A newly-built elementary school in Stockton, California will be named after Flora Arca Mata, the first Filipino-American (Fil-Am) teacher in the state of California.
This immortalisation was announced after the Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) unanimously voted to name a new K-8 school after Flora Arca Mata.
The Fil-Am teacher was considered by many as a pioneer of teaching in the Stockton unified school for 32 years until her retirement in 1980.
Mata gained prominence as the first Filipino American to graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles and served as the first woman of color to teach at the Stockton Unified School District.
UCLA’s “Bruin Women Firsts” newsletter noted that she was hired during a time when it was difficult for minorities to secure teaching positions, and her work as California’s first Fil-Am teacher paved the way for other Asian Americans in education.
The choice of immortalizing Mata started when the Little Manila Rising, a Stockton-based organization composed of Filipino-Americans (Fil-Am) teachers, successfully launched a campaign to put her on the list of the SUSD’s survey to give the new elementary school a name.
The school is currently supporting construction and is projected for completion in June 2020 and occupancy August 2020.
California’s first Fil-Am teacher
Flora Arca Mata, California’s first Fil-Am teacher, was born to Jose Arca and Victoria Salcedo in Honolulu, Hawaii.
She was the second youngest of six siblings and the first American Filipino woman to graduate from UCLA, where she received her certificate in teaching.
Mata after graduating college married Vidal Mata, and both were teachers for Stockton Unified School District.
Flora taught for 32 years, continuing to substitute after retiring in 1980.
In 1940, the couple decided to move to the Philippines to teach until the duration of World War II.
With the help of Karloff, the couple was able to return to Stockton where Flora started her teaching career in California under the SUSD’s jurisdiction for more than three decades. Flora continued to work as a substitute until she was 80 years old.
She died at the age of 95 in December 2013 and is survived by her son, Eddie Mata, and daughter, Vida Longley-Mata.
The Fil-Am teacher has 21 grandchildren and great-grandchildren to whom she had instilled the importance of education, and Californians are grateful. She lived a beautiful, wonderful life and missed by her friends and family.
Extensive history on Mata
The Stockton native Dawn Mabalon has written extensively about the history of Stockton’s Filipino community. The author of “Little Manila Is In The Heart” shared transcripts of interviews she conducted with Flora Mata a decade ago. Fil-Am teacher’s relatives shared photographs, old and recent.
It’s enriching to know that during her time, it was a great honor to teach and students have great respect for their teachers regardless of color. Are times drastically changing? Is teaching no longer a revered profession?
Students complain that their teachers’ lack of mastery of their subjects causes them to transmit the same ignorance. The end result is that students mock their teachers who dish out “irrelevant, incorrect, and outdated information.”
With the Internet within easy access, students can easily crosscheck information.
While we believe that every student who attends school should be rewarded with fruitful learning to equip them for life, we commend teachers who are interested in technology to aid teaching and thus, derive some sense of deep reward for their labor and more respect by their students.
Photo from: Ha-Insta
