he became a regular Teacher I; by 2014, Teacher II. While colleagues rested on weekends, he enrolled in a Master of Arts in Science Education—”at first, just to challenge myself,” he says, unaware the credential would soon matter enormously. When the Senior High School curriculum launched in 2016, it lifted him to Master Teacher II and carried him to Elias Salvador National High School in Agdangan, where he took on leadership roles and began a Doctor of Education in Educational Management he “had no intention of finishing.” He finished it. “I always see things through, no matter how long it takes.”
By 2020 he had returned home to teach STEM at Manuel S. Enverga Memorial School of Arts and Trades. Across those fifteen Philippine years, he became known less as a classroom fixture than as an evangelist for action research—leading school and district projects, mentoring fellow teachers through research writing, and, in his own telling, treating their promotions as personal victories. The Gawad Gintong Binhi Award named him first runner-up as Outstanding Researcher in DepEd Quezon. He reached the top five at the Region IVA Gawad Patnugot in secondary research. He advised thesis students across every strand and served as panelist and statistician for those who asked.
Then came a detail that captures his character in a single day. He officially resigned from DepEd on June 1, 2024, bound for the United States. On that very same day, he sat for the Principalship Exam, the NQESH. Three months later, the results arrived: he had passed. “It was a proud reminder that whatever my future holds, I am prepared—with skills, credentials, and a heart for service.”
He had tried to teach abroad before. New Zealand didn’t work out. The United States did—turning what he calls “a distant hope into reality.”
Where fifty students becomes fifty chances
The second year changed everything. Longing for a place where he could teach the way he believed in, he moved to Sunrise Mountain High School—and discovered that the enormous classes he might have dreaded were exactly where he wanted to be.
“Larger classes did not mean bigger problems, but bigger opportunities,” he says. Mainstream learners, students with individualized education plans, multilingual English-language learners—he sees each as a story to decode rather than a challenge to survive. That belief runs to the center of how he understands the job. “Above all, I am fueled by a passion for research and a deep belief that understanding each student’s story is key to unlocking their potential.”
The compensation, after years of financial strain, arrived as something close to relief. “One of the first things I appreciated in my current role was being fairly compensated for my hard work and experience—something that was a struggle back home,” he says. For the first time, he could support his parents, settle his debts, and cover both his needs and a few long-deferred dreams.
But the deeper comfort came from a community he hadn’t expected to find. Nearly thirty Filipino teachers work at his school, and they turned a foreign city into something survivable. “Their support, encouragement, and camaraderie helped me adjust to life in a new country and made me feel at home even when I was far away from everything familiar,” he says. “Our shared journey is about more than just teaching—it’s about lifting each other up and creating a family away from home.”
The freedom to pursue research bloomed too. He presented at an international research conference in New York, taking first place for Best Paper and third for Best Abstract. He judged senior design projects at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas College of Engineering. He launched a district-approved research initiative at Sunrise Mountain aimed at raising science achievement, joined the Society for Neuroscience with a presentation scheduled for Washington, D.C. in 2026, and was named outstanding peer reviewer of the month by international journals. “These experiences have boosted my confidence, expanded my network, and inspired me to keep growing,” he says.
The boy who sold puto before dawn
None of this, he insists, can be understood without the beginning.
He grew up the youngest child of parents who never finished school—a father who worked as a driver and laborer, a mother who sold fish, the two of them eventually joining forces to sell their catch from a tricycle. A gap of ten to fourteen years separated him from his older siblings, several of whom married young and met early hardship. For a long time, his own family doubted he would reach college at all, half-expecting him to follow the same path.
His mother thought otherwise. She stretched a budget that barely covered basics to enroll him. He met her halfway and then some. “There were days I skipped meals just to save enough for school projects,” he says. He walked with her to sell fish in neighboring towns and spent summers hawking snowballs, pansit, spaghetti, halo-halo, and palamig along the roadside. He sold his mother’s homemade pizza in the school canteen and collected the earnings each afternoon to fund the next day’s allowance. Before dawn, he sold suman, puto, and kutsinta for extra money. Through his last two years of college, he lived in a professor’s home, trading all the house chores for food and a roof.
He won no awards in those years, no formal recognition of any kind. What he built instead was a temperament. “Every challenge shaped my character and fueled my determination to succeed—not just for myself, but for my family and community.” The conviction that emerged from it has never left him: “No matter where you start, you can rise above your circumstances with hard work, faith, and a clear vision for the future.”
The road back home
For all he has gained in Nevada, his eyes are fixed on a return.
When his J1 tenure ends, he plans to go home, rest, and fulfill the 212(e) home-residency requirement—then teach again, perhaps at a college or university, perhaps online. He imagines more international experience down the line, maybe elsewhere in Asia, maybe another American chapter. Eventually he wants to save enough to start a business back home, one that supports his family and opens doors for others. “Ultimately, I want to spend my remaining years in the Philippines, where my heart truly belongs,” he says. “No matter how hard life may be, true happiness for me is found in the place where I was born and raised.”
His advocacy is already clear. He wants to champion teacher development and action research, empowering Filipino educators to innovate the way he learned to.
And to the kababayans navigating their own difficult chapters abroad, his advice is practical and hard-won. Put God first. Set goals and keep a plan. Above all, respect the paycheck. “Don’t just save what’s left after spending—instead, set aside your savings first as soon as you receive your salary,” he says. But he refuses to reduce the overseas life to sacrifice alone. “We are also here to live fully and experience new things. Explore, make memories, and embrace the opportunities that come your way—but always with wisdom and moderation.” The goal, in the end, is a homecoming without regret. “One day, when you return home, you’ll want to look back with gratitude, not regret.”
From a fishing town in Quezon to a fifty-seat classroom in Las Vegas, Aris has carried the same conviction that once got a hungry boy through college on canteen pizza and predawn puto sales: give your best, and you open doors—not only for yourself, but for the generations still deciding what to believe about themselves.
