Power of Mentorship and Paying It Forward

When he arrived in Gaston County, North Carolina, from his native Philippines in 2021, John Angelo Ramos had already taught for several years. But he needed support to make a successful transition. As he had in the Philippines, Ramos found that support in teacher mentors.  

Today, Ramos has five years of teaching experience in the Gaston County School District and has won school and district awards for his performance. But, he says, he understands that all of this wouldn’t be possible without the support of fantastic mentors and the professional learning they made possible.

“I had great teachers,” Ramos says, “and I am the person that I am today because these people influenced me to reach my fullest potential as an educator.”

That influence led Ramos to focus on giving back by inspiring others to become better teachers. To sharpen his mentorship skills, he decided to pursue professional development in the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s online Instructional Leadership Certificate [ILC] program.

A Childhood Dream of Being a Teacher

Growing up in the Philippines, Ramos got the teaching bug early. “I fell in love with teaching as early as, I would say, elementary school,” Ramos says. “I would lead my friends in a kind of play-teaching scenario. I would be the teacher and they would be the students, and I would teach them how to draw, how to write, and everything. I carried that passion to high school and beyond.” 

After high school, Ramos attended Philippine Normal University, his country’s national center for teacher education, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in science education. He taught high school in the Philippines for three years before signing up for an international teaching visa program, which brought him to Forestview High School in Gaston County, North Carolina, in 2021. There, Ramos faced all the challenges of living and working in a new culture and community.

The Support of Mentors Makes the Difference

Throughout his years as a student and a teacher, Ramos has relied on the support of mentors to help him overcome the challenges he faced. After he finished his education degree in the Philippines, for example, a mentor helped him make the transition from being a pre-service teacher into a classroom educator. “For me, mentorship is an important, critical relationship,” Ramos says. “It’s a two-way system between mentor and mentee, and there are so many things to learn from one another.”  

The international visa program that brought Ramos to the United States required three years of monthly mentoring. “[My mentor] guided me in terms of pedagogies, classroom management, and standards-based teaching. She taught me a lot about strategy, such as how to approach a difficult conversation. And she showed me real-life examples of how to work effectively in the classroom.”

Ramos’ teaching and leadership skills grew, eventually earning him recognition as 2025-26 Gaston County School District Teacher of the Year for his work as a biology teacher. For Ramos, this work is not a singular effort.

“[The award is] a collective effort of the people that mentored, guided, and trained me in the past, along with my students,” he says. “It’s not only what I personally contributed, but what I’ve learned from all of the people around me.”

As a result, he says he found his purpose — the “why” that drove his passion for teaching: a desire to give back by guiding and supporting other educators as he had been via his mentors.

Learning the Leadership Skills to Give Back

As part of his journey toward becoming a better teacher and mentor, Ramos pursued professional development through the Instructional Leadership Certificate (ILC). The program is designed to help teachers build their leadership capacities and learn to provide the developmental support their colleagues need to become better classroom teachers. ILC focuses on leading adult learners, engaging with relevant problems of practice that address common challenges of instructional leadership, and applying knowledge, skills, and insights to practice leadership in the classroom and beyond.

“The idea that really resurfaced for me during the program is that I had amazing teachers. And… for me it's a life mission to pass that along to the younger generations. I think it would be a disservice to humanity if I wasn’t able to share that with other people.”

Making Connections and Giving Back

When asked about his experience in ILC, Ramos describes it as transformative. “I was amazed by how carefully everything was woven and scaffolded. It keeps you on track, but you are also able to reflect and make connections from one topic to another and to the work you are doing in the classroom,” Ramos says. “People might not expect this from an online asynchronous format. But the full experience of this program is so much more robust than just another online assignment.”

Ramos also noted the importance of the connections he made with a motivated group of international peers. “These peer connections really enriched the perspective, the understanding, the concepts, the culture, and then the sharing of ideas and knowledge, because I was able to talk to someone from Australia” he says. “I was able to talk to someone from New England. I had some fellow participants from North Carolina, and we were able to connect about what is going on in terms of public education here in our state. It was an amazing experience.”

Ramos' connection to Harvard extended beyond the screen when he traveled to campus in December to attend an Askwith Education Forum, where he had the chance to meet Lecturer Noah Heller, faculty chair of ILC, in person. "Meeting Dr. Heller face-to-face after learning with him virtually was such a meaningful moment," Ramos says. "It reminded me that even in an online program, the relationships you build are real and lasting." The evening also gave Ramos the chance to hear Dean Nonie Lesaux speak in person alongside other distinguished voices in education. "Being in that room, hearing from leaders who are shaping the future of education, was incredibly inspiring," Ramos says. "It reaffirmed why I'm doing this work and why mentorship and continuous learning matter so much."

As a high school commencement speaker last year, Ramos was able to share the challenges of his education experience in the Philippines, as well as his pride in the opportunities he found in public education. The emotional reactions of parents and students in attendance were a testament to the power of mentorship, he says. “Just show up. Be a human. Teachers are now facilitators of learning and a resource - they no longer have a monopoly on knowledge,”Ramos says. “If you want to become a teacher-leader, a mentor, [the ILC program] is mandatory learning. You’ll build networks and learn from the powerful stories of others.