It’s officially October, which means it’s Filipino American History Month. To celebrate, we’re making a podcast episode about one piece of Fil-Am history in Massachusetts: Iskwelahang Pilipino or IP.
IP is the longest continuously running Filipino cultural school in the US. Founded in a church basement in Newton in 1976, the school became a non-profit organization in the 1980s and relocated to Bedford, Massachusetts in 1995.
Today, the completely volunteer run program serves students between pre-K all the way through high school with a variety of cultural programming. That includes language, cooking, dance, and a rondalla music program.
We are joined by three of IP’s volunteers to discuss the program’s history and how to get involved: Myra Liwanag, Executive Director of IP; Elsa Christiansen Janairo, the Director of the Rondalla Instructional Program; and Michelle Lazaro Payumo the School Age Program Director at IP.
Listen to the full episode.
TRANSCRIPT
Kaitlin Milliken: Hello, and welcome to the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken, and this show is obviously made by BOSFilipinos.
It’s officially October, which means it’s Filipino American History Month. To celebrate, we’re making a podcast episode about one piece of Fil-Am history in Massachusetts: Iskwelahang Pilipino or IP.
IP is the longest continuously running Filipino cultural school in the US. Founded in a church basement in Newton in 1976, the school became a non-profit organization in the 1980s and relocated to Bedford, Massachusetts in 1995.
Today, the completely volunteer run program serves students between pre-K all the way through high school with a variety of cultural programming. That includes language, cooking, dance, and a rondalla music program. In fact, the school’s musical program, The Iskwelahang Pilipino Rondalla, toured the Philippines, Europe and Canada multiple times.
Here to discuss the program in depth, we have three of IP’s volunteers: Myra Liwanag, Executive Director of IP; Elsa Christiansen Janairo, the Director of the Rondalla instructional Program; and Michelle Lazaro Payumo the School Age Program Director at IP. All three of these women also have personal connections to IP. Myra is a member of IP’s first graduating class. Elsa was a member of the program as a child. And Michelle started volunteering at IP with her now husband.
And with those introductions, thank you Elsa, Michelle, and Myra for taking the time today. Tell us a little bit about what IP is for folks who may not be familiar. Myra, why don't you kick us off?
Myra Liwanag: IP, Iskwelahang Pilipino is, first and foremost a community. It translates as Filipino school. And we do run an educational program. But it's a group of Filipino families and families who have a connection to the Philippines who come together as families to participate in activities related to Filipino culture, food, dance and music. From the ages of preschool, all the way through 12th grade for the students. And then adults of all ages.
Kaitlin Milliken: Great. And Michelle, I know that you're working with kids and trying to program for the different ages. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those activities and things that people participate in might be?
Michelle Lazaro Payumo: So at IP, so every Sunday we meet. We have preschool to high school. And then we have different subjects for classes, our classes’ names are binhi for a preschool, we have ilang-ilang for grades one and two. We have some sampagita, grades three to five. And then for the older kids, we have bonifacio for middle school and rizal for high school. And then we offer classes like Filipino life. So it talks about the week, combines culture language, so it's more activity based. And then we also offer FAE which is short for Filipino American experience. And we also offer which is one of the favorite of students is arts and crafts and cooking...then we also have music and dance.
Kaitlin Milliken: Great. So IP is fascinating because it's both a great way to preserve the culture, but it also has a great history and is a big part of preserving Filipino culture historically in the US. And it started in Newton in 1976. And I'd love to get a little bit more information about the history and why it was started. Elsa, why don't you give us some insight.
Elsa Christiansen Janairo: Back in the 1970s, there was an entire generation of immigrants who had come relatively recently within the past 10 for some 20 years prior to that, and they were having children. They were having children in a land far from their parents. In addition to trying to find ways to help children stay in touch with their cultural roots, they also wanted the children to be able to connect to one another. And to know in a place like Massachusetts where there weren't really large Filipino communities that one could find geographically that their children weren't alone. They weren't the only Filipino or Filipino American child ever to exist.
And so they, they very intentionally wanted to bring together kids in community, and families in community to support each other, while at the same time sharing aspects of their culture that the kids could become more familiar with in a community based setting, and also become really proud of, and create an identity together that they feel good about, and then go out, you know, as young adults and represent.
Kaitlin Milliken: So anyone can chime in here. In that founding era, how many people were involved? Who were the families that were getting started with it? Was it hard to find people to participate?
Elsa Christiansen Janairo: The two women who are usually credited with pulling together the founding group, both had educational backgrounds. They were teachers in various ways. And their interest was to really just pull together any Filipinos they could find. So it was a small group, initially, maybe around 10 families. They would just get together and the basement basically, that was almost free rent wise, in the neighborhood where one of them lived, and look for any volunteers that they could find amongst themselves. And perhaps if there was expertise they were looking for outside of their immediate circle, like dance specifically, they would recruit from anyone they could find in the Boston area.
And it was a little bit of a challenge at first to figure out how they would do it. But they were very intentional about doing it, and about what their goals were. They, they listed their goals and their mission. And our mission these days, which we've re-examined a few times over the years, has largely stayed intact. I think we've added to it. But we never found that there was anything to take away from it. Because they had a really expansive vision of what and how Filipino American children should come together to learn about themselves and learn to be proud of themselves.
Kaitlin Milliken: Great, that is an awesome mission. You just mentioned Elsa, that sort of that mission has grown over time. I was wondering, Myra, if you would be able to give a little bit more color into the ways in which the mission has expanded?
Myra Liwanag: Sure. I think, you know, early on, as the story is told to me, because I wasn't around in the early years, actually, families were finding that there was a gap between the immigrant generation and the generation that was born here. So a lot of the effort was really about finding ways to close that gap. And in the early years, it was largely immigrants, as Elsa was saying, from the post 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act era, right? So a whole bunch of folks came to the United States around the same time, so it's this little boom of families, particularly in the Boston area.
And then over time, you know, the school struggled. There were some years where maybe there were just a handful of students, maybe just six students. And other years where there were more. In the first decade, you know, it was always a struggle to get to the next year. But one of the things that I think the founding generation was committed to, particularly Chris Castro, who was our longtime executive director, she said, “We need to open every year just like a school, for families to know that this community is alive. We need to open every year.”
So that's one of the reasons why we lay claim to the idea that we are the longest running continuously run school. We're not the oldest but we've never closed our doors, not even during the pandemic. So you know, at the end of the first 10 years, there was this moment of “Aha, we've made it through a decade.: And then the school grew and changed and tradition started to really firmly establish themselves. So now starting with our 10th year, every five years we try to have a big celebration of another five years of operation. And then over time, we saw new programs come up in our 10th year, the Rondalla program was born. And that's our music program which Elsa can tell you a lot more about. And then in the late 90s and the O's, we moved out of the church. And we moved to Bedford, Mass., which is where we are now at the town center, and somewhere around.
Shortly after that, we hit a milestone, serving 100 students a year. In the early late 00’s and early O's, we started building our Filipino American Experience Program. And all through all of these years, we also had some consistent programs for our families, like our caroling programs. We have a choral group of families that come together and they sing every fall. And we have different activities, social activities, and different celebrations, such as a talent show where the kids can share their talents every year, to all of these things are things that the students take part in, but also families that were part of IP before are welcome to come back. And so they're like mini reunions when they have these community events.
Kaitlin Milliken: That's great. You mentioned Myra, that over the last year, even during the pandemic IP was still offering classes. What was it like to run educational programming completely online?
Myra Liwanag: For the first maybe the first few classes, it was terrifying. We're a community of volunteers. The program is entirely volunteer run. So we're all parents of children or alumni who've come back. And then parents of children who've graduated who stuck around to continue teaching, you know, only a handful of our teachers are professional educators. So we really kind of tapped our professional educators to give us advice on how they were handling remote teaching and education. Because, you know, for all the rest of us, we feel like amateurs, you know. And we really gained a lot from them. But I will say that the folks who saved the day were our IP dads who were really well versed in technology, and AV and zoom and microphones and cameras. And because they made it easy for all of the rest of us to do what we usually do, and they helped us put it online every Sunday.
Kaitlin Milliken: That's great. And Michelle, when it comes to that online programming, you know, how did some of the activities have to change from when they were in person to when they were online?
Michelle Lazaro Payumo: Actually, that was one of the discussions that Myra and I would have planning the year. So we have a yearly schedule. So that's all set, whether in person, right, and then in virtual, we tried to maintain that. So every time it's a special community event, let's say it's music or the talent show, so we had to reinvent. But it's amazing how it feels like we're together, seeing the kids perform. But now on a different platform. We also have activities like our games, which everyone loves… So we also had to, you know, somehow still keep that spirit. But just on this platform, but we always had that in mind. We had to keep the schedule, keep what's familiar. We tried to just make the flow as if we were in person. But, you know, we just kept that spirit on and, and, you know, our theme last year was by baya ihan, so making sure that we're a community working together, and I stayed connected.
Myra Liwanag: It was challenging in the beginning, and we made our way through bit by bit. But it was this incredible year of innovation for all the teachers because just as Michelle was saying, everybody had to reimagine how we make it feel like regular IP, regular classes. And so our talent show suddenly opened up because everyone was submitting a video of their talent. And so we had sports demonstrations and really creative videos edited and all kinds of talent that we didn't expect to see showcased which was wonderful. And we got to see the kids engage in really different ways and, in many ways, they taught us because they were ahead of us. They started school before us and they knew how to participate with online classes better than we did, oftentimes. So they give us some tips along the way.
Michelle Lazaro Payumo: Can I add one more thing I think that we need to highlight that's very Filipino? That is very IP? We also had the Luton workshop, which was a success, like because that's one thing that IP is when we get together, it's during our Merienda time, because we're now virtual, we couldn't do that. So we had two workshops where it was a family effort. And first of all, it's not just students doing cooking in person when we did it, now it's the whole family doing it together. So and then after we all send pictures, send each other pictures eating. So it was innovation and just different. But it still has the same spirit and heart.
Kaitlin Milliken: I love how it's become a family activity. I definitely do want to take a dive into how you get families incorporated. Are there any activities, Michelle, and Myra and Elsa that you'd want to highlight of how families together can work to preserve their cultural identity and stay in touch with their roots?
Elsa Christiansen Janairo: Well, it's interesting, because when you started your question, I wasn't sure where you're going with it. And one thing that came to mind immediately that we do, as families together, is what some people would consider a giant community service project that we do at the Lowell Folk Festival. And we have a food booth. And it's one of the longest running food booths at the festival since we've been there since the first year. And the families come to gather, prepare food, fres. I mean, we're even, you know, starting with whole cabbages. They're chopping them up, turning them into the insides of lumpia, wrapping the lumpia, frying lumpia, everything's happening there, and everyone from some of the youngest members of our community, to the lolos, and the lolas, the grandparents are all there helping together to create food.
That is one of the major ways I think that cultures here in the US that may not be as well known, become known to other people is through sampling their food. And so it's with great pride that our families put all of these meals together and serve them to people with big smiles and explanations of what the food is and how it was made. And it only happens once a year. And it's for three days. But it is this amazing opportunity for families not only to meet each other, but work together, you know, with all the different generations of the family coming together around culture, and around the importance of connecting with people through your culture. So it's one of the great things that we do.
I think, in terms of finding ways to preserve culture and hand it down, I think one of the things that I found important growing up... I'm multiracial. So part of my family's Filipino, and part of it's not, is really having the opportunity to come into a space which IP was for me, where it was normal, to be thinking about all of this, to be thinking about the fact that I'm living in a certain place in the world. But the way that my home life is and my reality is, is influenced by different places in the world and different cultures in the world. And how do I pick and choose? And how do I try to understand the important things, perhaps the ideals, the values, the history of different sides of my family, and decide what I want to take with me, and, and then ultimately teach to my children?
So I think just by the fact of attending IP, because it's not really a drop off program. It's not something where a parent just dumps the kid and runs. The parent remains engaged, helping out on the day of part of the community, part of the planning, part of the support for the children, meeting the other kids in the community, so it becomes a giant family really. So I think just from engaging, even if you only engage for one year, it instills in children the idea that there's really this possibility of embracing the many cultural influences that they have as children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants, and possibly of different cultural influences within their own families. And not having to cut themselves into components or pieces, whether this one place and this in another place. It's really an amazing opportunity to be part of a community where everyone's doing that. Right? And you don't feel like you're alone trying to figure yourself out. Who in the world am I?
Kaitlin Milliken: I would love to talk about the volunteer process. Michelle, I'd like to hear from you. Because I know that you've had a very long running history as well as a volunteer, how can families that are interested in getting involved with their kids or folks who are just willing and wanting to get involved, you know, as Filipino people living in the greater Boston area? How could they do that?
Michelle Lazaro Payumo: Because we always need volunteers. But I think it's really just coming to the school and experiencing it with your child. I think I can speak for myself. It's like, it was organic, what happened in you, like I said, it was my husband, I met him he was active at IP Rondalla. And then it kind of turned around when we had kids. And I'm, it's just being there with everyone, like what Elsa said, you're engaged. And then you feel like, you want to be involved in the community. So it's really having friends and just being with your child, and you find yourself helping, you're in merienda, you're helping prepare the foods, you're bringing food, lumpia or anything mac and cheese, whatever, you can bring. So then it kind of becomes organic, but always we ask, we need help, and that's what's amazing about IP, or everyone willing to help. Myra, maybe you have some input on that, too?
Myra Liwanag: Well, I tell people all the time that the IP experience is what you make of it. And that, when you give to it, you get back so much more from the experience. So, you know, one of our, our main sort of our main mission is to strengthen families and community. And one of the ways that you strengthen families and communities is building connection, of course, the best way in our sort of philosophy is to really live it. And so that means, you know, coming in the door as a parent helping out with merienda, serving food, or helping the teachers in the classroom. Just wherever you can find a spot to help out. And that's how people get to know each other.
Everyone there is giving themselves to achieve something greater than any of us could do alone. I started IP when I was a senior in high school, so I had spent most of my childhood years outside of IP. And my parents were very focused on building a life here in the US. We were fortunate to have many cousins around. So I grew up with a pretty good awareness of, you know, what being Filipino means: we ate the food almost every day, and we saw our family almost every weekend. But when I went to IP, I got to see what was more than just my family, I got to understand better Filipino culture, Filipino values more deeply, because I could see it extended beyond the people I was related to, but further to this community of folks who help each other and support each other who laugh together and eat together and, and love each other.
So I think if you you know, if you're new to Filipino school, and you're just trying to make your way, introduce yourself to folks, connect with other parents, find out how long they've been there and throw yourself in, and somehow you managed to land and find a place for yourself and your family.
Elsa Christiansen Janairo: I also want to add that there is a place for volunteers who aren't parents yet, or maybe won't be parents. And there are different places where people have gotten engaged. Sometimes adults who are musicians have joined our caroling group and loved being part of that community. Some have joined our rondalla group and engage with the students there. And then there are other really interesting things like we'll have a cook off, and we'll invite local Filipino or Filipino American chefs to be like the celebrity chefs who get to judge who did the best or most creative job. And it's great, it's great.
Some of those things are one off things where they're just occasions for kids to get to see role models from throughout the community. Other times, there are people from local college programs who are interested in Asian American youth development and want to come and you know, engage maybe for a few sessions, run a series, or become a speaker at a workshop. So there are various ways to volunteer and you can always connect with Myra or Michelle to find out more about that. We welcome folks even if you're not yet a parent.
Kaitlin Milliken: Wonderful, I think that's an excellent note for us to close on today. Elsa, Myra, Michelle, thank you so much for talking about this piece of Greater Boston and Massachusetts, Filipino American history and for covering so much ground today.
This has been the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken. Music for our show was made by Matt Garamella. Special thanks to Elsa, Michell, Myra and the team at IP for making this episode special. Enrollment for the 2021-2022 school year at IP is still open. To learn more visit ipbahay.org.
If you liked this episode of our show, you can subscribe to the BOSFilipinos Podcast on your streaming platform of choice. You can also follow us on Instagram, @bosfilipinos, for more Filipino american history month content. If you have ideas of what we should cover, you can let us know at bosfilipinos.com. Thanks for listening and see you soon.